On Thursday evening, May 1, The Community Leadership Experience at Worcester State (CLEWS) received a certificate of recognition from the Worcester School Committee for three years of community service to Chandler Magnet School. The recognition was presented by Chandler Magnet Principal Ivonne Perez. The ceremony took place in the Council Chamber in Worcester City Hall. Representing the CLEWS Program were: Kurt Corriea, Meghan McMahon, and Margaret Benoit.
For the past three years, CLEWS students, who include community service as part of their education at the university, have been instrumental in completing community service projects at Chandler Magnet School. Rose Mathieu, WSU’s AmeriCorps VISTA, was also recognized for her part in writing the grant for this year’s Earth Day Project. That project was supported by both the Massachusetts Service Alliance and the Community Harvest Project and obtained grant funding to add shrubs, plants and raised beds for gardening. WSU mobilized students, as well as volunteers from the Grace Presbyterian Church, to join school staff and parents in holding Earth Day on a Saturday, April 12.
The recognition was given for this year’s Earth Day, but also for on-going work at Chandler Magnet. Last fall, CLEWS students worked at Chandler Magnet on several Saturdays to help teachers prepare their classrooms and cover all of the bulletin boards in the school in preparation for the teachers’ needs. Several of Dr. Mark Wagner’s students spent an entire Saturday helping the kindergarten teachers set up their classrooms. Last spring, CLEWS student volunteers along with Chandler Magnet families cleaned out several areas behind the school that were in much need of attention. Other jobs have been hanging banners that outline Chandler’s core values and that are hanging in the school’s foyer. In all, the School Committee’s recognition is a lesson for WSU’s students that Changing the Way the World Works outside the classroom is valued and appreciated by members of various communities.
Beyond the Classroom
Alumna Explores the Correlation Between Mindfulness and Depression in Undergrads
In 2011, Carolyn J. Wilcomb ’12 and Dr. Champika K. Soysa conducted a study among full-time undergraduates at Worcester State University to examine how the facets of mindfulness, self-compassion, . . .