Category: Faculty & Staff Blogs
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Community = Q(f x d)>R(f x d)
On our first day in class this semester, I asked my students — all first years in the Aim 4 program — how they define community. Then I shared with them some definitions from the last 75 years. This broad offering: “A common definition of community emerged as a group of people with diverse characteristics…
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Because of Community with Professor Carrie Dolan
This post is courtesy of Caitlyn Whitesell, Communications Intern for The Office of Community Engagement. #BecauseofCommunity allows us to share reflections from across campus and community on individuals’ motivations for working within community. These weekly posts are usually only on our social media, but my interview with Professor Dolan needed more. Professor Dolan of Kinesiology…
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Member Mentality
Much of our work in OCE is connected to The Active Citizens Continuum. The continuum describes how an individual can develop in their commitment to community. Member: concerned with their individual or family’s needs Volunteer: participates in service with intentions of doing good Conscientious Citizen: adds questions about root causes to their engagement Active Citizen:…
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Ways of Welcoming
One of my favorite things about William & Mary is our enthusiasm for welcoming others in. I spent much of the last month welcoming students to our programs and offering directions to strangers ambling across campus with map in hand. I have seen students welcome their new peers through Convocation high fives and an offered…
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Magnitude and Direction
“If you remember anything from this class, I want you to remember that a vector has both magnitude and direction” – T. Wayne, my high school physics teacher. A few years ago, I celebrated the tenth anniversary of graduating high school by sending a letter to ten of my former teachers sharing what had stuck…
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Belong Here
Growing up in a military family shaped the way I relate to a sense of place. On the one hand, my connection to where we lived was always temporary. On the other, I learned quickly that each place I lived left a lasting imprint on who I was. Each new hometown had its own customs,…
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Celebrating Active Citizenship
Last week, the Office of Community Engagement hosted our annual celebration of active citizenship. We invite all students, faculty, staff, and community partners to come together in recognition of the important work of the past year. No blog post can encapsulate the many things to be celebrated, so I am just going to highlight four…
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The Difference Community Makes
A few years ago, I asked the students in the Aim 4 community leadership program to write down three ways they are different because of their community experiences and three ways community is different because they engaged. As I was searching for notes to use at this afternoon’s Aim 4 meeting, I found the students’…
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Active Citizenship Reflection
Every year I get to host our Celebration of Active Citizenship which recognizes the many ways students have prioritized community in the past year. While the cupcakes and awards are pretty great, one of my favorite parts of the celebration is listening to students reflect on their community experiences. This year our student speaker was…
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An Education in Kittens
“Is it hard to give them back?” That’s almost always the first question I am asked when someone learns that I foster cats and kittens for our local Heritage Humane Society. Of course it is hard to say goodbye to faces like this, but it is also right. Hard but right is one of the…
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The Welcoming Semester
As I compiled the end of semester reports, I noticed a bit of a theme for the Office of Community Engagement this fall. We have been doing a lot of welcoming. First we welcomed five new staff members to our team. That’s three new community engagement fellows, our new budget manager, and a new coordinator…
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Vocation, Capacity, Community Part One
When I talk about vocation with students, I often describe it as the overlap between what you want and are equipped to do and what your communities need. After all, active citizenship, the guiding model of our office, is about prioritizing community in your values and life choices. It is through this lens of vocation…
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Anne
Wherever Anne Davis ’16 was, those around her were sure to feel a burst of energy. That’s one of the reasons I selected her to serve as the Fellow for Hunger and Nutrition in the Office of Community Engagement and why I was so looking forward to working with her. I wasn’t sure exactly where…
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Sounds of the Semester
A few weeks ago, I asked the first year students in Aim 4 to tell me about the most memorable smells on-campus so far, and there were some interesting answers. But today I want to share with you some of my favorite sounds of this semester. Now a month into their William & Mary experience,…
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Who I Am Is Here
I just logged into my blog dashboard to upload an end of semester post and for the first time noticed that I have a Draft folder with something in it. Below is the entry I discovered which I wrote in December 2012, the first winter after I graduated. It seems appropriate to finally post this…