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Last week NC Campus Compact welcomed the newest NC Afterschool Corps members with a two-day orientation and training event. For the 2018-2019 project year, fourteen members will serve at 10 campus and community sites to strengthen afterschool programs and facilitate connections between colleges and universities and their community partners. All of these members are serving as part of the AmeriCorps Volunteers in Service to America program, also known as VISTA. VISTA aims to strengthen organizations that alleviate poverty through volunteering and the mobilization of resources. NC Campus Compact has sponsored VISTA projects since 2003; this year marks the second year of the Compact’s focus on afterschool.

The orientation and training event was held at Elon University and included sessions on why afterschool matters, performance measurement, the Design for Change approach, and event planning. We also enjoyed a team dinner, an afternoon at Elon’s Challenge Course, a conversation with the program coordinator of the It Takes A Village Project, and lunch with several VISTA program alums.

NC Campus Compact is excited to support this group of talented and dedicated national service members. Learn more about them and their placement sites below.

Amanda Kinsey
Site: High Point Leap
Partner: High Point Univeristy

Originally from the small town of Hailey, Idaho, Amanda recently graduated from The University at Buffalo in Buffalo NY with a degree in health and human service- early childhood. During her undergraduate years, she joined an Emergency and Rescue Squad and became a Certified EMT, held an executive board position for an on campus community service club- UB Circle K, and worked at the local YMCA as a Before and After School site coordinator. In her free time, Amanda likes to craft, kayak, and explore her new home. Why VISTA? Amanda says: “I decided to become a VISTA because after graduation I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to do. This year I am looking forward to finding myself through the eyes of my students.”

Ana Gomez
Site: Duke University, America Reads and Counts
Partner:Durham County Library

Ana will be working with Duke’s America Read America Counts program in her hometown of Durham, NC. She graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a Bachelor’s of Science in biology. Throughout undergrad, she worked with the university’s Carolina Latinx Collaborative as the undergraduate director. In that role, Ana worked on programming to help provide resources for Latinx students. She joined VISTA as an opportunity to expand the skills that she had learned in undergrad and because the mission is something she wants to work for. In her free time, Ana loves to cook and run.

Anissa Williams
Site: Movement of Youth
Partner: UNC-Chapel Hill

Anissa Williams is a North Carolina native from Henderson in Vance County. She is a 2018 graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), receiving a B.A. in Anthropology. During her time at UNC Anissa developed a passion for health equity and social justice. While she aspires to further her education and career in the field of Public Health, she is also dedicated to giving back to the youth in marginalized communities. Anissa exhibited this dedication during her time at UNC by serving as the Site Director for Movement of Youth, a mentoring organization for students of color, for over 2 years. Anissa is excited to continue working with Movement of Youth as an NC Campus Compact VISTA member and looks forward to all the growth that will happen this year with the organization and through her personal journey as an alumna!

Brenda Dial Deese
Site: Lumbee Tribe Boys & Girls Clubs
Partner: UNC Pembroke

Brenda Dial Deese is a member of the Lumbee Nation and a resident of Pembroke, NC. She is a retired educator from the state of North Carolina who is serving her second term as an AmeriCorps VISTA member with the Lumbee Boys & Girls Clubs. Other professional experiences include working as Program Coordinator with the Intertribal Circle for the Prevention of Substance Abuse in Native Youth and as adjunct faculty with the University of NC-Pembroke. She designed OILS (OBED Indigenous Leadership Styles assessment, as a tool to offer insight to decision-making practices, strengths, and weaknesses among Indigenous leaders. It can be found on www.cinnamonwit.com.) Brenda holds a PhD in Curriculum, Instruction and Counselor Education from North Carolina State University and is board certified as a National Certified Counselor and Licensed Professional Counselor- Supervisor.

Brittney DeWitte
Site: East Carolina University, Center for Leadership and Civic Engagement
Partner: Boys & Girls Clubs of the Coastal Plain

Brittney works to build capacity of the Boys and Girls Clubs of the Coastal Plain by connecting them with ECU’s Center for Leadership and Civic Engagement, specifically their mentor and tutoring program, Pirate PALS. Britt graduated from East Carolina University with a degree in Recreational Therapy and is thrilled to be able to complete a year of service at my alma mater! As an undergrad, she worked as a Resident Advisor for three years, an Orientation Assistant for three summers, and spent much of my free time taking advantage of service and leadership opportunities through the Center for Civic Engagement and Leadership. In her free time, she enjoys reading, painting, playing the ukulele, hanging out with her cat Coco, or binge-watching Netflix shows with friends.

Caroline Averitt
Site: Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater High Point
Partner: High Point University

Caroline is serving at the Boys and Girls Club of Greater High Point to assist with volunteer management and recruitment as well as resource development. Her major project is supporting implementation of the club’s Child and Adult Food Care Program (CACFP) grant. Caroline graduated from UNC Chapel Hill in May 2018 (go Heels!) with a degree in history and 2 minors in music and medical anthropology. She also has a background in nutrition and dietetics, which is what led her to the nonprofit world and then to Americorps VISTA! She is looking forward to engaging with the community in High Point and helping the kids at the clubs have an amazing afterschool program.

Carolyn MacNair
Site: NC State University, Juntos
Partner: Juntos Wake County- Garner High School

Carolyn graduated from UNCW with a B.A. in Spanish and International Studies. She worked with several different nonprofits throughout Wilmington that served the Latinx community. She tutored ESL students, assisted parents in finding employment, and led a small empowerment group for refugees. As a VISTA volunteer, she will be working for a program called Juntos at NC State. Carolyn says: “I hope to empower young students to reach their full potential despite social and economic barriers and I’m looking forward to meeting people that are just as passionate about serving the community as I am!”

Evangeline Giaconia
Site: UNC Asheville, Math Department
Partner: Asheville Housing Authority

Evangeline Giaconia, originally from Brentwood, Tennessee, graduated in 2018 from Appalachian State University with a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and minors in Biology and Religious Studies. She does long-term ethnographic research in the Napo province in Ecuador and recently returned from her third trip, where she and her research partner continued their study of the indigenous language Kichwa and worked with educators to develop a language lab in the local school. She is an avid fan of languages, martial arts, and mythology, and is also a writer who hopes to one day publish young adult fantasy. As a recent graduate, she is thrilled to be an NC Campus Compact VISTA, working with a remarkable group of people committed to fighting poverty and affecting positive social change.

Kelli Early
Site: UNC Asheville, Math Department
Partner: Asheville Housing Authority

As an alumna of her Host Site, UNC-Asheville, Kelly is excited to be an Afterschool VISTA to expand the Marvelous Math Club. As an undergraduate, she fostered her interest in the social sciences, law, and political science. She is excited to join NC Campus Compact because of the impact afterschool programs had on her development, especially in the arts, and she is looking forward to expanding her roots in the Asheville community and facilitating a place for youth to be their exceptional selves.

Nataly Arriaga Frias
Site: NC State University, Juntos
Partner: Juntos Wake County- Garner High School

Nataly was born in Mexico, but has lived in Mooresville, NC for thirteen years. She graduated from NC State with a bachelor´s degree in sociology. As an undergrad, she volunteered with a fellowship that focuses on international students, an experience that helped her discover a love for helping people navigate a new culture. During her last semester at NCSU, she got a student job with Juntos and it was an eye opening experience, working with people who come from her own culture. Talking to Juntos parents made Nataly realize how much her parents could have used the information Juntos provides. She is excited to begin VISTA service, so Juntos can engage more volunteers and inform more students and parents. In her free time, Nataly enjoys painting and discovering new cuisines.

Sarah Callihan
Site: East Carolina University, Center for Leadership and Civic Engagement
Partner: Boys & Girls Clubs of the Coastal Plain

Sarah is an AmeriCorps State alum, having served with a program sponsored by Iowa Campus Compact. As a VISTA, she will take on several roles at her host site, including working with campus living’s community service committee, Boys and Girls Club of the Coastal Plain, and volunteer management. She is from Dayton, Ohio and graduated from Wright State, where she recently completed a M.Ed in Student Affairs in Higher Education. There she was a part of campus ministry organizations and equal rights organizations. For fun Sarah enjoys going to the movies, photography, baking, hiking, road trips, board games and spending time with family and friends.

Sydney Haboush
Site: Western Carolina University
Partner: Language Enhancement After School Program (LEAP)

As the VISTA member at Western Carolina University, Sydney is primarily responsible for recruiting and training volunteers for the Language Enhancement After School Program for English learner students. Hailing from Fort Mill, South Carolina, Sydney graduated from Winthrop University with a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and minors in history and international studies. During her undergraduate career, she was an active participant in Model United Nations and Alternative Spring Break and did a semester abroad in Prague, Czech Republic. The week-long trips of Alternative Spring Break were so impactful and ultimately inspired her to serve with AmeriCorps VISTA. In her free time, she enjoys reading, getting creative, and spending time in the great outdoors!

Siera Nie
Site: Movement of Youth
Partner: UNC-Chapel Hill

Siera is serving as a Site Operations VISTA at Movement of Youth. She was born and raised in Charlotte, and is a recent graduate of UNC Charlotte Graduate), where she earned her Bachelor’s of Social Work. She has a passion for serving vulnerable populations. During her undergraduate studies, Siera had the opportunity to work with the elderly, children, and homeless families. Her experience involves providing direct service, but as a VISTA she is looking to create something that is more sustainable. In other words, “build a fence” to prevent people from falling into the stream. For fun, Siera likes to create crafts, knit, find recipes on Pinterest and prepare them, learn different languages via Duolingo and try out local ethnic restaurants.

Tayla Clark
Site: Warren Wilson College
Partner: Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Western NC and other agencies

Tayla is from a small town in east Tennessee, and she attended college at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, North Carolina. Tayla graduated with a degree in biology, and she worked for WWC’s Center for Community Engagement throughout her four years there. Tayla is returning to Warren Wilson and the Center for Community Engagement as a VISTA this year to provide support for several after-school programs in local elementary, middle, and high schools. She is most excited to continue working with these programs in a new position and to support the students of Warren Wilson as they engage with these programs.

Headshot images provided by members.

Every August, our summer network meetings convene civic and community engagement administrators to share ideas and preview the year ahead. Last week,  more than 60 representatives from 30 member campuses took part in the two regional gatherings.

Our west region meeting was hosted by Western Carolina University. The day included a welcome by WCU’s interim chancellor Alison Morrison-Shetlar, updates on the progress of Civic Actions Plans submitted to national Campus Compact by Queens University of Charlotte, UNC Charlotte, and Western Carolina University, and a variety of reflection activities that explored our understandings of key terms in the field, including “community,” “social justice,” and “democratic.” Several campuses presented new and emerging “bright spots” in their civic and community engagement work:

• Central Piedmont Community College partnered with Loaves and Fishes to establish emergency food pantries on all six of CPCC’s campuses in the Charlotte metro area.
• Appalachian State University’s ACT office (Appalachian and the Community Together) has redesigned its student office worker positions to include “collateral” assignments like social media manager and event planner that enrich programming and help student employees develop professional skills. ACT staff worked to incorporate the NACE career-readiness competencies into these re-designed positions and into the professional reflection and performance evaluation process.
• Western Carolina University’s bright spots included CURE – the Conference on Undergraduate Regional Engagement – a partnership between the Center for Service Learning and the Honors College that highlights place-based research and engagement by first year students. WCU also shared info about a successful faculty institute for community engagement, a program supported by NC Campus Compact Engaged Faculty Scholar Dr. Beth Wall-Bassett.

Meeting participants also brought non-perishable food items to donate to Homebase, an on-campus agency that serves students who need a helping hand, including students who were formerly in foster care.

Participants at the west region network meeting.

Wayne Community College was the site for our east region meeting. Participants were encouraged to bring small toys and books to stock the prize boxes at a local elementary school that the college will support this year.

In addition to the reflections around community engagement terms, our meeting included Civic Action Plan updates from Davidson County Community College, Elon University, and UNC Wilmington. Bright spots shared at this meeting included:

• A new partnership between Elon University’s Kernodle Center for Service-Learning and Elon Athletics seeks to help student-athletes meet Elon’s experiential learning requirement through service-learning. Funded in part by an NCAA grant, the project’s first year focused on collecting baseline data and on educating campus and community partners.
• NC State has a new program — Rural Works — that places students in paid summer internships with public, private, and non-profit employers in NC’s Tier I counties. In its first summer, the program placed 19 students in positions that served communities in 23 counties.
• Durham Technical Community College spotlighted its new Campus Harvest Food Pantry Cookbook, a collaborative project that grew out of the school’s on-campus food pantry. Partners included student volunteers, pantry customers, community allies, and Durham Tech faculty and staff.
• ECU shared its new Community-University Partners Academy (CUPA). The academy, a partnership between the Office of Community Engagement and Research and the Center for Leadership and Civic Engagement, consisted of four, day-long, on-campus workshops in May and June designed to assist  community organizations in accessing university-based resources, making data-informed decisions, and generating projects that
  connect community-based student learning with faculty research. Ten community partner representatives were selected to participate.

Participants at the east region network meeting.

View the full summer network meeting agenda and 2018-19 NC Campus Compact program calendar here: Agenda Calendar HANDOUT

NC Campus Compact’s next network meetings will be held on January 3, 2019 at Durham Technical Community College and on January 4, 2019 at Davidson County Community College.

Dr. Jennifer Ahern-Dodson of Duke University and Dr. Rebecca Dumlao of East Carolina University (ECU) have been selected by North Carolina Campus Compact to be the 2018-2019 Engaged Faculty Scholars. They are the fourth pair of NC faculty members to take on the role, which was created in 2015.

Ahern-Dodson and Dumlao will receive support from the Compact and from their respective institutions as they undertake a project designed to deepen the scholarship of campus-community engagement at their school. They will also serve as consultants to another North Carolina college or university seeking to enhance community-engaged teaching.

Dr. Jennifer Ahern-Dodson, Duke University

At Duke, Dr. Jennifer Ahern-Dodson is an assistant professor of the practice in writing studies. In her research, she studies how the concept of community shapes writers’ lives and practices. Her past efforts have included contributing to interdisciplinary initiatives focused on public scholarship and community engagement at Duke, serving as a faculty consultant and community partnership liaison for the Service-Learning Program, and teaching a range of community engaged courses on the Duke-Durham Neighborhood partnership, student activism, student self-authorship, and literacy.

As an Engaged Faculty Scholar in the coming academic year, Ahern-Dodson will work to develop a faculty writing network in order to support community-engaged scholarship at Duke. The project will include a scholarly writing retreat that will be open to faculty from other colleges and universities in the Triangle, as well as writing groups and a publication workshop. The project will be designed to help faculty reflect on and share community-engaged learning and research.

In her proposal, Ahern-Dodson explains the need for such connection among engaged scholars:

Community often runs counter to the concept of the academy, which typically positions writers in isolation (scribbling alone in the attic) and often creates sharp distinctions between scholarly writing and teaching. For publicly engaged faculty, this can be particularly challenging because teaching, research, and service are not so easily divided. We seek, instead, to integrate these dimensions of our work.

Ahern-Dodson’s project will also advance Duke’s Civic Action Plan, which outlines five priorities, including efforts that “encourage and support faculty and staff involvement in civic engagement.”

Dr. Rebecca Dumlao, East Carolina University

Dr. Rebecca Dumlao is a professor in the School of Communication at ECU. For more than a decade, Dumlao taught the capstone course for senior communication students. The course included a community-service component and resulted in more than 1600 students contributing 18,000 service hours on communication projects benefiting local organizations. Most recently, Dumlao designed a five-week graduate level course, “Health Communication and Community Engagement,” which paired students with local organizations to conceive public health research or teaching proposals.

In 2013, Dumlao was recognized as an outstanding service-learning educator, receiving the Robert L. Sigmon Service-Learning Award from NC Campus Compact along with ECU’s Scholarship of Engagement Award. Her forthcoming book — A Guide to Collaborative Communication for Service-Learning and Community Engagement Partners — will apply communication scholarship to the field of community engagement. Dumlao also serves on the editorial board of the Compact’s journal Partnerships and on the peer review board for the International Journal of Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement.

For her Engaged Faculty Scholars project, Dr. Dumlao will turn the 5-week community engagement and health communication class into a 15-week, semester-long course. She explains:

The project would allow me to focus much more on graduate students, many already living and working in North Carolina communities. The ECU graduate students taking the class would work collaboratively with community partners to address a community health-related issue, potentially serving as a model for service-learning and community engagement with other graduate programs on campus.

Dr. Chris Buddo, dean of ECU’s College of Fine Arts and Communication, recommended Dumlao for the program and writes that her work will contribute to “strengthening and growing our engaged scholarship.”

“This effort,” writes Buddo, “is designed to support the university’s wider commitment to public service.”

Engaged Faculty Scholars receive a stipend of $1500 and additional funds for professional development. The scholar’s institution is encouraged to provide a match of cash, course release, or other resources. Each will share their work with the field, including as presenters at the Compact’s annual PACE Conference, to be held at UNC Greensboro in February 2019.

“Faculty who have a track-record of successful service-learning and community-based scholarship make great ambassadors for this work,” says Leslie Garvin, executive director of North Carolina Campus Compact. “This program provides support for faculty members to advance their own projects, and we leverage their expertise to strengthen our network.”

Past Engaged Faculty Scholars:

2017-18
Dr. Jacquelyn Lee, Assistant Professor of Social Work, UNC Wilmington
Dr. Elizabeth (“Beth”) Wall-Bassett, Associate Professor of Nutrition & Dietetics, Western Carolina

2016-17
Dr. Maggie Commins, Associate Professor of Political Science, Queens University of Charlotte
Dr. Cara Kozma, Assistant Professor of English, High Point University

2015-16
Dr. Annie Jonas, Professor and Chair of the Education Department, Warren Wilson College
Dr. Ashley Oliphant,  Associate Professor of English, Pfeiffer University

Learn more about the Engaged Faculty Scholars program.