Day of Service will put 1,000 Maryville University students, staff and alumni to work at service projects across the region
9/17/12
ST. LOUIS – Maryville University has canceled daytime classes from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 18, so students can give back to the community during a university-wide day of service.
As Maryville Reaches Out enters its fifth year, the culture of volunteering and giving back continues to grow on campus. This year volunteers will work at about 80 sites across the St. Louis area and southern Illinois.
Students will volunteer in many different ways, including painting a mural at Gateway 180: Homelessness Reversed, rocking babies and doing crafts with children at the Cornerstone Center for Early Learning Inc. and providing landscaping and clean up at Ride On St. Louis, an organization that provides equine-assisted therapy.
Students will lend their unique talents to outreach efforts, too. For example, music therapy students plan to sing, dance and socialize with employees after work at Lafayette Industries, a packaging operation that employs adults with disabilities.
Maryville President Mark Lombardi brought the Maryville Reaches Out tradition to campus, and he routinely visits a number of work sites each year. The day of service reflects Maryville’s commitment to local communities and introduces first-year students to an important part of the University’s culture as the semester starts.
Reporters, editors and producers: You are invited to cover Maryville Reaches Out. The University will hold a volunteer send-off celebration beginning at 8:15 a.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 18 in the John E. and Adeline Simon Athletic Center on campus. The kick-off will have strong visuals with bleachers full of students in Maryville Reaches Out T-shirts. We also can arrange for on-site interviews with volunteers at locations across the area.
Maryville’s Associate Dean of Students Kathy Quinn said that in the past four years about 3,750 volunteers have provided nearly 14,000 service hours on roughly 300 projects. The day takes a lot of preparation. Two students, Sarah Schwegel of Kirkwood and Chelsea Carroll of St. Charles, worked this summer to help plan the day. Carroll said she was excited to take an active role in planning “such a cool event.” She added, “This experience has been awesome for me; we have set our goals higher to celebrate our fifth year and all the students, staff and faculty have been so willing to help us reach these goals and support our desire to serve the greater St. Louis community.”
Schwegel said she has a friend who served as student coordinator last year who inspired her to seek her position. “I have always enjoyed volunteering, so providing others with an opportunity to volunteer has been very rewardingto me,” Schwegel explained.
About Maryville University
Maryville University, founded in 1872, is ranked in the national universities category of U.S. News & World Report. It is one of three institutions in the Greater St. Louis Area ranked in this division. Kiplinger’s Personal Finance ranks Maryville in the Top 100 Private Universities in the U.S. for Best Value.