March 30, 2018
Shawnee State University students volunteered their spring break to travel to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina as part of an Alternative Spring Break class lead by Gabriel Brown, Adjunct Faculty and 1st Generation Mentor at SSU.
The class is a service-learning course that explores the history and culture of Myrtle Beach and focuses on community engagement. Service projects included community restoration by helping the New Directions homeless shelter, the North Myrtle Beach Historical Museum, and beach cleanup. Students focused their attention on empowerment, place-making and asset-based community development while learning about the history and culture of Myrtle Beach.
The goals of the course are to help students develop leadership skills through the role of “servant-leader,” encourage students to examine the role of service to others, increase awareness of the needs of individuals in underserved communities by applying empowerment strategies, increase understanding of asset-based community development and actively engaging in service-learning.
There were a total of seven SSU students in Brown’s course: Ethan Clarke, Lamont Garris, Aaron Lemaster, Summer Morgan, Trent Patterson, Maria Renteria and Rachel Roar.
“This trip was a great opportunity for these students to apply their personal skills to a community much different than their own. They gained knowledge regarding teamwork, leadership and organization in their projects of beautifying the area and serving homeless individuals, said Brown. “I was fortunate to have a group of students who were eager, willing and cared about the work and services they were providing to the community of Myrtle Beach.”