1. Let’s See How Far We’ve
Come
UC Clermont College’s
VISTA Impact report
2010-2011
With thanks to:
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2. The Plan
I. History & background
II. My day-to-day activities
III. The Impact Report: numbers
IV. Some notable projects from this year
V. Future
VI. Questions?
VII.Thanks

3. Background
• VISTA=Volunteer In Service To America
– An Americorps VISTA “…creates or expands programs designed to
bring individuals and communities out of poverty.”
• VISTA’s placed through an initiative by the Ohio Campus
Compact(OCC)
– OCC is “a non-profit, membership coalition of 46 college and
university presidents and their campuses working to promote the
civic purposes of higher education.”
– OCC VISTAs help build and leverage campus resources into the
community to fight poverty.
• This will be the third and final year of a VISTA at UC Clermont to
work on service learning and civic engagement.
– Can pursue opportunities with OCC’s VISTA program after sitting
out a year for another issue (e.g, Veteran’s issues, college access,
food access, etc).

4. History
• UC Clermont hosted former VISTA,
Austin Watts, from August 2008-2010

5. History
• Austin worked with Barbara Wallace to
establish community partnerships, create
service learning handbooks and train/support
faculty in service learning.
• Additionally, Austin worked with Student Life to
create civic engagement opportunities for
student organizations and served as the advisor
for the student organization, SHOCK.
• Before leaving, Austin helped form the Service
Learning Community Action Council

6. The VISTA’s Role
• This year, I:
– Continued to support faculty, students and
community partners in service learning courses
– Maintained/expanded our community partnerships
– Created/advertised civic engagement opportunities
for SHOCK & Clermont Scholars
– Supported the NCLI and PIF grants
– Created/revised resources for service learning &
civic engagement.
– Served on and helped create a report for the
Service Learning Community Action Council

7. Numbers from 2010-2011(See
Impact Report)
The VISTA Impact: by the numbers(2010-2011):
• Civically Engaged Students: 429
• Total Hours Engaged: 4,611
• Service Learning Faculty: 16
• Service Learning Courses: 31
• Partner Agencies: 26
• Community Members Impacted (directly): 350
• Value* of Community Engagement: $102,990
*One hour=$21.36 (Independent Sector, 2010)

8. Notes on the 2010-2011
Numbers
• “Civically Engaged”=umbrella term for students who
volunteer and/or took a service learning course.
– Around 4,000 students enrolled at the start of the year
therefore 10% of student population is “civically engaged” to
some extent.
• The number of hours is a conservative estimate.
• I would argue so is the dollar value from
independentsector.org as the skills students use are
specialized.
• Our community impact is greater than 350 when
considering our efforts in regards to food security.
– that was only the number of youth served at the Boy’s &
Girl’s Clubs of Clermont County this year and on Earth Day.

9. More Notes…
• The majority of students who were
“civically engaged” and time spent in the
community came from service learning
courses.
– Additionally, the only retrospective data I have
is from service learning
• Note: This is does not mean that students
do not volunteer on their own or as part of
an organization but we didn’t have the
capacity to track this data.

10. Service Learning Numbers

11. Service Learning Numbers

12. Service Learning Numbers

13. Notable Projects/Progress
This Year
• A sampling of service learning & civic
engagement projects from the year:
– Community Garden
– Multimedia Projects
– Paying It Forward grant (Philanthropy)
– Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA)
– Tutors/Mentors for youth
– Special presentations in after-school programs
– Earth Day

14. Community Garden-Summer
2010

15. Community Garden Fall 2010

16. Community Garden-Spring
2010

17. Community Garden-Present

18. Multimedia Projects
• Service Learning Students in 2D design
and a Multimedia capstone course
jumped in with:
– Logo design for Goshen Township’s
Community Center
– A “how to” video for Habitat for Humanity
– Brochure design for Thomaston Woods
Apartments.

19. Paying It Forward-Eng 289
• Students participated in service learning
and based on their research, writing and
service learning experiences defined “at
risk youth”.
• Based on their definitions, they donated
funds (via the Paying It Forward grant)
totaling $4,500 towards local community
based organizations targeted towards
helping youth.

20. Paying It Forward-Eng 289
• Freestore Foodbank Video

21. VITA
• A Service Learning & Tax Preparation
course taught winter quarter by Bruce
Davis.
– This kept a large amount of money in the
community and saved residents money on
tax preparation services as well.
– Students were certified by the IRS to file
the taxes.

22. Tutoring/Mentoring & Special
Presentations
• Every quarter saw UC Clermont
students working with local after-school
programs as tutors/mentors.
• Spring/Winter quarters included special
presentations on public health and
environmental education for youth in the
community.

23. Microbiology students explain
how easily germs are spread.

24. Service Learning student and
youth at Thomaston Woods

25. Earth Day
• Part of an American Association of
Community College No Child Left Inside
Grant.
– Focuses on Promoting Environmental Literacy
• Involved service learning courses, student
organizations and community partners.
• Leveraged funds from AACC to support
Earth Day. Duke Energy funded the garden
– Thanks Meredith Delaney for connecting us
with the Duke funds!

26. Microbiology student present
to youth on Earth Day

27. Student Organization
involvement on Earth Day

28. Jon Streater from the Clermont
Coalition for Activity and Nutrition
talks to youth at Earth Day

29. Future
• We hope to build on momentum that we have created the
past three years.
• Barbara will continue to direct the program and work with
faculty, partners and students.
• We hope to include service learning in the college’s
strategic plan.
• SLCAC and Mentors from AACC grant recommended the
creation of an office with full time director and specific
policies and procedures.
– This is necessary in order to ensure quality, including risk
management for our students/community, and continued
expansion.

30. The “Thank You” Slide
• Thank you:
– Partners
– UC Clermont
– Fellow VISTAs and OCC
– Barbara and Linsey!