[with Project 168: https://project168.wvu.edu/competency-areas/curriculum#area-1]
[with Project 168: https://project168.wvu.edu/competency-areas/curriculum#area-1]
“Thanks for checking in. Due to the WVU "transformation" that you might have seen in the news, some of my responsibilities have shifted. I do not have social action workshops on the calendar this semester. I continue to promote the opportunities you share with us with the hope that my colleagues sign up, and I aim to facilitate social action workshops in the future.”
2
I am deeply invested in engaging our students and community members to be thoughtful citizens. Through my work at the Center for Community Engagement, I teach students about critical service learning pedagogy and help them shape their passion into intelligent, well-formed action. Along with other Center staff, I support faculty and instructors to use best practices for service learning, collaborate in community focused research, build social enterprise, develop sustainable relationships across the state and nation that improves the quality of life for West Virginians, and creatively brainstorm ideas in a space designed to move WV towards solving community problems. We are a hub for community engagement and civic action. We have noticed that our students' motivation has shifted since the pandemic so I am looking for ways to revive the Center's Social Action Clinic that our service learning students utilize. Additionally, the Center for Community Engagement is exploring the option of offering a minor so we're hoping this co-curricular seminar in the Fall could help rebuild the momentum with student engagement, belonging, purpose, and social action.
Prior to working at WVU, I worked for Eastern Michigan University where I facilitated an out-of-school time youth program where we guided students through a democratic leadership model inspired by training from The Neutral Zone (Ann Arbor, Michigan) and The David. P. Weikert Center (Ypsilanti, Michigan). Many of the students who participated are now actively engaged citizens working towards building and sustaining healthy communities.
I am looking forward to finding out what issues my students might choose to address in their campaigns! This year, our presidential ambassadors started a Fentanyl Education Task Force which got a lot of attention. (https://well.wvu.edu/fentanyl) Other groups of students that I support started a health literacy campaign as well as a financial literacy campaign. I am wondering if/when/how recent State policy decisions will be expressed on campus in the Fall. For example, West Virginia's legislature made some recent decisions that directly impacts the young adults in our state including revoking access to gender affirming care, access to abortion, and a shift in the state's gun policy so that college students and staff may now bring their guns on campus. These are just some of the recent changes that students might choose to address.
West Virginia