Y Student Group Promos: A YouTube Playlist

At this year's Student Program Orientation, groups created short promos to grab your interest, make you laugh, and ask you to care about their cause. Pretty effective, and well worth watching:

Telling Stories: Audio Documentaries Now Available for Streaming

Latest tracks by UniversityYMCA

"Telling Stories" is a new oral history project that is beginning to unravel and explore the rich history of the University YMCA. We're also preserving current history by recording interviews with current Y members, such as student leaders, donors, and staff.

The first three Telling Stories episodes are now available on SoundCloud and can be live streamed, downloaded, and shared easily:

http://soundcloud.com/universityymca

Jenni Kotting, the new Communications Director at the Y, has begun this process of interviewing, editing, and arranging the stories. She has a strong background in sound design, ethnography, and oral history. She says, "When I was hired, I wanted to bring my passion for oral history and archives to the table. I never imagined there would be so many stories to tell, and I've never had so much fun editing down a 90 minute interview into a 15 minute episode." Although she complains that her equipment isn't capable of recording at a professional level, she's happy with the way the stories have come together and proud of the students who shared so deeply during their interviews.

Currently available episodes include:

Martha Webber
Alternative Spring Break Volunteer and Graduate Student 

Martha Webber, against some major odds, has become both a seminal academic and devoted volunteer. She is the storyteller here, and it’s fitting because that’s her passion as a grad student. Her dissertation is an ethnographic and auto-ethnographic narrative which she describes in detail. Martha came to the Y almost as soon as she came to the University for her grad program. She became co-leader of Alternative Spring Break and her interests shifted both academically and personally towards service learning and civic engagement.

Andrea Rosales
La Colectiva Volunteer and Blogger for Undocumented Rights 

Andrea didn’t discover she was undocumented until she was in high school when she had to decline a work study position to which she’d been accepted. From that point on, she was on an emotional roller coaster. She felt alone and helpless... until she began to connect with the larger undocumented community through forums and blogging. Now she’s an activist with Y Student Group, La Colectiva. This group of 18 students has put in over 2000 volunteer hours in the past year alone, for which they received the Y’s Outstanding Student Group of the Year Award. Quickly, Andrea became a big part of La Colectiva’s educational outreach, organizing, and action aimed at changing state and national legislation.

Kenny Long
Engineers Without Borders Volunteer and Student Board Member 

Kenny Long is a leader in Engineers without Borders, and a new student board of governors member. When he came to the University of Illinois, his family in Texas couldn’t believe how far from home he would be. Soon enough, his involvement with the Y would take him even farther... to Africa. Kenny arrived to the village of Ntisaw with other student engineers. You can hear in his voice the affection and respect he developed for the place. He especially admires the way politics and religion played out while the water system was being planned. Listening to Kenny, you can understand why he got attached to Ntisaw. The people, as a community, worked so hard to get fresh water. They saved an improbable amount of money. And when everything went wrong, they did it all over again.

Alternative Orientation offers new students a different view of the University of Illinois

“I really think we need to keep tying things back to U of I. When I was an incoming freshman I wanted to know as much as I could about what to expect.” - Kenny Long, President, Engineers without Borders UIUC and University YMCA Board of Governors representative

In 1926, the University YMCA established “Freshman Camp,” to help new students to get oriented and adjusted to University life. The program focused on personal character development and “provided information and tips designed to help freshman to succeed in their academic and social lives, along with a chance to speak and interact with senior students and faculty members.” While the program was discontinued briefly in the late 50s, it was reestablished in 1959 and renamed twice in 1964 as “Freshman Conference” and in 1971 as “New Student Conference.” These conferences were a space for sharing of participants’ hopes, fears, and expectations of college life as well as a forum for addressing serious matters related to higher education. The last conference was held in 1973.

This fall, the University YMCA Student Board hopes to revive the spirit of Freshman Camp with a new program, Alternative Orientation. The day and a half retreat will still serve as a forum for learning more about the collegiate experience, but with a focus on leadership development and community engagement. Students will learn about the Social Change Model of Leadership, participate in a community service project, explore their personal strengths as a leader, explore campus from through the eyes of a campus leader in a very unique photo scavenger hunt and connect with campus leaders. All of these activities share a common purpose, helping new students explore their own passions and desires to create sustainable change while developing skills to make those dreams a reality.

Several University YMCA students who are in Champaign-Urbana for the summer have been meeting regularly with YMCA staff to discuss programming ideas, recruit participants, and develop campus partners. This July 29-30, the students will run a pilot of the program aimed at incoming students from Champaign County. In September, they plan to hold a similar program for students who have begun to get involved in service, environmentalism, or activism, but want to develop leadership skills to facilitate their development within an organization.

Want to learn more? Visit the Alternative Orientation website: http://www.universityymca.org/alternative_orientation/ or contact Kasey at kasey@universityymca.org or 217.337.1514

Ready to sign-up? Apply online here.