State Sen. Peter Oberacker, R-Schenevus, joined SUNY Oneonta students in the Empire State Service Corps to hear about their experiences Wednesday, Nov. 19.
SUNY Oneonta is one of 45 participating SUNY campuses, said Alina Daley, the Empire Service Corps program director. ESSC has more than 500 corps members, 68 of which are at the SUNY Oneonta campus. Students in the program commit to completing 300 hours of paid public service throughout the academic year in one of nine service areas of interest, called cohorts.
Daley said the service corps is happy to have launched its second year.
“One of the most wonderful things about service corps is our ability to be flexible and adaptable to what are the needs of our community in the moment, day of, and that we are already doing this work, so when there is a heightened need, we can answer that call very quickly,” Daley said.
Eight of the cohorts are in action at SUNY Oneonta, Daley said. SUNY Oneonta President Alberto Cardelle, said he attended a conference last weekend, during which it was emphasized that “all of higher education is measured by what happens in about 10 institutions throughout the country.”
“What you’re doing is almost like an antidote to that national narrative to demonstrate that we can line up our educational mission, our research mission, to provide service to our local communities,” Cardelle said.
Oberacker said he is the legislator in the Senate with the most SUNY institutions in his district. Coming from the food industry himself, he said he was pleased to see SUNY students dealing with food insecurity and efforts of that nature, including veteran outreach.
Daley said during the first year of the program, SUNY students logged more than 100,000 service hours throughout New York.
SUNY Oneonta student Elisabeth Vogl, who is in the civic engagement cohort, said that as a biology major, she did not have a lot of prerequisite knowledge on the topic before starting the program.
Now that she is in her second ear, Vogl said she has gone to several city and county meetings, learning how the fire department determines what calls are false alarms or how the arborist decides which trees to plant. She said she has taken the information she gathered back to school with her, showing students how to get involved in local politics and voting efforts.
Another student, Lauren Philips, who is in the peer mental health cohort, said she focuses on alcohol and other drugs education in her work. She said she has enjoyed connecting with students on a student to student level, working with them from a nonjudgmental perspective.
“It’s also given me a lot of public speaking skills that I did not have that will lead me into further advocacy and outreach for things that I think are important,” Philips said.
Turning to the host site supervisors, Daley asked how they see the service corps’ motto of “here to do good” come to life through their work with students.
Acadia Pezzolesi, a supervisor on campus for peer mental health, said she is the outreach specialist and coordinator for peer mental health education at the counseling center. She said with an increase in stigma surrounding mental health, “to see the students make connections with students has been really impactful for both students and the counseling center as a whole.”
“In addition to forming more connections with other campus offices, they are the connection between the students and the counseling center,” Pezzolesi said.
Rachel Kornhauser, supervisor of students in the sustainability cohort, said many of them are working on the on-campus thrift shop, promoting circularity among students and the community by taking in gently used items and sharing them with students for donation prices.
Students do composting work, she added, providing hands-on experience with sustainability fields they could consider in the future.
Daley said students in K-12 tutoring, student success coaching and those in early childhood education cohorts are working with local students and helping to be secondary educators. There are students at all three Oneonta elementary schools, the middle school and both Laurens and Milford central schools.
Kennedy Harkins, who is in the K-12 cohort, is working at the Oneonta Middle School. She said she has learned a lot from her host teacher who has been “open to showing me how to be a teacher.” She said he has gone over lesson plans and taught her about the materials he uses to teach his students effectively.
Linda Drake, the campus coordinator, said with students working both on and off campus, she loves to see the connections students are making. She said it has been nice to hear from supervisors and school principals, that they are grateful for SUNY Oneonta service corps contributions.
“The Empire State Service Corps program empowers our students to take on civics and service opportunities that benefit all New Yorkers,” said SUNY Chancellor John B. King Jr. in an Oct. 17 news release. “Communities throughout the state are enriched, and SUNY students receive real-world experience as they work to improve lives through this program.”