Why is Community Service Important for Engineering and for College?
Written By Business Subteam Member Julia Allen ‘23
Introduction
Our project team, Engineers in Action, has service at its very core. As a team, we design and coordinate the building of a pedestrian bridge in isolated rural areas, and then send a small travel team to build it. We also do a yearly Habitat for Humanity build in Ithaca to give back to our own community. So it only seemed natural that this year, we began to expand the service aspect of our team to helping more community members through holding an Engineering Day for Kids event at Cornell.
Engineering Day for Kids
Planning a service event on a college campus can be hard simply because there are so many events already happening and we needed to create something new. Part of the challenge was planning an event that wasn’t too similar to one that already existed, that also fit thematically with our project team and of course, helped people. We chose Engineering Day for Kids because our team has engineering as a core theme, and this would allow us to share something we loved with a future generation of builders.
The planning process was long, and not without its share of roadblocks. One issue we spent our time discussing was branding. Originally, the event was going to be called “Construction Day for Kids”, but since we wanted the target age group to be late-elementary school to early-middle school age, we realized that this name might turn older kids off to the idea, since “Construction Day for Kids” sounds like a little kids’ event. We also spent a lot of time discussing community partners, sponsorship, materials, activities, location, and more. The logistics for the event had to be solidified early so we could reserve space, and then we moved on to planning age-appropriate projects to do with the kids.
One large aspect of the planning process was finding other campus organizations to collaborate with. In this, we had no shortage of groups to choose from. We looked at partnerships with Big Brothers Big Sisters, Girls Who Code, Society of Women Engineers, and more. There are dozens of campus organizations at Cornell with connections to local schools, doing varied activities from mentoring to tutoring to running events for them. It is hard to find a major student organization at Cornell that doesn’t boast some sort of community outreach aspect. From raising money for cancer research to tutoring struggling middle schoolers to running crafts for Girl Scouts, college students have done just about anything you can think of.
Why is service so important to the college experience?
Why is it that this demographic is so drawn to helping others? I believe it is because as college students, we are preparing to become adult citizens of the world. By preparing for a career, yes, but also by learning how to live on our own, take responsibility for our own needs, and make new connections that will last the rest of our lives. As we are preparing to become adults, we are broadening our perspectives by meeting people from all walks of life, and connecting with a larger world than most of us have been a part of before. And this leads us to reach outward: to give back not only to our new community of Ithaca but to make connections with communities all around the world. Engineers in Action embodies this idea perfectly; we focus most of our efforts on helping a small community in rural eSwatini, a community much unlike our own. To do this, however, we build on support from our own communities, relying on donations from people and businesses right here in Ithaca and also from our families all around the world.
Community outreach efforts like Construction Day for Kids are important not just because of their impact on the kids we work with, but also because of their impact on the college students that run them. Through organizing this event, and helping with numerous others throughout my first year in college, I have become a part of a culture where helping others is second nature. It is a naturally ingrained part of our lives that we help others, both in big ways like building a bridge and in little ways, like helping our siblings with their homework. Service is so crucial to the college experience because service opportunities build young adults into global citizens with a built-in desire to help others.
