Montana Campus Compact AmeriCorps VISTA Summer Associates served ten weeks terms begining in June of 2015. These VISTAs focus on community needs like summer learning loss, nutrition, and STEM education. This summer we had the pleasure of placing 28 VISTA Summer Associates across Montana. They came from near and far, and today we checked in with Alex Fowler who came to serve all the way from North Carolina!
Where are you from and how did you decide to come and serve
in Montana?
I am from the foothills of North Carolina. I live in a rural
town of 1,500 with pretty views of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I currently am a
junior philosophy major with minors in Health and Human Services and
Entrepreneurship and Social Enterprise at Wake Forest University located in
Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Montana has always intrigued me as I have a love
for nature and wilderness. I am halfway through college now and thought it
would be the perfect opportunity to get out west and experience things in a new
light to refresh and rejuvenate myself as I go into the last half of my college
career. I plan on pursuing a career in criminal/family law. Who knows? I could
return to Missoula and attend law school at the University of Montana which
I’ve heard has a rather prestigious program.
Where are you serving?
Can you describe a typical day or week?
I am serving at spectrUM Discovery Area in downtown
Missoula. It was created to provide a place for children to interact with
science in ways that they never could in a typical classroom setting. My
position is the Americorps VISTA SciNation Summer Associate. SciNation is an
organization of STEM and education leaders from Tribal Health and Human
Services, Ronan Elementary School, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai
Wildlife Management Program, and Salish Kootenai College on the Flathead
Reservation. They cooperate with spectrUM to help plan our outreach efforts and
curriculum on the reservation. In a typical week I am either helping to plan
the logistics and activities we will be taking during our events/conducting the
events. We typically rent out a university vehicle, load up all of our
supplies, and head out to the reservation site for that week to engage with
students in numerous science activities.
What is the main focus of your project?
The main focus of our project is outreach. The youth we work
with would typically have minimal opportunities to visit our museum during the
summer. With summer break in full swing, there is a definite lack of
educational endeavors that youth on the Flathead can participate in, and
spectrUM and SciNation have collaborated to fill that gap. By partnering with
school districts and other community partners, we have created a program called
Science Bytes, which is in its inaugural year. You might be asking what Science
Bytes actually is. For the majority of our outreach events, we have helped
teach summer school for the first half of the days. During the second half, we
transition to the area’s federally funded feeding site, located on the school’s
premises and interact with even more students from the Boys and Girls Clubs
Foundation to local church youth groups. Not only do the students get an
enriching, nutritious meal for free, but they also get enriching science
education at the same time. In one effort, we are helping to fill an
educational barrier and aiding in promoting food security on the Flathead
Reservation. Our shining achievement, however, was during the Arlee
Celebration. We erected a large tent deemed as the “Science Learning Tent”
manned with STEM role models from the Flathead community as well as numerous
staff of our own. We served over 1,000 people in the two day period. The event
was indisputably a success and was the climax of my service here. I was able to
interact with the native culture in ways that I could never imagine, and I know
I am a better person from the experience.
What do you plan on doing after your service?
I mentioned this earlier, but I will be making the 35 hour
road trip with my best friend who is flying out to accompany me on the trek
home. I will hope to finish school with high marks and enter the legal field.
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From all of us at the Montana Campus Compact affiliate campuses and network office, we thank Alex deeply for
choosing to serve in Montana, and we wish him the best of luck in the future and hope to see him again in back in Montana.
