Engaged Bucknell intends to broaden and coordinate Bucknell’s already-vibrant civic-engagement effort, and make it a more visible, intentional institutional focus. The strategy includes steps to make civic engagement accessible for all students, who sometime struggle without transportation or time to volunteer. But even now, the Office of Civic Engagement (OCE) manages opportunities for plenty of students quietly invested in their mission to make the world a better place.

Shelbie Wenner ’20 is a doctor-in-the-making studying neuroscience and Spanish. She started volunteering at the Lewisburg Community Garden and Community Harvest about a year ago.

“I love gardening,” Wenner says. “We always had a garden growing up. But volunteering was a social thing too.”

Wenner says juggling her time is a challenge, but the reward is real.

“It’s hard work,” she says. “You’re sweating; you get blisters. But to see food go to people who work hard for their money and want to sit down to a hot meal is rewarding.”

At Community Harvest, a weekly community supper prepared with ingredients grown in the Community Garden, Wenner is a volunteer who cooks, serves and cleans after the meal shared at a Milton church. She appreciates that even her smallest effort has meaningful impact.

“Everyone knows everyone, so it’s like a family dinner,” she says. “You’re helping people, so you feel good. And you feel grateful for how blessed you are.”

A first-year, service-learning class introduced Craig Silverman ’20 to the Bucknell Buddies after-school tutoring program that he now coordinates as a volunteer.

“It was an education course, Immigrant Youth in U.S. Society, that exposed me to the service-learning element,” he says. “It put volunteering into focus for me. It was exciting to get into the community and see how others live outside the Bucknell bubble.”

In Professor Ramona Fruja’s education class, students pored over data detailing struggles of immigrant youth in the U.S. Then the class set out to make a difference at two area affordable-housing sites, where Bucknell students help school-age residents with homework, conflict resolution and interacting in safe, supervised activities.

“To get off campus and engage with the kids in educational activities really tied the course together for me,” says Silverman.

Now, Silverman, a mathematical economics major from Reading, Pa., sounds more like a parent than a student when talking about the programs that serve kids kindergarten to high school.

“With that gap, it’s hard to manage the older kids who instigate the younger kids. There’s verbal conflict, bullying,” he says. “We have to meet them in the middle to stop a situation before it happens. We have to keep them on task and engaged, reminding them of the importance of education.”

While Silverman says the program’s goal is to teach students about themselves and reinforce the importance of academics, he is enriched, too. Volunteering has improved his time-management and relationship-building skills. And he developed a special friendship with a fifth-grader, who invited Silverman into his home and introduced him to his parents and his dog.

“For me, it has been an education in patience, responsibility, learning selflessness and compassion,” he says. “It has taught me a lot about myself emotionally and intellectually, and it’s been a catalyst for maturity.”

Silverman says he won’t rule out teaching, although he’s aiming to become an actuary now.

“But I don’t get the excitement from numbers and math that I do from working with youth,” he says.

In spite of a trend toward service-for-résumé-building, Prince Tchokouani ’19 hasn’t included his volunteer service on his résumé. His gain from civic engagement so far has been much more personal.

“It’s a form of self-reflection,” the electrical engineering major says of volunteering. “I didn’t get to where I am by myself. There were always mentors or other people showing me how they did it and constantly supporting me. Giving back and helping is just paying it forward.”

Before Bucknell, Tchokouani volunteered near his hometown of Lanham, Md. At Bucknell, he completed work-study in the Office of Civic Engagement and traveled to New York with Bucknell’s Engineering Success Alliance to spread the word to middle-schoolers about engineering careers and how to land a job.

Tchokouani also took a 2018 spring break service trip to the Dominican Republic. The group took medicine and clothing gathered through drives and helped rebuild schools.

Tchokouani says he expects he’ll always volunteer, because there are everyday ways to make a difference. “Volunteering can be on a one-on-one basis, and in little things you do every day,” he says. “You have to find the little ways in life to give back.”

Opportunities for community service were part of the reason Maren Burling ’19 chose Bucknell. “I knew I wanted an educational experience that included service,” the Monroe, Conn., native says. “I had heard about the Bucknell Brigade, and I wanted a university that had a strong Office of Civic Engagement, so I met with [OCE administrators] before I came to Bucknell.”

In high school, Burling took service trips: In Peru, she taught kindergarten; in an Ecuadoran pediatric hospital, she provided emotional support to children.

“Those trips made me realize I wanted to take this to the next level — [service] is something I need to be part of my life,” she says.

At Bucknell, the Spanish and anthropology major landed a Shepherd Higher Education Consortium on Poverty internship, working at a Washington, D.C., homeless shelter. Her stipend provided about $8 a day for expenses, so Burling had a taste of how poverty works in her own country.

“Now I understand why it’s a crisis if you’re homeless and you lose your Social Security card,” she says.

Burling says she found the right fit at Bucknell, and the OCE introduced her to like-minded friends.

“I appreciated finding people who have passion for service and understand it,” she says. “We’re really lucky to have clean water to drink — we acknowledge our privilege every day.”

Theresa Dollar ’22 needed 75 hours of mandatory service to graduate from her high school near Damascus, Md. By the time she graduated, she had officially logged 419 hours.

“I just really enjoyed volunteering,” the biology major says. “I want a sense that what I’m doing matters. I want that to be a constant in my career, too.”

When Dollar told her faculty adviser she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with a biology major, he suggested she check out the Lewisburg Community Garden. She’d actually written a 20-page paper about community gardens in high school.

Soon she was also lending a hand at Bucknell’s new campus farm doing what she loves: gardening.

“I’ve learned a lot about gardening, but I’ve also become more aware of how I impact my surroundings,” she says. Her fellow students share her awareness. “Everyone I work with is very conscious about how what they do affects the environment. We all have a common goal, and we’re very motivated. It’s energizing. It’s the highlight of my day.”