FOI: Campus/Community Involvement

[10 Engagement points]

Background

One of the standard course requirements for Foundations is for students to attend campus or community events.

The campus and the community offer wide opportunity for involvement that many students seem to miss. This impoverishes their experience, reduces opportunities for personal enjoyment, and limits the ways students get to know others.  To overcome these limitations, in this Section of Foundations everyone will be asked to develop and carry out a "Campus/community involvement plan".

Developing and carrying out this plan will count heavily in each student's "Engagement" grade.  (For a reminder of the way this works, click here.)

Campus/community involvement plan

Each student makes a written plan of action for the semester, expressed in just one or two short paragraphs. The plan should describe a coherent approach to getting significantly involved on campus or in the community, by connecting with organizations or by attending out-of-class events this semester. The plan should meet the following requirements:

	Go beyond things that are required or expected for other classes.  This is to be “extra-curricular” activity.
	Don’t count floor meetings or other routine kinds of things you would be expected to attend anyway as a part of just being a dorm resident.
	Go beyond things you would do just for entertainment.
	Don’t count going to parties, or fraternity/sorority rush functions, or other purely social gatherings.
	The Pathways in a Modern World meetings are not part of this.  Since you will be attending those meetings and writing brief responses to them, you should take that time commitment into account when you make your plan, so that you don't over-commit yourself.  Make your plan significant but realistic.  The truth is that you do have time for both Pathways meetings and some significant campus or community involvement, unless you need to work a lot of hours every week for pay.  If there truly is a serious financial issue here, come see me and maybe we can make a deal.

The above things could be important to you, but they aren't what this plan is about.

In developing about your plan, distinguish between Passive kinds of activities and more Active kinds.  For example, attending a talk or a concert performance counts as Passive even though you might get a lot out of it.  Giving the talk or the performance, on the other hand, is Active.  In Passive activities, you are taking in and processing the event, while in Active activities, you are helping to make things happen.

	You might want both Passive and Active activities in your plan, but a good plan could include only Passive or only Active activities.
	If a plan includes only Passive activities, then in order to be acceptable, the plan must include two or more quite diverse kinds of Passive activities.  Don't set up a plan in which your sole aim is to attend meetings of Campus Crusade for Christ.  Merely adding meetings of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship to the plan doesn't help.   But a plan that calls for attending some meetings of a religious group, plus going to a few concerts put on by the Music faculty and students, might be just fine.  In your write-up give a brief explanation for why you have chosen to do these particular things.
	If a plan includes Active activities, then if the time commitment or personal involvement in those is fairly significant, an acceptable plan might be limited to just one type of activity.  For example, if you are really committed to working on a Habitat for Humanity house, and will spend a few of your Saturday mornings doing that, then you would have enough for a plan with just that one item.
	The plan should not just be a random list of things you intend to do.  It should hang together in some way.  It is not acceptable to just say "I will go to a bunch of talks on campus."  It is not acceptable for a plan to consist of one sentence, like "I will go to the meetings of PRIDE."

Procedures

	At the beginning, you don’t need to know exactly which events you will attend or exactly what groups you will get involved with.  A general idea is all that can be expected in advance of your actually trying to carry it out.  But even at the beginning your plan should give some indication of being an actual plan and not just smoke.
	To get started, you should write up a draft of your plan, and submit it.  Later, you will modify your plan or make it more definite.
	You will be asked for written progress reports during the semester, with a final report at the end.

Examples of good plans

1. I plan to become an active member of the student organization associated with [my expected major], and will attend several meetings sponsored by that group this term.  I am hoping that this will help me understand more about my major and that I will meet other students who have some of the same interests I do.  I already know that they meet once a month.   Maybe I can find out this way what kinds of things a person with my major can do with the major.  I also plan to check out what is going on with Hillel on campus, because I want to explore how my Jewish background relates to campus life.  I'm not sure whether this makes sense, but I want to try it out.
2. I want to broaden my musical horizons this semester by attending several concerts on campus put on by students and faculty.  I think maybe I'd like to hear something that's different from what's on my CD's.  This is just to let me experience some new kinds of music.  Since I'm really into music a lot, I also plan to work with the Entertainment Committee to help plan concerts for the campus. So, everything in my plan is pretty much centered on music.  But one part of my plan is passive and the other part is active, so I think I'm ok with this plan.
3. I expect to work on the student Habitat for Humanity house project this semester. That means I’ll go to work on the student Habitat house two or three times.  This will be a good change of pace on weekends, I'll meet some other people, get some exercise, and be doing someone some good.  This will take some time and commitment from me.  Getting up on Saturday!!  But I don't know how to get there, so the first thing I have to do is figure that out.  That's all.
4. I want to get involved in politics or student government. I’m not sure what exactly I’ll do, or how this all works on this campus, but maybe I’ll check out one of the student political organizations. Or maybe I can volunteer to do something for the student government and check out how that all goes.  My major is History, and I think getting involved in political things sort of fits with that major.  Anyway, I've always been interested in this kind of stuff.

Getting information about what's available to get involved in

	Campus bulletin boards -- look for meeting announcements.
	Attend Festival ISU on the quad on Thursday of the first week of class.  It runs more or less all day and lots of different groups are out there trying to get members.
	The Vidette.  Look at ads, including the Classified ads.  Skip the beer ads.
	Various ISU Web sites.  For example, departments may list student organizations related to majors.  Or, if you feel lucky, you could even try a Google search of ISU Web pages, looking for key words, such as "theater", or "Student government".
	Student life Web site: www.ilstu.edu/depts/studentlife.  See under "Get Involved".  However, a lot of this info is out of date at the start of the term.
	Check the campus churches or religious groups.  Or the Student Volunteer Center.
	Telephone Student Life or an academic department and ask.

Go ahead! Think of something fun and interesting that will enrich your educational experience.  After all you're enrolled in a residential school, not a purely online school.  Take advantage!  This is part of what ISU has to offer you.