The Three Amigos: a unique service

This archived article was written by: Kim Emett

Angela Chavez, Tom Hebdon and John Emett have proven their dedication to be a success in benefiting the lives of others. Each has created an atmosphere of trust, and pure dedication to the projects they are involved in.
Angela Chavez, a political science major from Green River, Wyo., has been studying at CEU for almost two years. Although the recruiting office does not cover Wyoming, she heard of CEU through a friend who attended and loved it here.
Chavez wanted to join the SUN Center because, “service has allowed me to go beyond my comfort zone.” Once she heard that there was a service organization on campus, she knew she had to be a part of it.
While at CEU, she has quietly impacted many by her service. Her leadership skills were put into action by being the service leader over the CEU Prehistoric Museum for two years. “It actually just kind of fell into my lap and when I heard about it, I thought it sounded interesting and like I could learn a lot from volunteering there.”
She has done more than just volunteer; she has alleviated much of the work load at the museum. Currently, the museum is understaffed and the volunteers Chavez brings in, along with the many hours she spends, helps to cut out the time-consuming tasks. Her dedication to service has created knowledge for the individuals that work with her that they can count on her.
Making a difference in the lives of others takes as little as just being there. Merely being the person to simply become available to help those that stands in need, to alleviate what otherwise could’ve become burdensome. Chavez is that person for the museum. The director of volunteers, Shawna Carroll, is leaving on maternity leave in a few weeks. Chavez stepped in to help get everything accomplished while Carroll is out, things will still run smoothly.
The staff at the museum has truly benefited from her upbeat personality. When asked what the student body should know about Chavez, Carroll added, “She is an asset to the college. She represents CEU well by her outstanding dependability. Angela is always upbeat and stands as an example to how a college student should be.”
Coming from Paradise to Price … literally, (Paradise is a small town near Logan), Tom Hebdon took on probably one of the more time-consuming projects to be over ” Service Learning.
Hebdon recently returned home from serving an LDS mission in Italy. Prior to his mission, he excelled as the leader over Active Re-Entry. He loves being with his family and eating chocolate chip cookies. The pre-dental major is a full-time student that spends 20-25 hours a month serving. Not only does he work with his own project, but is always willing to support the leaders and help better the SUN Center.
A service-learning course, marked (SL) in the catalog, indicates that part of your learning will be active through service. The course curriculum can be enhanced through hands-on service, and in turn, your learning becomes a benefit to the community.
For instance, Brad King’s children’s literature course requires students to read children’s books: 30 picture and 10 chapter books. Part of the requirement is to spend time reading to children (the service portion). A student must complete the reading regardless and children get to benefit from a college assignment.
That is Hebdon’s quest: to educate professors in various fields as to what service-learning is, and how to become a service-learning course. Much time and effort has been put into this. He has held two service-learning luncheons to instruct, benefiting nine instructors and is working on meeting with the instructors on an individual basis to answer any questions and to help implement service into their curriculum.
He has done a wonderful job and has, “great vision of the future of service-learning,” says Kathy Murray. The impact he makes today, will definitely be of worth and value for tomorrow.
When looking into ways how to improve and make service more accessible in the lives of students, John Emett is the man to talk to.
Emett reaps success both in and outside of the classroom. Enrolled in challenging courses as physics, statistics, biology, literature and two general courses, his dedication to learning is apparent through his achievement. He has a desire to make a difference and make things better for the people to follow. This semester, he has taken on the task of Service Corner at the Institute and a service-learning survey to find out ways to improve the impact on students and the courses for students.
At the end of January, he planned, organized, and carried out a Service-Corner kick-off. The volunteers started by tying two quilts, prepared some fleece blankets, put together school kits for children in need, and ended by going to Parkdale Care Center to sing to the elderly. Service corner started to give students a chance to do service during their breaks throughout the day.
Utah Campus Compact, the organization over all service units at colleges and universities across Utah, held a retreat over the Winter Break. During the retreat, ways to improve service-learning were discussed and a committee was formed.
Emett took on the items discussed and put it into reality. The survey created was passed around, at random, to the student body. Once the surveys were completed and returned, he began discerning the information and interpreting it for a statistics report. Emett’s studies have shown that students feel service is a powerful way to learn and their experience is directly correlated to class discussion and project relativity.
During a recent meeting, Linda Dunn, executive director of the Compact, mentioned how impressed she was with taking on this task of compiling a survey.
Later on in the semester, Emett will be holding a faculty and staff appreciation luncheon to show gratitude to all of the hard work that they put into making student’s experience premiere.
John’s devotion has proven to be an advantage for improving the quality and executing the task of service to work for the benefit of the students.