SERVICE MEMBERS MAKE A DIFFERENCE ON SEPTEMBER 11

VISTA members at the Missoula Food Bank

In honor of the national day of service observed on September 11th, Montana Campus Compact national service members spent the last few weeks engaging in service projects around the state. VISTA members Rachel Juel, Eli Bowe, Andrew Prior, Kaleigh Mency, and Yanet Eudave Marin collaborated with other service members and a local farm to harvest 982 pounds of apples for the Gallatin Valley Food Bank in Bozeman.

Members in the Flathead Valley, Navraj Kaler, JJ Dynneson, and Courtney Olson also collaborated with service members from other projects to volunteer at the Montana Dragon Boat Festival in Lakeside, an event sponsored by Kalispell Regional Healthcare. The members were excited to play a part in a great community event! Tansy Remiszewski in Missoula also volunteered with a community event, serving food, beverages, and hospitality at the Missoula Urban Demonstration’s annual garden party fundraiser.

Paxton McCausland, a VISTA member serving in Helena, participated in a service project at a Habitat for Humanity build-out site in East Helena. Paxton was thrilled to not only help build a house for a family in need, but also to learn how to use a reciprocating saw, a hand saw, and a nail gun (his personal favorite).

Missoula area VISTA members Emma Giron, Ashley Hettler, Alexi Corbett, Syed Hossain, Marlena Weiss and Maryelizabeth Koepele worked to pack snacks at the Missoula Food Bank to help out with their EmpowerPack Program, which sends snacks home with school children over the weekends.


 Alexis Burton organized two community clean up events in Troy. Her first cleanup event was with a group of sixth graders. Alexis was pleasantly surprised to see how much the students enjoyed the event; they spent three hours happily picking up trash and asked her when they could do it again! Her second event was with another service member, and the two of them were able to collect twelve 10-gallon buckets buckets worth of trash from around Troy’s community dump and the back side of the Frisbee Golf Course.

AmeriCorps Leaders and VISTA members created care packages for first responders in their host site areas. Care packages were delivered on 9/11 to thank first responders for their service.  Leader Daniele Vickers presented her care package to Mr. Willy Torros, who is the Department Head of Marcus Daly Memorial Hospital EMS. Maryelizabeth, Lana Petrie, Sabrina Quimby, Jordan Fernandez, Nicole Lemaster, Clara Moser, Loni Neilson-Kattel, Marlena Weiss, and Syed Hossain visited Missoula Fire Departments to show their gratitude. Not pictured: Dayton Smith, Adam Maes, Amber Dechaine, Chandler Padgett, and Amon Barry delivered care packages in their respective host site towns.

Montana Campus Compact service members were thankful to have the opportunity to engage in such a wide variety of projects in Montana!

BATTLING HUNGER AND BUILDING COMMUNITY IN THE GALLATIN VALLEY!

Guest blog by Aubree Pierce, MTCC AmeriCorps VISTA with Montana State University
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My project is at the MSU campus food pantry, Bounty of the Bridgers (BoB). We began having pop-up pantries in October of 2017 so we are making adjustments and trying to improve the pantry as we go. My role with this project has been integral in building capacity and creating sustainability for the BoB Pantry. Through this project I have developed relationships with many campus and community partners who have helped push this project forward and are helping create permanence and sustainability on campus. These relationships as well as the support of student volunteers are so critical to the pantry’s success. 

Two of the most important relationships established are with the grocery stores, Rosauers, Safeway, and Albertson’s, and with the Gallatin Valley Food Bank. We currently serve mostly shelf stable items and bakery recovered from local grocery stores. We are greatly supported by the Gallatin Valley Food Bank. They provide us with some produce and we also pick up some produce from grocery stores. However, the supply is often limited and lacking in variety.

I had been in some communication with the campus research farm, Towne’s Harvest Garden, but I felt that this relationship could be stronger and would be a good source to bring more produce to the pantry. I reached out to the farm managers and they were very excited to work more closely with us. They gifted us a space to grow our own produce for the BoB Pantry and are growing extra rows of their normal crops to donate to us in exchange for occasional volunteer help.

After the partnership with Towne’s was established, I applied for and was awarded a grant from Youth Service America and the Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation to host a Global Youth Service Day project. For our Global Youth Service Day event, we held a Garden Kick-off and Earth Day party. This event was a huge success because we were able to get more students involved with volunteering as well as some of the pantry clients, and this event helped raise awareness of the BoB Pantry and our dedication to providing fresh, healthy foods to the MSU community.

At this event, volunteers helped prepare the garden beds, plant seeds in the field, plant seeds for transplanting, and plant seeds to take home. We also had a kid's planter pot decorating station, a local food tasting station, and a farm to table educational station.

We will continue to have students and youth volunteer and be involved with the garden through the summer. We are excited to see fresh, nutritious food come to those in need, and we are excited to provide a learning opportunity for children to learn more about gardening, local food, and where their food comes from.

This event was so much fun and a great way to end the semester. I am filled with pride and I am in awe of the enthusiasm of the students and community who came together to work on this project. The students have made the pantry a success. It’s incredible to see so many young individuals engaged in service to better their community. The student volunteers that I am so lucky to be surrounded by are an inspiration and they have made my VISTA service feel so impactful. 

HIGHLIGHTING EMPOWER PLACE: VIEWS FROM AMERICORPS LEADER KRISTIAN STIPE

EmPower Place is a hands-on family learning center that brings together science exhibits, University of Montana role models, library books, activities, and free snacks. Located at Missoula Food Bank, EmPower Place is a collective impact effort by spectrUM, Missoula Food Bank, and Missoula Public Library. EmPower Place is powered by the City of Missoula, the Missoula Redevelopment Agency, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

We strive to educate and encourage critical thinking in all activities we do, whether it is for science or for art. We have activities scheduled almost every day of the week. On Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays we have our after-school programing called the After-School Clubhouse, which includes a cooking class, a game day, and a science making & tinkering day.

On Mondays and Wednesdays, the Missoula Public Library hosts its Tiny Tales programming in our space in the morning. Tiny Tales is a program where a library employee will sit down and read children’s books and sing songs that the kids love. On Fridays we have a different guided art project where kids can explore the ideas ranging from what a water shed is, to making valentines cards for refugees living in Missoula.

Monday Cooking:

Every Monday afternoon we have our after-school club house where we have a cooking class. One day this month we made fruit sculptures held together by caramel and tooth picks. Pictured here is FruitBot 9001, a robot with the mission to destroy hunger.Each week we get to learn new cooking techniques, practical skills, and how to be effective and safe in a kitchen.

Science Tuesday:

Every week at EmPower we spend our Tuesday morning learning about a new science topic by doing a variety of activities. Each month we have a theme, and February’s theme was Love Our Neighbors. This month we had hygiene, neurons and brains, and blood typing and hearts.

Hygiene: First you must take care of yourself: Learn how to wash your hands with GloGerm, brush your teeth and wash dishes. GloGerm can show you how well you wash your hands, by showing spots you missed under a black light. We can also see any spots we missed when brushing our teeth and the importance of flossing by seeing our green ‘food’ on the teeth.

Making & Tinkering Thursdays:

On Thursdays our After-school Clubhouse hosts a spectrUM discovery area Making & Tinkering activity. One day this month we made a giant cardboard castle using no scissors or tape. It even had a functional draw bridge to cross our moat.

These weekly science/making & tinkering activities really make the kids think outside the box and problem solve a whole host of potential problems that can come up in science. The activates usually include a team work component so that everyone can work together to solve the problem at hand. We have made giant soccer balls out of straws, hoverboards, and bouncy rockets this month, in addition to the card board castle.

Our after-school program at EmPower Place is starting to take off and we are seeing more kids every single day. Starting in April I EmPower staff will be taking over the control of cooking classes from the food bank, where we will have an even more personal touch with that programming. I am excited to see how the program evolves and ready for any changes that might be included with that.

MTCC VISTA SUPPORTS VETERAN CENTER AT MSU

On Monday, January 8, the Veteran Support Center kicked off a semester long effort aimed at encouraging financial literacy among veteran students. The inaugural event was the Financial Success Summit, which covered scholarships, loans, and entrepreneurship. Subsequent events throughout the semester will have narrower focuses. Connor Harbison, the MTCC AmeriCorps VISTA serving at the MSU Blackstone LaunchPad, supported the staff at the Veteran Support Center, in order to put all of MSU’s resources to work for veteran students.

“Working with veteran and non-traditional aged students, finances can be a big source of stress,” said Joe Schumacher, Director of Veteran Services. “Any resources we can give them to remove that stress means they can focus on other things, like academics.”

The Financial Success Summit gathered veteran students, financial advisers, university administrators, and student loan experts together to share knowledge and empower the veteran student population. MSU has an unusually high concentration of veteran students, and veterans are a core constituency of Connor’s VISTA Assignment Description, or VAD. This makes for an ideal common cause between the Blackstone LaunchPad and the Veteran Support Center.

About three dozen students gathered for the pre-orientation event, which was held in the MSU Strand Union Building. Connor Harbison, one of the MTCC AmeriCorps VISTAs serving on campus, attended and gave a few brief remarks on the resources available at his service site, the Blackstone LaunchPad. Judging by the question and answer session, as well as walk-in visitors at the LaunchPad after the event, this outreach was a success.

“As a veteran student and entrepreneur, the resources at Montana State University, especially in the Veteran Support Center and the Blackstone LaunchPad, have been crucial, both now and in the past,” said James Rolin, founder of Cowboy Cricket Farms, a venture that works with the Blackstone LaunchPad.

The Financial Success Summit is just one of many collaborative events between the Blackstone LaunchPad and the Veteran Support Center. Connor has worked closely with Joe and the rest of the staff during the first six months of service. In the spring semester, this partnership will continue, with weekly outreach hours and a monthly sack lunch, focusing on a specific aspect of entrepreneurship. The goal of this effort is to retain more veteran students and ultimately prevent veterans from falling into poverty.

About the Blackstone LaunchPad: The Blackstone LaunchPad at Montana State University, housed under the Jake Jabs College of Business and Entrepreneurship, is an entrepreneur resource for students, alumni, and faculty across the university and community that offers coaching, ideation, and venture creation support.

FALL GAME JAM AT SKC!

On November 3rd through 5th AmeriCorps Leader Dayton Smith helped put on the Fall Game Jam at Salish Kootenai College, hosted by Flathead Tech4Good.

 “Water is Life” is this year’s theme at SKC. With that focus the purpose of the fall Game Jam was to bring local high-schoolers, SKC students and community volunteers together to tackle related issues with-in the community. With the"Water is Life" theme in mind, Tech4Good Game Jam focused on the unique challenges that Flathead Watershed faces.

Now what is a watershed? The first thing that comes to my mind is a “shed that holds water”, but that’s not the case.  Now if you know exactly what a watershed does congrats, but if you’re like me then welcome to the soon to be woke club. Overall we all live on a watershed. A watershed is like a funnel that drains from the land to the same location or body of water. And how our communities treat the land plays a big role on the water we have. Not woke? Watch a  short video on "What's a Watershed"( Soon to be Woke Club: What is a Watershed)

Now learning about watersheds can be useful, but making it useful and relatable can have a deeper connection with the students and community members. With that there’s the Flathead Watershed. That Friday students learned about the challenges that Flathead Watershed faces such as Invasive species, oil train derailments, pollution due to agriculture development and more.
Although there was not a big turnout for this year’s fall Game Jam the effort continues to bring students and communities member together to work towards a common goal.

For more information on the SKC's Fall Game Jam visit Tech4good.

NASA BLASTS OFF FROM BIGFORK WITH CARTER OLLERVIDEZ

Hello, my name is Carter Ollervidez. I am a MTCC AmeriCorps Leader serving at ACES afterschool program in Big Fork, MT. We got the great opportunity to be part of a NASA STEM challenge. I went to Helena to attend a two day, face-to-face training with NASA in order to fully grasp the STEM challenge my students will be taking on.

During our training, the first challenge was landing on the surface of Mars! I worked with a partner using the Engineering Design Process (EDP). Together we embarked on a mission of building a drag device to slow down a capsule to the surface of mars. We were able to finish a great prototype at the training and then I was on my way home to start the program in Big Fork.

We started off the program at ACES with some team building. Then we broke up into two teams. Our first mission was to come up with a team name, mission patch and a vision statement.

Team One: The Cat-stronauts, proclaiming; “Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much!”

Team Two: The Orion Landers and their vision statement is; “Let's take a trek.”

On day two we got together and played a rousing game of hot seat with our vocabulary words for the course. Then we discussed in more detail the criteria and constraints of the challenge.

Our Mission: Build a drag device to slow down a capsule for landing on the surface of Mars.

Constraints:
1. Only the materials provided can be used for the drag device.
2. The drag device must connect to a team-built cargo bay that is assembled using the template provided in the student journal section.
3. The overall mass cannot exceed 50 grams.
4. The drag device must have angled or round edges; one big circle is not allowed.
5. The cargo bay should be protected by the device when it is dropped from a height of one, two and three meters.

Then to finish off the day the students wrote a letter to our Program Director at ACES, explaining their new job as a NASA Scientist.

The team working hard on the design of their parachute.

We then got right into research. They dove into questions about drag devices, low-density supersonic decelerators, parachutes, and much more. We also made sure to research who will benefit from this work we are doing and this problem we are hopefully solving. We also came up with a few questions for our NASA Scientists to answer. One of our questions was: How much does a 100 ft. parachute weigh?

This period was hard work for the teams, we concentrated super hard and powered through. Each team worked separately on a design that fulfills the constraints of our project.
The teams powered through, then came together at the end to see and explain to each other their design. They came up with two prototypes to begin building.

We started off the New Year with a bang by meeting NASA scientist, David Berger! He grew up on a small farm in Indiana wanting to work on the next NASA rocket plane/spacecraft. He was fortunate enough to be able to start working at NASA as a co-operative education student in college.  At NASA he has worked in propulsion, aerodynamics, systems engineering, flight test engineering, chief engineering and education technical management positions.

After our call with David Berger we started building our devices! The kids took to it and worked well together, creating and adapting the model as they used different materials.

Next up, we went out and tested our two designs! Then they spent time reworking designs to see what we could improve upon based on the first test’s performance. The kids were super excited to try their prototypes! Following a few design changes, it was time to test them once again.

The kids learned the importance of having a big light surface area chute with a hole to help stabilize the craft on the descent. Their last chute proved to work the best as they continued to consider weight and surface area ratios.

Testing the parachute and taking notes.

We also had the pleasure to talk with Kurtis Long.  Kurtis Long is a research engineer at NASA Ames Research Center. He runs wind tunnel tests to investigate the lift, drag, and flow patterns of different objects. We had a really great experience listening and asking questions. Mr. Long congratulated the students on their designs, and was happy to see they had come up with a few ideas that NASA also had.  ie; A parachute designed with a hole in the center, and a cupped capsule to catch wind.

Our final discussion with NASA was career oriented. We met with the Johnson Space Center, It is the center dedicated to astronauts. Our Subject Matter Expert was Sarah McNamara. Mrs. McNamara works on the guidance, safety release and evacuation for the Orion Lander.  She answered a ton of questions the kids had for her about different careers NASA has to offer - from doctors to divers. She also spoke on becoming a NASA Scientist and how to do it! She said goodbye in a really neat way - by showing us a live view from space!

Finally, the last week was upon us. We made the finishing touches on our video and even shared a little time at the local Dairy Queen and having a celebratory ice cream cone.

Thanks for following our journey. We all learned a lot and can’t believe we got to talk to real astronauts!

LIFE AFTER VISTA: DOING WHAT YOU LOVE

Sara Feilzer is an MTCC VISTA Alum currently working for Exploration Works in Helena, MT. Her passion for teaching science to young Montanans has been an inspiration to everyone she works with. We would like to highlight her past and current accomplishments and thank her for her service to Montana communities.

When and where did you serve your term as a Compact AmeriCorps VISTA?

I served from July 2015 to July 2016 in Missoula with spectrUM Discovery Area, a hands-on science center focused on encouraging the next generation of Montanans to pursue higher education and hopefully a career in STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math).

What are some highlights from your year of service?

One of the highlights of my year of service was helping to plan a massive gala fundraiser for my organization which brought in over $50,000. It was incredible to see all of the people in the community that came together to support spectrUM and allow us to continue to serve Montana and its families. I also helped build infrastructure for a summer camp program and was able to see firsthand the impact that my service had on students of all social and economic backgrounds.

How did your service impact your life?

My year of service was an eye-opening experience for me personally and professionally. I had a great deal of hardship during my time with spectrUM and MTCC, but because of those experiences, I was able to learn so much more about myself and how I handle successes, setbacks and failures. It also was such an incredible experience to be serving with other service-minded individuals and watching their passions for civic engagement grow and change throughout our term of service. I met some amazing people doing incredible work through MTCC, and I am extremely proud to call them friends. I was lucky enough to serve in the community that I grew up in, with the organization that I fell in love with in high school. Through my term of service though, I was exposed to so much more, and the opportunity to do so much more to engage and give back to my community.

Where are you now and in what way are you still involved with civic engagement?

Currently I am the Community Education and Outreach Director for ExplorationWorks, a hands-on science center in Helena, Montana. My focus is on engaging the public in informal STEM education and hopefully sparking a lifelong passion for science. I lead programming geared for kids as young as 2, all the way to adults, hopefully encouraging them to look at their world a little differently. I am also going to start volunteering with the wildlife education center at Montana WILD in January, which I am super excited about,  and I also serve on the Board of Directors for Animal Wonders, an organization that takes in displaced exotic animals, gives them a forever home, and turns them into ambassadors for their species.

Any additional thoughts on your current passions for community service?

I think that civic engagement is one of the most important things we can do for our community. When we serve our neighbors, friends, family, we create a safer and more welcoming place for all. I would love to see every person engaged in their community and helping to pass on their passion and knowledge to the next generation.