Student Volunteerism is Alive and Well in JEP

Student Volunteerism is Alive and Well in JEP

For a variety of reasons, USC’s Joint Educational Project is finding students are experiencing a renewed interest in helping others

by Sheldon Teitelbaum

The Tootsie Roll war began not with a sneak attack or a shot heard round the world, but with a nasty if instructional trick played by a 19-year-old USC sophomore on some fourth graders at a school not far from campus.

The warmonger’s name is Kristen Sample, and she is a community volunteer dispatched to Martin Luther King Elementary School in Los Angeles by USC’s Joint Educational Project.

JEP, which runs out of the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, was created in 1972 to provide students with the opportunity to participate in public service and educational programs within the community adjacent to USC. According to Richard Cone, JEP’s director of 12 years, between 600 to 700 LAS students come forth as volunteers each year.

Sample, a student of international relations, launched her war as an object lesson in her chosen field. And when it ended, the children who participated were left a little less innocent, a bit more wise.

“We began,” she recalls, “by distributing 100 pennies to the kids. We gave them out arbitrarily, with some kids getting several and others very few. But we told them that was OK—after all, they were only pennies. In fact, we urged them to give them away to their friends.

“After a while, the pennies began to become concentrated in the hands of a few of the kids. At that point, we told them all that we had forgotten something important. The pennies could be redeemed for Tootsie Rolls.

“That was when the fighting began.”

Sample and a fellow student broke up the skirmishes and suggested a new tack. The class was divided into two groups: the haves and the havenots. Both were instructed to devise a plan to redistribute the wealth.

“It was interesting,” says Sample, “The havenots came up with a number of plans. The haves couldn’t think of one. This, we told the kids, was the basis of the concept of ‘inequality’ in international relations; the fact that some countries have wealth and others don’t.””

At first glance, international relations might seem to be an unwieldy addition to a fourth grader’s curriculum. But the children at Martin Luther King Elementary School ate it up— with generous helpings of free Tootsie Rolls thrown in for good measure,

Sample is one of scores of USC students who have worked with youngsters in nearby innercity schools. And she says that however enriching such activities may be for these children, they are far more so for the volunteers.

“Being with these kids has turned people's attitudes around,” she says. ‘Some of the people who’ve worked with me said they were blown away by these kids’ willingness to learn.”

When Cone first arrived at USC, he recalls, it wasn’t difficult to persuade students to devote a few hours a week to community service. The “Peace Corps mentality,” he says, still had some appeal.

“But then we moved into the late '70s and early '80s and it was rough. People wanted to know what was in it for them, and satisfaction didn’t go a long way toward recruiting them. Now, though, volunteering has come back in vogue.”

This, says Tammara Anderson, JEP’s director of community programs, may have less to do with altruism and high ideals than with the fact that a few stints of volunteer activity on one’s resume can often mean acceptance to a graduate program or to medical school. “If you don't do community service,” she says, “you can forget medical school these days.”

“I don’t care why they come in,” says Cone. “And some come in kicking and screaming because their professors made community volunteering part of their course requirements. Because once they do, they tend to get hooked.”

But Cone wants it understood that he is not a do-gooder by profession, and JEP is not in the business of simply engaging in charitable enter- . prises. Rather, he says, the issue is a university's ability to deliver an education that has some bearing on the world outside.

“We are in the ideal geographic location for a university in the 20th century,” he says. “And our job is to produce professionals who will work, for the most part, in cities—this is not, after all, an agricultural institution.

“Our students have to learn about the real-life problems of the inner city, to communicate across cultures. And we have the lab within. which they can do that right here. All they have to do is cross the street to build the bridge between the theories they’ve learned and the realities they will face.

“So we see ourselves as an educational project. We take students who have not been exposed to other communities—who are culturally deprived, if you will—and we send them out to learn about contemporary America.”

Volunteer might as well be sophomore Susan Illies’ middle name. Illies, who is studying chemistry and hopes to attend medical school, works as a resident adviser in Troy Hall and has signed on for a stint as a summer camp counselor, But before she could repair to the pastoral calm of country living, she had to face 10 weeks of Sunday mornings in the company of cadavers.

“I want to be a medical examiner,” she explains. Indeed, Quincy was her favorite TV show.

“I never missed it,” she says.

She leapt at the opportunity to lend a helping hand at the coroner's office in the Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center.

At the beginning of the semester, Illies, who is 20, attended an orientation session. The idea, she says, was to get used to the sight of dead bodies.

Illies and a fellow volunteer spent much of their first hour in the morgue peeking out from between their fingers. On one gurney, she said, was a man in his 40s who had succumbed to a heart attack. A second man was a ravaged derelict. A third, in his teens, was a suicide. Half his head had been blown away.

“It was weird,” she told me. “T’d look and then T’d look away. In the end, I couldn’t stop looking. I found myself really interested.”

No, she doesn’t think she is morbid. She is attracted to the criminological aspects of forensic medicine. And frankly, she says, dealing with the dead is a great deal less complicated than undergoing the emotional torment of treating someone who might have a fatal disease.

Anderson notes that JEP’s Trojan Health Volunteers Program—. which sent Illies out into the world—remains one of the most popular,

It was founded, she says, two years ago by Daniel Potter, a premed student who had volunteered as a clinical assistant at St. John’s Medical Clinic on Adams Boulevard. Potter walked away from his experience convinced that this kind of thing was just what the doctor ordered.

Eventually, Potter developed a program for his fellow pre-med students which grew to service LAC/USC, the Spastic Children’s Foundation, Martin Luther King Jr. General Hospital and the Drew Medical Magnet School. And Potter, who graduated last June, earned the LAS Extraordinary Community Service Award for his efforts.

Another program that Anderson says has attracted many volunteers deals with the children of mothers staying at a nearby shelter for battered women.

“The shelter has an elementary school,” explains Anderson, “and our students, for the most part psychology, sociology and communications majors, adopt what we call ‘little pals.’””

Dealing with some of the problems these children face, explains Anderson, is often rough, especially for those students whose backgrounds may have been sheltered.

“It is something our students have never experienced outside of a text book. They take it hard.”

But they also tend to stick with it. And for those who can’t, it’s better that they discover it now, while they can choose another profession, than when they get out into the world equipped with a degree that doesn’t fit them.

“Many of our students use us to test their own academic resolve,” says Cone. ‘That's good. This is the time they should be testing themselves—and the world.”

Kristen Sample (left) with students from Martin Luther King Elementary School, and medical volunteer Susan lies,

Kellie Nakano (left) and Renee Stasio chat with Lilington Johnson and her fiveyear-old great-granddaughter, Shaunna Smith, in front of the David S. Cunningham Multiservice Center on Washington Boulevard.

Volunteer Frezad Moosa with his “pal,” Joshua, age 5, at a local shelter for battered women.

JEP director Richard Cone with director of community relations Tammara Anderson: “I don’t care why [students] come in, because once they do, they tend to get hooked.”

Five extraordinary student volunteers

USC’s Extraordinary Community Service Award is given each year to a graduating senior or student organization that has made a significant contribution to the community surrounding the University. The award is endowed by Grace Ford Salvatori and administered by the Office of Urban Affairs in the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. The student or organization selected receives a check for $1,000 and a personal plaque; in addition, their name is added to a permanent plaque in the foyer of Grace Ford Salvatori Hall.

While the actual award won’t be announced until after this issue of Trojan Family has gone to press, we thought you’d like to meet this year’s finalists.

Elizabeth C. Larco. Elizabeth is an English major who has worked extensively in Troy Camp, USC's summer camp for children from local schools, and has been environmental and external aftairs chairperson for the Student Senate for two years. In addition to recruiting and managing student volunteers, she developed and implemented a spring and fall blood drive for the Red Cross, a Thanksgiving food drive, and a “Toys for Tots” toy drive, obtaining sponsorships from campus organizations and outside businesses.

Stacy M. Rowe. An IDM/anthropology major, Stacy assisted in the development of the Women’s and Children’s Transitional Housing Network, a model program providing housing for up to 18 months for abused mothers and their children, offering counseling, educational activities and some stability to these people. As part of her work, she wrote proposals for funding, helped open two houses for use as shelters, planned group outings and collected furniture, clothing and appliances.

, Marcus Yee. An electrical engineering major, Marcus began working with USC’s branch of the Asian American Tutorial Project four years ago and is now project coordinator. This student-run volunteer organization is a joint project with UCLA and Occidental College which tutors children—usually recent immigrants—in downtown Chinatown. Tutors meet with the children on Saturdays and tutor them in math, reading and English,

Joseph Robert Sauer. Another engineering major (biomedical engineering/electrical engineering), Joe has tutored elementary school students who were recent immigrants to the United States, recruited other USC students to help tutor; assisted the physician and nursing staff at California Medical Center and St. John’s Well Child Center; and worked as a counselor in a camp for physically disabled children.

Mark Henry Forte. Mark is a political science major who has been an active volunteer throughout his USC career. As a freshman and sophomore he tutored and taught mini-courses to children at Magnolia Street School and at 36th Street School. For the past two years he has been program director of Varsity Scouts, coaching Virgil Junior High School sixth and eighth graders in basketball, football and softball and then starting a similar program at Le Conte Junior High that now has over 200 participants.