Every $1 contributed to the food bank purchases five pounds of food, says Mangapora, who estimates the student’s contribution to be about 20,000 pounds, or one semi truck-full. That’s roughly a seventh of the food bank’s monthly quota.

Almost 600 students participated in community service activities this semester as part of the sophomore-level Integrated Work Life Competencies course at Mays, doing everything from making sandwiches to staging dachshund races.

Team ACDC and 80 other student groups (nearly 600 students in all) were performing community service as part of a sophomore-level business class, Integrated Work Life Competencies. When tasked with the creation of $1,000-worth of value to a charitable organization, the response from Mays students was varied: some chose to build ramps for the disabled, others chose to mentor at-risk youth. The student-led projects taught participants a variety of lessons, from teamwork to professionalism to communication skills, but it impressed upon them one thing more: the value of selfless service.

At the end of the semester, all of the groups presented at a service fair, showcasing their achievements to judges and competing for scholarship money. Each member of the top four teams won a $250 scholarship for their upcoming semester. Team ACDC and three others were chosen.

Team En Fuego

The members of Team En Fuego assisted the Brazos Animal Shelter with organizing with their annual Wiener Fest fundraiser.

When it came time to decide where they would focus their efforts, the seven members of Team En Fuego didn’t have to discuss their options for long. “We all had a keen interest in animals,” said group member Christopher Reed ’12. That shared passion led them to work with the Brazos Animal Shelter. The organization immediately put them to work, adding them to the planning committee of their annual fundraiser, Wiener Fest. Group members met their $1,000-goal by helping to organize and execute the event, which this year had nearly triple the attendance of previous years and raised $47,000.

“It was more fun than work,” said Reed, who values the event planning experience he received through this project. He says he was pleased that the event was so successful, as the increased profits will be used to purchase more land for the shelter to expand their facilities.

Mays 6.0

Members of Mays 6.0 sold peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the Wehner Building to raise money for meals for children in Kenya.

Mays 6.0 fed the hungry, starting within the Wehner Building. Partnering with the recognized A&M student organization The PB&J Project, group members sold peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to raise money for meals for children in Kenya. Students manned a table in one of the main halls of Wehner over the lunch hour for several weeks, encouraging their classmates to give up their lunch money (and any other change they possessed). In return, students received a PB&J and the privilege of providing a meal for someone in need. The team contributed $1,040 of value to the organization through their labor. Over the semester, the project collected more than $2,500.

The project hasn’t ended with the final grade. Like many other students in the class, Kevin Gilmartin ’12 says that he and group members plan to continue the effort next semester. “We want to see how much we can raise and how far this can go,” he said. “We don’t want things to go back to normal.” Gilmartin says it struck him when he heard that for $1.50, he could provide a daily meal for a child in Kenya—for a month. He’s spreading that message through the PB&J Project, telling his classmates that it doesn’t take a lot of time or money to make a difference in the life of a child.

Team Capace

Team Capace members donated time to multiple projects at a local retirement community, including staging a show with some of the community’s residents.

Team Capace group members gave of their time at Waldenbrooke Estates, a retirement community in Bryan, Texas. Over the course of the semester they facilitated an annual Meet Your Neighbor mixer for the residents and also planted an herb garden in memory of a former staff member of the facility. The bulk of their time, however, was spent creating a play tailored for the residents.

The activity started as an acting class, but the residents were interested in putting on a show. The students complied: They spent several weeks writing a script, collecting props and costumes, creating simple set pieces, and rehearsing the cast of 10.

They called the 20-minute show “A Very Gilligan Thanksgiving” (the residents chose the theme). Due to illness, two of the residents had to be replaced with students on the day of the production, but still, it was a hit. “Every chair was filled,” said team representative Nida Haq ’12, who estimated about 75 were in the audience. Both the participants and the audience loved it, she said. “That’s how we rated how successful our project was.”

Haq says that what started out as a class assignment evolved into something more over the six-weeks her group was active at Waldenbrooke. “It was a good bond. It wasn’t only community service. It was a relationship,” she said

To read more about the Integrated Work Life Competency class projects, see “Selfless service in the classroom” (MBO, November 2009).

Congratulations to the winning teams:

The more than 600 students involved in this class will present their projects at a service fair this Tuesday and Wednesday, December 1 and 2. Representatives from the agencies the students worked with will also be present. The fairs will be held in the lobby of the Wehner Building on the A&M campus from 5:30 to 9 p.m., with a break from 7-7:30.

“Our teams are charged with creating $1,000-worth of value for their chosen agency,” says Nancy Simpson, clinical professor and director of the Undergraduate Special Programs Office at Mays. “For the purpose of the project, we value their time at $10/hour; however we emphasize that they create value by identifying and meeting need, not simply by putting in hours. The project also serves as a vehicle for learning about teams, business communication, and ethical decision making.”

The students chose their own projects, partnering with community organizations such as the Brazos Valley Children’s Museum, The Down Syndrome Association, Scotty’s House, Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity, and the Texas Ramp Project, to fulfill a specific need within that organization.

One team, Aggies Contributing Dollars for Cans (ACDC), turned a common student dilemma into an opportunity for the Brazos Food Bank through their service project. At the end of the semester, students frequently have unused “dining dollars” remaining in their pre-purchased meal plans. They can only carry over $100 of that money to the next semester, forcing them to lose the money or spend it on non-essential items such as junk food at Rattlers, the campus convenience store that accepts the meal-plan money but offers a very limited selection of products. Team ACDC worked with campus dining services to create a third option for students: they can now donate their unused money to feed the hungry in the Brazos Valley. This is the first semester that this option has been available, so the group is unsure of how much money will be raised through the effort, though they expect it will be substantial, says team rep Aaron Ebers ’12. Though the class only requires students to participate in their service project for one semester, Ebers says if their campaign is as successful as they expect, they will turn the class project into a student organization on the A&M campus and encourage students to continue giving each semester.

Team Ranch Hands spend their volunteer hours mentoring and tutoring the children at Still Creek Ranch in Bryan, Texas. The ranch provides a home and schooling for disadvantaged children, and is supported entirely by private donations. In addition to their mentoring activities, the A&M students assisted in the ranch’s annual fundraising dinner and silent auction. Team representative Kelly Bryan ’12 said that the experience, while personally touching, was very instructional, as team members learned how to interact professionally with a non-profit organization.

These projects and more than 80 others will be judged during the two-day service fair by a panel of faculty and staff members. Winning groups will win scholarship money for group members based on the success of their projects and presentations.

For more information about the students’ projects or the service fair, please contact Simpson at (979) 845-4140 or njsimpson@mays.tamu.edu.

They soon will be, thanks to the newly created Mays Communication Lab.

The lab, piloted in the spring 2008 semester, is a branch of the Transitions Program, which helps students successfully navigate the transitions from high school, to college, to the real world. When Martha Loudder, associate dean for undergraduate programs, began brainstorming ideas for the Transitions Program in 2004, she asked corporate partners what soft skills, or “core competencies,” would make Mays students more employable and successful. Among the answers she heard, communication consistently was at the top of the list.

“Recruiters complained that we were not doing a good job of preparing our students for oral and written communications,” said Loudder. However, when she conducted a formal assessment of students’ writing skills using samples they had written for class, she found that 88% of them were writing at a level that Mays deemed acceptable. When she took that data back to employers, those that had voiced concerns clarified: it was just the basics of business correspondence that students were not successful with. They didn’t know how to write good memos, professional emails, or executive summaries. “We realized that somewhere in the curriculum, we needed to teach these very basic skills,” said Loudder.

By the time they graduate students may know how to write well in the classroom and they should know how to behave professionally, but these skills don’t always transfer to the real world application without practical lessons. That’s where the Mays Communication Lab comes in.

Broccoli in your teeth

Mays lecturer Sommer Hamilton ’04 heads up the lab, creating the curriculum, managing the peer tutors, and giving one-on-one assistance to students. Her lessons are presented in tandem with the sophomore level integrated worklife competencies course. Over the semester, Hamilton’s lessons provide practice in several forms of common written and oral business communication.

Mays lecturer Sommer Hamilton ’04 (center) heads up the Mays Communication Lab, creating the curriculum, managing the peer tutors, and giving one-on-one assistance to students.

She says that initially, some students are apathetic when it comes to communicating well. She combats that attitude by reminding them that communication is tied to their appearance. “It’s about that moment when you are sending an email to the CEO of your company and he sees that you’ve used the wrong ‘your.’ You’ve written ‘your’ instead of ‘you’re’, and he thinks, ‘Huh, is this person really as educated as I thought? Do they not know, or do they just not pay attention to details?’”

Hamilton likens these minor errors to broccoli in your teeth, little things that can change one’s appearance drastically. She helps students keep their smiles broccoli-free by helping them master the language, audience concerns, style, transitions, tone, spelling, grammar, and needed content for great business writing. “We are in a culture of impressions. In business we need to come across as polished as possible,” she says. “Even in e-mail, you need to present yourself with your best foot forward, to your boss and to your clients, to the lawyer you’re writing to on behalf of your company. You need to be as correct as possible.”

Until recently, Mays students could graduate without ever having written that staple of corporate communication, a memo. Hamilton says it’s more than just practice they are lacking. “They need to be graded on their writing so they have feedback for improvement,” she says.

That feedback and improvement loop is the main focus of Hamilton’s grading system. For each assignment, her students turn in a rough draft, which she and her staff of seven student aids critique exhaustively. Students are then expected to consider all of the comments and revise their work before turning in a final draft.

If students struggle with an assignment, they have two options: they can drop by the writing lab in Wehner (open 20 hours per week) to get individual help or go to the web to view dynamic e-lessons Hamilton has created.

“If they’re writing their draft at two o’clock in the morning, they have the access to an e-lesson online when they need it,” says Hamilton, who sees great benefit in this kind of on-demand learning.

After one semester using this system, Hamilton was pleased with the results. In her pilot class, all 160 students passed the communication portion of course. She saw it as a mark of success that by the end of the semester, much less revision was needed on each assignment. “They were definitely starting to internalize some of those standards that are needed in good communication. My biggest goal was to make them their own editor,” she says.

Bigger picture: Transitions Program

Hamilton says that the value of the Transitions Program and the Mays Communication Lab is their practicality. “We get them thinking, ‘How would I do this in the real world? I’m not going to be a

college student all my life.’ We help them to understand in college what is going to be asked of them after graduation.” Helping students identify their strengths, build upon them, and be able to articulate and implement them in a professional setting is a large part of the program.

Open to all business undergraduate students, the Transitions Program fosters learning in large classes, small groups with peer leaders, and through teamwork on projects. Each student creates an AggiE-folio, an electronic portfolio of their best work from all four years of their academic career. This acts as a showcase of the skills developed in the program, such as PowerPoint slides, videos of their presentations, personal web pages, and classroom assignments.

Transitions brings continuity to the undergraduate program as the lessons are multidisciplinary, touching on subjects such as teamwork, communication, and ethics that students need in every course, as well as in the professional world.

Director of Business Undergraduate Special Programs Nancy Simpson says she hopes to communicate with faculty members outside the program in all areas of the college to better understand the way that students will encounter these core competencies in upper division courses. “Repetition is key to learning and the more we are using similar language, the more likely students will be to transfer ideas and skills from one area to another,” says Simpson.

For more information about the Transitions Program, visit http://mays.tamu.edu/transitions/.