March 03, 2016
Spring break doesn’t mean ‘hang out and party’ to all college students
Contact: Kevin Hensil, khensil@passhe.edu
Harrisburg – Bithlo, Florida; Copperhill, Tennessee; Barnet, Vermont; Pittsboro, North Carolina;
Warsaw, North Dakota.
The names probably don’t sound at all familiar. They sure don’t sound like typical
spring break destinations. Where are the beaches?
These and other less-exotic locales are among the communities in which hundreds of
students from Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education universities will spend
all or part of their time off from classes as part of what has become a new “alternative
spring break” tradition.
Spring break is next week for the 14 State System universities. It’s often a time
when students head to the beaches for several days of fun in the sun. In recent years,
however, it has become a time when students all across the country take time out to
lend a hand.
“We wanted to offer an opportunity for students to do something a little more meaningful
over spring break than just to hang out and party,” said California University of
Pennsylvania senior Kaitlyn Strosnider, a secondary education and biology major from
Uniontown, and member of Cal ROCKS (Reaching Out for Catholic Kinship).
Members of the group will spend their spring break in Destin, Fla., volunteering with
Habitat for Humanity. Although Destin is a beach community, the Cal U students are
going there to help repair homes, mend fences and do some yard work. Strosnider organized
the trip along with junior Miranda Andrews, a biology/pre-medicine major from Brownsville,
and the Rev. Michael Zavage, a campus minister and adviser for Cal ROCKS.
“A lot of students want to donate their time, energy and service to make a difference,”
said Strosnider, whose group received financial support for their trip from two local
churches and from academic groups including Alpha Lambda Delta and the Cal U Biology
Club.
For the third year in a row, members of Cal U’s New Life Christian Fellowship will
work with the Beach Reach mission in Panama City, Fla., helping to make sure other
students have safe transportation during the week. Hundreds of students from universities
across the U.S. take part in the outreach effort, which is organized by the nonprofit
group LifeWay.
A third group of State System university students, from Millersville University of
Pennsylvania, also is headed to Florida—to the little-known community of Bithlo in
the heart of Central Florida near Orlando. Thirteen Millersville students will join
approximately 60 others from the University of Central Florida, University of Miami,
Florida Atlantic University and Juniata College to assist United Global Outreach,
a non-profit community benefit organization that focuses on transforming neglected
communities.
Bithlo has seen decades of neglect, resulting in polluted water, an accumulation of
junkyards, a lack of resources and dilapidated buildings. The students will serve
dinner to individuals experiencing homelessness, renovate neighborhood homes, work
with children in the community’s charter school and install community garden sites.
This is the second year MU students have participated with United Global Outreach
during spring break.
A different team of 11 Millersville University students will stay close to home and
travel to sites in Lancaster County to complete service projects over a three-day
period. The students will serve two local community organizations, Global Aid Network
(GAIN) and Habitat for Humanity.
A group of students from Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania also will be working
with Habitat for Humanity as part of the organization’s Collegiate Challenge, from
Sunday through March 12 in Newport, N.C. The Collegiate Challenge is a program that
provides opportunities for students from youth groups, high schools and colleges to
spend a week building a house in partnership with a Habitat for Humanity affiliate.
Many of the LHU students who will be attending the trip have been working with the
local Habitat affiliate on other projects.
More than 60 Slippery Rock University students will take part in the school’s Spring
2016 CareBreaks community service program, which provides students with domestic and
international community service opportunities. Since 1994, more than 1,200 SRU students,
faculty and staff have spent in excess of 200,000 hours tutoring children, building
low-income housing, assisting the homeless and hungry, protecting the environment
and many other selfless endeavors across the country and around the world.
This year, SRU students will work with Carolina Tiger Rescue in Pittsboro, N.C., helping
to build new enclosures and assist in grounds keeping and maintenance; Save the Chimps
in Fort Pierce, Fla., helping to create enrichment devices and spending time preparing
meals for the animals; and Oatland Island Wildlife Center in Savannah, Ga., to help
the organization in its international advocacy for animals. They also will volunteer
with Hands On Nashville, working on sustainability projects in an urban environment;
and Community Collaborations International, in Charleston, S.C., helping out with
disaster relief and cleanup efforts following flooding along the South Carolina coast.
CatholicScots, part of Edinboro University of Pennsylvania’s Newman Student Association,
will travel to Warsaw, N.D., where they will volunteer at the Saint Gianna Maternity
Home and help the Franciscans of Mary Immaculate. Campus minister Laura Gifford will
lead the group.
Twelve students from Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania’s Honors Program will travel
to Jamaica from Saturday through March 11 to offer basic assistance to people in need.
In previous years, the students built a home, volunteered in schools, visited orphanages
and nursing homes and provided basic services at medical clinics. This will be the
fourth year BU honors students have participated in the alternative spring break experience.
Three student groups from Indiana University of Pennsylvania will be participating
in alternative spring break programs.
Thirteen Honors College students will travel to Ciudad Sandino, Nicaragua, to work
with a local healthcare clinic to provide support for the area's poor populations.
A second group is going to Barnet, Vt., to do construction and painting volunteer
work at the United States' oldest Tibetan Meditation Center, Karme Choling. The third
group will spend the week in Soddy Daisy, Tenn, where they will work with the Cumberland
Trail Conference to help blaze hiking trails, which, once completed, will comprise
the Cumberland Gap Hiking Trail that runs from Georgia to Kentucky.
Students from Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania will spend the week at the Chincoteague
Bay Field Station in Virginia, where they will take part in a variety of projects,
ranging from coastal shoreline restoration; managing invasive species at the Greenbackville
site; and restoration of nature trails and installation of trail markers on NASA’s
Wallops Island. Students from the Geography Earth Science Organization, the Honors
Program, the Ecology Club and other programs will participate.
The group, led by Dr. Sean Cornell, associate professor of geography/earth science,
also will install and initiate a maritime forest ecologic succession living laboratory
and monitoring system. Dr. Cornell will coordinate the use of geotechnology to help
map, photograph and measure tree growth to develop a geodatabase and baseline to track/monitor
ecosystem change for future student/faculty projects and future summer course-embedded
research projects that will be used and taught by a wide-range of faculty.
Students from other State System universities also will be participating in alternative
spring break programs during the next week. At least there shouldn’t be any exams
to worry about for a few days.
Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education is the largest provider of higher
education in the Commonwealth, with about 107,000 degree-seeking students and thousands
more who are enrolled in certificate and other career-development programs. Collectively,
the 14 universities that comprise the State System offer more than 2,300 degree and
certificate programs in more than 530 academic areas. Nearly 520,000 State System
university alumni live in Pennsylvania.
The State System universities are Bloomsburg, California, Cheyney, Clarion, East Stroudsburg,
Edinboro, Indiana, Kutztown, Lock Haven, Mansfield, Millersville, Shippensburg, Slippery
Rock and West Chester Universities of Pennsylvania. The universities also operate
branch campuses in Oil City (Clarion), Freeport and Punxsutawney (IUP), and Clearfield
(Lock Haven), and offer classes and programs at several regional centers, including
the Dixon University Center in Harrisburg and in Center City in Philadelphia.