Tis the Season to Serve

With the Holiday Season upon us, we all know that this is the time of the year when we should be thankful for all that we have as well as when we should go out of our way to be generous to those who may not be as fortunate. Campuses throughout the state are embodying this holiday spirit and student volunteers are taking part in a variety of service projects with the hope that all members of their community can have the opportunity to enjoy a happy holiday season this year. Check out what some the projects that our campuses will be taking part in over the next few weeks: 

Flathead Valley Community College - FVCC student volunteers have organized a Giving Tree program  for which they have set up two Christmas Tree  on campus that are decorated with ornaments, each contains the age, gender, and wish list for a local child in need. Members of the FVCC community are encouraged to take an ornament and purchase gifts for the child whose information is on the selected ornament. The project is in partnership with the Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) organization whose mission is to advocate for the best interests of children that have been victims of abuse, neglect, or abandonment.

UM - The Campus Corps program in Missoula has taken the lead in organizing a campus wide Adopt a Family & Adopt A Veteran initiative in which members of the UM community who choose to participate are assigned a family and/or veteran in need to purchase gifts for as well as a corresponding Holiday wish list for each.  This project is in partnership with the local Salvation Army as well as with the Valor House, which serves Veterans and is run by the Poverello Center.

MSU - Campus Corps program in Bozeman is recruiting students to lend a hand at the Big Brothers Big Sisters gift wrapping booth at the Gallatin Valley mall to partake in wrapping 

MSU-Billings - On Saturday December 10th student volunteers from MSU-Billings will be spending the afternoon at the Garfield Community Resource Center to help out with their Holiday Party to provide some Christmas Cheer to the local children of the South Side neighborhood. Volunteers will be lending a hand in arts and crafts, games, cookie decorating and more.

Fort Peck Community College - FPCC Campus Corps is sponsoring a family, providing them with gifts, a dinner, and an Alco gift card to cover various holiday expenses. In order to make this happen, the team of volunteers have been working hard to reach out to local businesses for donations, to host bake sales to raise funds, and to arrange for a Christmas dinner to be provided for the family. 

UM- Western :  Student volunteers at UM-W are participating in two different projects taking place in the Dillon community.  First, they will be serving at the local Armory's "Christmas At Our House" event for which they will help prepare dinner and then help with crafts and greeting during the actual event. Additionally, students will be working as ushers for the Southwest Montana Arts Council's performance of "The Nutcracker".


MSU-Northern - Student volunteers in Havre, MT will be offering their service to the Salvation Army, taking part in their annual Christmas Charity fundraiser. Volunteers will be working shifts as bell ringers outside local stores where they will collect money from shoppers as they enter and exit the venue.


Aaniiih Nakoda College - The campus community up in Harlem, MT will be participating in a Giving Tree activity that has been organized by members of the college's basketball team.  They have a tree set up with ornaments, each containing the information of a child enrolled in the Immersion school located on campus for whom they are expected to purchase gifts for.  Additionally, student volunteers will be contributing to the coat drive which has been organized by Phi Theta Kappa this holiday season. 

Alex Black - Leader of the Bobcats

This week's featured Campus Corps leader is Montana State's very own Alex Black.  Alex decided that four years at MSU was just not enough and after graduating in May of 2011made the decision to stick around Bozeman's beautiful university and spend her fifth year on campus rallying students to server their community as the Campus Corps leader. If you are a resident of Bozeman or the surrounding area, there is a good chance that you have heard a lot about Alex lately or at least about the wildly successful "Can the Griz" food drive that she spearheaded. In this year's competition the Cats crushed UM's Grizzlies raising a record 58,000 lbs. of food for their local food bank!  Much of this success can be attributed to Alex's efforts, as she worked diligently all fall to prepare for the big event and successfully implemented many new innovative ways to expand the drive.

Alex is originally from Idaho Falls, ID and if you ask her about how she feels about living in Montana, she will answer you with a long list of things that she loves about the state that she now calls home. Most of all she is thrilled to live in a town that offers an overwhelming number of outdoor recreation activities nearby, providing her plenty of opportunities to ski, bike, camp, and hike whenever she's not busy with her duties as a leader.

Having studied graphic design at MSU, Alex hopes to pursue a career in this field while also incorporating her love of working with the youth population.  Alex envisions these two passions coming together in her career aspirations to one day be a freelance graphic designer primarily focusing on children's books and youth illustrated magazines. Alex is indeed a Bobcat through and through and the impressive amount of service she has done for the Bozeman area attests to how much she truly cares about her local community, which is so lucky to have her!

Service Saturdays are a Hit on Montana Campuses!

This semester Service Saturday programs seem to be popping up at more and more of our campuses throughout the state and with very good reason. What better way for college student to spend their weekend  than by taking advantage of an opportunity to get off campus and into their local communities with the goal of making a positive difference and helping meet some of the most pressing needs in their areas?  Furthermore, these events provide an opportunity for participants to meet a variety of new people, both other students and community members, while promising that all will have a lot of fun in the process!

Service Saturdays welcome all students, faculty, and staff to partake in various one-time service projects throughout the year, with the frequency at which they occur varying by campus. For instance, MSU & MSU-Billings both host one Service Saturday a month at which they offer a few different projects to choose from, while at UM's the program collaborates with just one site at a time and events occur on a  weekly basis.  This year projects have ranged from Habitat builds to spending time with seniors at an assisted living home to re-painting Bozeman's iconic "M" after it had been defaced by graffiti.

Shanna Ungate, Campus Corps leader at UM, has expressed how pleased she is with the success of Service Saturdays and how well they have really caught on amongst the campus community. She is happy to report that so far this year, every Service Saturday has been well attended and that the weekly email containing upcoming events now has a distribution list of over 400 students who have expressed interest in the program! She shares; "I think that Service Saturdays are a great in that they are a simple way for any student to get involved in service. And for those who are interested in the Campus Corps program, it allows them to get a taste of the various Missoula nonprofits which can then have an influence on which they decide to choose as their placement site." It certainly serves as a testament to the character of Montana students of higher education that they are increasingly choosing to spend their day off of class engaging in service work, and communities across the state are so grateful that they do!