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  MACC AmeriCorps*VISTA: MACC AmeriCorps*VISTA Snapshots 2006-2007

Through the MACC AmeriCorps*VISTA program, AmeriCorps*VISTA members are placed on host campuses throughout Massachusetts. Members serve their host site by supporting and sustaining community service and service learning projects at their assigned colleges and universities. While all MACC AmeriCorps *VISTA members uphold these general goals, every campus placement is unique to the students and communities they serve. Throughout their year of service, MACC AmeriCorps*VISTA members work on a variety of projects. Click below for a snapshot.

2006-2007 AmeriCorps*VISTA Members:

American International College
Jay Helmer
Jay Helmer has been working to build the community service program at AIC. During the fall semester, he worked primarily with first-year students, organizing a wide variety of service opportunities for them to engage in the Springfield community. This semester, he has begun working with student organizations on service initiatives. He is also in the process of recruiting hundreds of volunteers for Springfield's Earth Day cleanup as part of the Keep America Beautiful campaign.
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Brandeis University
Bashir Martin
Bashir is currently organizing an event entitled "Justice Begins at Home: Building Brandeis-Waltham Community Partnerships." The event will inform both Brandeis and Waltham communities of the mutual benefits of university-community partnerships. Ultimately, the aim is to connect faculty, students, and community members in order to forge new partnerships for future community-engaged learning courses/projects.
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Bunker Hill Community College
Meghan Callaghan
Meghan Callaghan has been busy planning Bunker Hill Community Colleges next Professional Development Day. The Day will focus on all things considered Civic Engagement. Meghan has been working in collaboration with Dr. Donna Duffy from Middlesex Community College to facilitate a discussion involving the indicators of engagement. Meghan hopes that faculty and professional staff will discuss and brainstorm how their work correlates with the colleges civic engagement initiative in break-out sessions during Professional Development Day.
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Holyoke Community College
Allison Reid
In response to the needs of students at Holyoke Community College, Allison Reid has helped to start an important conversation. Her primary question is: How can colleges and universities assist financially disadvantaged students to ensure academic success? Thanks to Allison, MACC VISTAs are working harder to help provide the resources/structures to get students the assistance they need. On the HCC campus, others had similar concerns and have already been starting to think about the issue. Through displays and tabling she has distributed more than 700 applications and information sheets for major public benefits programs. She has also created a wiki to facilitate information exchange between HCC staff about sources of support for student and is exploring creative collaborations with off-campus partners to meet key student needs, including transportation and professional clothing.
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Massasoit Community College
Justen Cantan
At Massasoit Community College, Justen is working with long-standing community partner, the Special Olympics to organize their spring event. Every year, the college conducts and coordinates the South Shore Special Olympics at nearby Brockton High School. Justen is organizing the event and taking care of administrative duties regarding the large numbers of volunteers slated to take part. His responsibilities include assigning duties and schedules and being the liaison during the ceremonies to mediate the communication between volunteers and those that need their help.
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Mount Holyoke College
Tory Blom
Tory Blom is increasing awareness about the Community-Based Learning (CBL) Program at Mount Holyoke College. She created a fall newsletter highlighting the recent accomplishments of the Program, in addition to planning CBL events and strategizing to improve the programs approach to publicity. She works with the coordinator to put together an advisory board to help plan the 10th anniversary of the Community-Based Learning Program. In the upcoming month, Tory will be planning a celebration that showcases the achievements of the Program, while sharing a vision of growth and sustainability for the future.
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Northeastern University
Lindsey Musen
Lindsey Musen created a new series of forums to bring students, faculty, staff, and community organizations together to discuss social issues affecting the local communities. The mission of F.O.C.U.S. Forums is to Form Opportunities for Collaboration, Understanding, and Service. Each forum brings community voice to campus through panelists representing neighborhood organizations and modeling community-based leadership. Participants receive resources enabling them to connect easily with opportunities for service, employment, research, or other initiatives. Topics this year include: Domestic Violence, Homelessness and Mental Health, Understanding AIDS, Early Education Access and Success, Disabilities, Accessibility, and Possibility, The Environment and Public Health, Refugees in Boston, and Supporting GLBTQ Youth.
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School of the Museum of Fine Arts
Robyn Reed
At the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Robyn Reed has helped to organize students making art that addressed social justice issues. A group of those students now meet weekly, and one of the activities they have joined together to plan is an "Empty Bowls" event; students are making ceramic bowls and decorating them, and those bowls will be available for sale as part of a meal with soup and bread. The money from the purchase of the meal is then donated to a hunger organization in Boston. The bowl, which the purchaser keeps, is a reminder of how many empty bowls there are in the Boston area every day. The group hopes to expand this event from the school cafeteria to a larger neighborhood event in the fall.
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Simmons College
Jessica Della Calce
At The Scott/Ross Center for Community Service at Simmons College, Jessica Della Calce has been working to re-structure and centralize the many after school programs Simmonss students manage at The Farragut Elementary School, a community partner in Mission Hill. She recently collaborated with two directors in The Scott/Ross Center to plan Diversity Training for over 70 Simmons and MCPHS students who will be working in the Boston Public Schools this semester. Jessica led a section of the training about accepting children unconditionally, no matter how challenging their behavior or how diverse their background.
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Simmons College
Megan Marincic
At the Scott/Ross Center for Community Service at Simmons College, Megan Marincic concentrates on strengthening the partnership between the center and the local YMCA International Learning Center. In order to build this partnership, Megan has performed faculty and student outreach and re-organized the volunteer coordination at the ILC. Megan administers extensive trainings and orientations for future ILC tutors, sends out bi-weekly emails to all the tutors with updates and interesting ESL website links, and offers reflection sessions to current tutors. Also, Megan helped facilitate a financial literacy meet and greet at the ILC to have the ILC and a finance class from Simmons College, meet each other prior to the financial literacy fair. The goal of this meeting was to ensure that both parties were comfortable with one another, that the ILC students could practice their English and ask questions, as well as for the Simmons students to gain a better sense of the individuals they would be serving during the financial literacy fair.
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Suffolk University
Liz Tenaglia
Liz Tenaglia has been working with the Bird Street Community Center to establish Connections 2 College, a high school-to-college mentoring program that matches Suffolk students with youth from the community. Together with a director from Bird Street, Liz advises Suffolk students as they plan their bi-weekly meetings with the high school youth and discussions about college admission, financial aid, multiculturalism, campus life and career choices. This programming is guided through organized activities, panel discussions, representatives from the Suffolk community, and community service projects. Suffolk supports this program by providing space, funding, resources, and trained volunteers. Plans are currently in progress to expand connections to college into an intensive summer program, housing the high school students in dormitories with Suffolk students, Resident Assistants and team leaders. This partnership is continually strengthened and improved through the involvement of the Suffolk Community and the participants of Bird Street Community Center.
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Tufts University
Rachel Szyman
In her second year at the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University, Rachel is working with the staff of the Lincoln Filene Center for Community Partnerships to strengthen mutually beneficial relationships between Tufts faculty, staff and student and the four host communities: Medford, Somerville, Boston Chinatown and the Mystic River Watershed. Rachel's energies are focused on the development and enhancement of the website and current resources, assisting with major programs and events, supporting opportunities to learn about diversity, power and privilege, and supervising and advising Tufts students, including the student organization Tufts Mystic Water Watch.
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UMass Lowell
Craig Thomas
Craig Thomass most exciting and challenging project is a research initiative for the City of Lawrence, Massachusetts. As the facilitator for a group of researchers from Tufts University, Harvard University, UMass Lowell and UMass Medical School and community members from diverse organizations including the Department of Public Health and the Greater Lawrence Community Action Council, Inc. Craig attempts to create consensus on issues of participant-researcher collaboration and research protection for residents. Examples of similar work can be found in several Native American Tribal Research agreements: the Navajo Nation Human Research Code; and the Akwesasne Task Force on the Environment: Protocol for Review of Environmental and Scientific Proposals. As the aim of university scholarship is increasingly shifted to research-based initiatives, movements towards community-based participatory research and community inclusion in research design are mobilizing across the country.
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Williams College
Sadie Miller, VISTA Leader
The Berkshire Institute for Student Activism (BISA) began as a way to address the lack of connections between regional college community service offices, student leadership and community leadership. Sadie Miller began meeting with student community service coordinators to plan a conference. Soon, the idea blossomed from a set of workshops to a series of issue-based learning circles, informed by community leaders and led by student facilitators with experience organizing community-based programs around that issue. On November 11th, 2006, students from Berkshire Community College, the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, Simon's Rock College, Southern Vermont College, and Williams College worked alongside community advisors in small issue-based action groups. Students shared action plans from which college-community partnerships are now being developed, informed, and guided by. Students also came away with a network of personal connections to the community and regional college activists.
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Worcester State College
Carrie Rice
At Worcester State College, Carrie Rice has been working to create a comprehensive service learning and civic engagement asset map of the campus. She has interviewed faculty from all of the disciplines in order to understand the capacity that the institution has for service learning. The asset map is a multipurpose instrument that will serve as a tool to further build the bridge between the school and the community.

Alternative Spring Break Programs
Massachusetts Campus Compact AmeriCorps*VISTA members across the state work to institutionalize Alternative Break programming. By providing opportunities for students to serve during their winter and spring breaks, members develop occasions for students to serve nation-wide and make connections between that service and service in their own communities.
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Babson College
Josh Stevenson
Josh has been busy planning two Alternative Spring Break trips to Veracruz, Mexico and Thibodaux, Louisiana. Josh has recruited 28 students, faculty and staff to provide assistance for Habitat for Humanity at these two locations. He has organized successful fundraising projects, such as the Gillette Stadium project, a letter writing campaign, and 50/50 raffle at campus sporting events to help fund the trips. Josh will be going to Louisiana to coordinate on-site logistics. There, the group will work on a development of new construction, specifically for people displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The trip members will work along side other Habitat members and the future homeowners.
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Endicott College
Hilary Douglas
Hilary Douglas is excited to be focusing her time on Endicott College's Alternative Spring Break Trip 2007 to New Orleans, Louisiana. In March, sixteen Endicott students will dedicate their time, energy and enthusiasm to helping those who were affected by Hurricane Katrina. In preparation for their trip, Hilary has been working with the students on several successful fundraising projects ranging from a 5K Fun Run to late night food delivery to ensure that every student selected for the trip is financially able to attend and participate in this historic relief effort.
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Lesley University
Ravi Prasad
Ravi Prasad is currently preparing for an Alternative Spring Break trip to Spartanburg, South Carolina. There, students and staff from Lesley University will be building houses through Habitat for Humanity. This trip serves as the beginning of conversations about social justice issues such as hunger and homelessness. By running nightly activities on these topics, Ravi hopes to deepen this dialogue, and use it as a springboard to engage these issues further upon returning to campus.
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Mount Ida College
Caitlin Loftus
Caitlin Loftus has been busy planning Mount Ida College's fourth annual Alternative Spring Break. This year, students worked to plan the trip through Needham Cares, a coalition of civic and volunteer organizations in Needham, MA dedicated to helping the residents of the Mississippi Gulf Coast after the destruction of Hurricane Katrina. For seven days in March, 12 students and 2 staff advisors will help to clean up debris, demolish destroyed buildings and repair or construct new homes. All of the students are very excited to have this opportunity and have contributed to the fundraising efforts.
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Wentworth Institute of Technology
Kevin Cusack
Kevin Cusack is currently working with three Architecture professors in planning an Alternative Spring Break trip to New Orleans. In January, a group of 21 Wentworth students traveled to New Orleans to begin renovating the Peoples Environmental Center and a second group of 22 students will return on March 10th to finish the restoration of the building, as well as construct demonstration gardens designed by Wentworth architecture students. Once finished, the Peoples Environmental Center will be used to teach residents how to clean up and rebuild their homes and yards, which have been devastated by Hurricane Katrinas floods.
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Wheaton College
Ryan Henke
Ryan Henke's most significant project this year was successfully coordinating a student effort to perform Hurricane Katrina relief in the city of New Orleans. As the organizing committee's advisor, he helped the students choose applicants for the trip, pick a work organization in the city, raise $20,000 to fund the excursion, and plan trip logistics. He also served as team leader for thirty-two students and one other staff member while on site in New Orleans. Over the course of a week, Henke's group renovated five parks in the Gentilly section of Orleans parish where they met local residents, landscaped the public space, and created three baseball diamonds.
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