Community Engagement Blog

How we do community engagement at Missouri State

Home » meaningful service

2 Opportunities to Reduce Food-Insecurity within the Missouri State Community

by

1. AmeriCorps at Missouri State University  

A new AmeriCorps Program – R.E.L.I.E.F.  (Recovering from Covid-19 through Education, Local partnerships, Interdisciplinary Efforts, and Food assistance) – will be launching in Spring 2022 on MSU’s campus.  

Housed within the Center for Community Engagement and Service-Learning departments, 10 AmeriCorps positions are open for anyone 17 years of age or older. 

Why serve with AmeriCorps at Missouri State University?  

This position will support the Bear Pantry at MSU with the goal of making healthy food accessible to the MSU community.  

A few responsibilities of this position include: 

  • Developing monthly healthy lifestyle and nutrition workshops 
  • Conducting real-time needs assessments  
  • Assisting in the pantry’s coordination, expansion, and sustainability in the Missouri State University campus and in the greater Springfield community 

What does the AmeriCorps position offer?  

Education award, disaster relief training, and a monthly living allowance with 30 working hours per week.  

Who is eligible to become an AmeriCorps member?  

To serve with AmeriCorps, applicants must be:  

  • 17 years old or older 
  • U.S. citizen or permanent resident  
  • Able to commit to 30 hours/week from February 1, 2022 to July 31, 2022 

How to apply for AmeriCorps at Missouri State University?  

Email your resume and cover letter to AlexJohnson@MissouriState.edu  

2. Student Leadership at the Bear Pantry  

Not Sure that AmeriCorps is for you, but still interested in involvement with the Bear Pantry?  

The Bear Pantry is adding new student leadership positions in the spring semester. Undergraduate students enrolled at MSU are eligible to join the BP Team. Fill out this quick form and a Bear Pantry staff member will be in contact with you in January 2022!  

Volunteer Hours or Service Hours?

by

I’ve worked in the CCE for one year plus six weeks to this point. Through the time spent in this office with the big green wall, I have shifted from being a student with some experience in volunteer work to an advocate for serving the community and the people that make it up.

I speak with students all the time about how they can get involved in Springfield and I can see it overwhelms them a bit. I know the look because I have made it several times. I remember making a similar face my freshman year as I sat through a mandatory meeting about volunteer hours for scholarships. I listened as there were countless ways to dive in listed off. It had never occurred to me that this community that I viewed as a temporary place of residence before I got my degree and got on with my life would have so much to offer in opportunities to learn and grow. I was overwhelmed because I thought these hours I had to complete would be painless, like much of the volunteer work I had done previously. Suddenly I was being encouraged to challenge myself and find a new passion!

Ignoring that challenge, I spent the majority of my first year looking for easy ways to find volunteer hours. I looked for on campus opportunities and one-time service days. I even applied to go on a Bear Breaks trip over Spring Break (mainly because I knew it would give me a lot of hours). That trip ended up being the best thing I did my entire freshman year as it is where I started to fall in love with service and the ability to build relationships through it.

I remember being overwhelmed during the trip when we were challenged to bring back our experience to make a difference in Springfield. I saw it as an insurmountable task, but I credit a beginning in my change in attitude to that trip. I started seeing solvable problems for the people in Springfield, rather than a laundry list of issues. I wasn’t completely cured of seeing these hours as a checkmark off my to-do list, but it would at least be a check mark I enjoyed.

In fact, I’m not sure I got over the to-do list mindset until I finished up the hours. After that, volunteer hours became service hours (a subtle but important difference). I started to serve at agencies where I felt there was a genuine need and the efforts were going toward an end goal that I was passionate about. And more importantly, instead of simply getting through the hours, I made efforts to learn from the community partners and fellow volunteers as I served next to them.

The point of all this is to challenge you to dive in. You could easily find volunteer hours or service hours around the Springfield area, but I encourage you to find the latter. If you ever need help, givepulse.com is chalk full of opportunities, and we would love to talk to you in the CCE. Just be warned, when you ask, “Where can I get service hours?” my response will not be, “There’s an opportunity in the PSU in two hours, but instead, “What do you enjoy doing?”

John Lang, Senior, Student Coordinator

Start off the Year Engaged in the Community!

by

What a year we have ahead of us at Missouri State! A new health and wellness center, the renovations in Glass and Ellis halls will be finished and my personal favorite: the new Einstein’s Bagel! These are just a few highlights of the big changes happening on campus. While change is all around campus, Missouri State remains consistent in its mission to engage students in its Public Affairs mission.

The Center for Community Engagement is ecstatic to continue engaging students in meaningful service and rolling out new programming with a mission to promote positive social change and foster understanding of our university’s public affairs mission. Meaningful community engagement is key to making your Missouri Statement. Just ask Clif Smart.  Here are a few ways to start following your passion at Missouri State and in the Springfield community!

  1. Bear Service Days! Join us September 9th for Into The Streets Service Day. Along side hundreds of fellow bears, you will have the opportunity to immerse yourself in the Springfield community and serve. If you can’t make Into the Streets, we will have service days throughout the school year that you can take part in!
  2. Immersion Trips! Our immersion trips can take you across the country and even to Costa Rica! Check out our website and find out how you can join one of our trips. This fall break students will be lead on trips to St. Louis and Milwaukee to focus on this year’s public affairs theme, Sustainability! !
  3. Community Engagement 101! Come learn and serve with community partners every day from 4pm-5pm in PSU 131. Office staff will go over the latest community service opportunities, talk about becoming an effective service leader, and how to make the most of your service experiences. This is a fantastic way to start connecting with community agencies that can last for years to come.
  4. Bear Service Team! BST plans and promotes service opportunities for Missouri State students. Partnering with local agencies and fostering opportunities for meaningful service are essential to Bear Service Team and to Missouri State students looking to take their community service experiences to the next level.
  5. Advocacy Events! The Center for Community Engagement sponsors and programs several advocacy events throughout the school year. From documentary screenings to speaker panels, advocacy events are a great opportunity to learn about community partners and speak with professionals that can get you started working with their agency. Coming in September will be events focused on Sustainability. Check our website for updates!
  6. GivePulse! This amazing system is set up with dozens of community partners in the area. Check daily for new events and service opportunities around the community. This is an information hub for service days and service opportunities in the Springfield area. If you aren’t in town, enter your zip code for the possibility of serving elsewhere! You can find an event for almost every day of the week!

May will be here before we know it, so make the best of your time this year! As a senior, I am looking forward to the service experiences that will make this last year special. Don’t be strangers. If you ever have questions reach out by emailing us at volunteer.missouristate.edu or stopping by our office in Plaster Student Union room 131.

4 Ways to Get Involved This Week!

by

As the semester comes to a close, the need to complete service hours can be stressful. Here are some community service opportunities happening in the next week that provide great opportunities to serve the Springfield community and address humanitarian issues!

  1. Saturday, April 22nd, volunteer with fellow students at FSL Day of Service! Students will be serving with Dickerson Park Zoo, Farmer’s Market of the Ozarks, Midtown Neighborhood Association, Springfield Botanical Gardens, and Springfield Dream Center from 8am to 1pm. Sign up here.
  2. Friday, April 21st, serve with Boys and Girls Club as they begin to build their new gardens for an after school program! Make sure that you wear weather appropriate clothing and be prepared to get dirty! Sign up located here!
  3. Celebrate Earth Day with Springfield Community Gardens! From 9:00am to 11:00 am on Saturday, April 22nd, at the Meador, Weller, Grant Beach, Delaware, and Brentwood Community Gardens! Follow hyperlinks for sign ups!
  4. Rock N Ribs BBQ Festival is still looking for volunteers for this weekend! There are volunteer slots available from Wednesday, April 19th to Sunday, April 23rd! Sign up here!

Remember, reflection is key to a quality and meaningful service experience. Before leaving your place of service, reflect on what you have done, what it meant, and what you will do differently following your service experience. All bears have the potential to leave their pawprint on Springfield. Making change through service is a sure way to start!

So What’s The Point?

by

The Sunday before fall classes start, new students are offered their very first lesson at Missouri State delivered by President Clif Smart at New Student Convocation. The air in JQH Arena is buzzing with the excitement of thousands of students ready to start the new year. After a raucous performance by the university’s pride band, the speakers begin. A guest speaker offers life and college advice, student and faculty leaders are recognized, and the year’s new Public Affairs theme is explained and ready to be implemented. From the moment convocation ends, you will know two things: the Missouri State fight song and the three pillars of the public affairs mission. Ethical Leadership. Community Engagement. Cultural Competence.

From New Student Convocation moving forward, students are inundated with the pillars at every turn without any deeper conception of what they mean. GEP classes are attempted extensions of the public affairs mission. New students are required to buy a common reader, complete service hours, learn how to get involved in campus organizations, etc. However, some first year students have expressed difficulty in finding meaning in certain service aspects of the classes. So, where are they finding meaning?

As a student worker in the Center for Community Engagement, I have approved hundreds of hours through Campus Link. From Boys and Girls Club to Springfield Community Gardens, students are trying to get involved. I feel pride in my university for taking the time to work in cultivating a culture of community engagement within the student body, yet I have found a disconnect in many of the students completing service hours between volunteering and meaningful service. Required service hours have purpose and good intention; however, many students don’t look past the requirement as just another form to fill out or miss the point completely.

But wait, isn’t good intention enough? Why even bring it up? Students are completing their service hours, so what is the point of mentioning individuals’ motivations?

An article written for Staying For Tea, a blog about individual and organization practices regarding community development both internationally and domestically, stated it best:

It’s about strengthening your voice so that you can be an effective advocate, deepening your knowledge so you can be a non-trivial player, and sharpening your skill so you can be a builder of capacity in others. You reveal your own prejudice that service is more about good intentions than effectiveness. Good intentions aren’t worth much if they bring harm to the people you intend to serve.

So what harm is it for a bunch of college students to complete their required community service hours any way they can? Well, there is no harm in doing the work. Harm comes from the reliance on good intention alone. There is harm when students reflecting on their service think simply giving community agencies the time of day is true selflessness rather than the work they have done. Finally, there is harm when students find that they are the single entity on which community partners rely and without whom the agency would have nothing.

Now, this is not every student by any means, but the sentiment is shared by too many of the students I have come into contact with. It is evident that deeper conversations must be had.  A solid base for passion and thoughtfulness is essential for effective service. For this reason, I challenge Missouri State students. It is quite a task to try and stir up passion for serving in just four short years, but it is possible. As a public affairs-driven university, I argue that it is our duty to jump start an ideological shift. We have the student population to complete effective work in the community. We have a large sector of students who are required to complete dozens of service hours before they graduate. We have a city chock full community partners who would love student involvement and a city with its fair share of issues to address. The resources for meaningful service are all around us. On campus, the Center for Community Engagement provides service learning and community involvement resources. Organizations such as Bear Breaks and Bear Service Team offers many opportunities to serve all over the country and reflect on the issues that need to be addressed. The list of community partners looking for engaging students is endless and the Center can assist any student looking to get involved.

I hope that in writing this piece I don’t deter participation in service opportunities nor do I want students to feel like I am writing this to scold them. Rather, I aspire to bring education and meaning to the service that Missouri State’s students are involved in. I don’t have all the answers, but instead want to introduce a conversation that needs to be had. Are we helping our students to become passionate and productive community members or are we facilitating an unsustainable volunteer effort? When service is seen as a means to a mandatory end, what can we do to create the necessary community connections and passions for community engagement that will last past graduation? When there isn’t a scholarship or student organization pushing you out into the community, what will you do?