Students and faculty at Hamilton have opportunities to connect with our surrounding communities through service-learning courses. Service-learning is a teaching method that incorporates community work into the curriculum, thereby giving students real-world exerience while meeting pressing community needs.
Projects
Project SHINE: Project SHINE ("Students Helping in the Naturalization of Elders") offers Hamilton students the opportunity to help local refugees & immigrants. Student participants work one-on-one or in small groups with adult learners in English or citizenship classes at the Utica BOCES ACCESS Site and the Adult Learning Center at MVRCR.
Youth Development Project: The Levitt Center is in its second year of a Youth Development Project that is designed to include 1) increasing the number of service learning courses offered at Hamilton College that address positive youth development and outreach to culturally diverse families and 2) academic enrichment that student volunteers bring to educational or after-school settings with youth and families, utilizing our international students and students engaged in cross-cultural studies of any kind.
VITA:
The Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) Program offers free tax help to low to moderate income (generally $42,000 and below) families who cannot prepare their own tax returns. The Levitt Center works with the Mohawk Valley Asset-Buidling Coalition, a group of 30+ community agencies to complete this project. Hamilton students are certified volunteer tax preparers through the IRS and will each spend 15 hours filing taxes at VITA sites such as the Resource Center for Independent Living and Mohawk Valley Perinatal Network in Utica, Harding Nursing Home in Waterville, and GPO Federal Credit Union in New Hartford.
Burmese/Karen Refugee Project
Community Garden Project: Jenney Stringer '08 began the Community Garden Project initially through a Levitt Summer Civic Engagement Fellowship. Jenney's vision for former refugees of the Soviet Union, Belarus, and Ukraine was to transform an empty lot of grass to a place where families of different background could create beauty and abundance in vegetable and flowers, gardening together in peace. http://www.hamilton.edu/news/refugeegarden.html
Independent Study Projects: Hamilton students can propose and design independent studies on topics of their choice. Students who want to focus on a topic relevant to the local community can work with Professor Owens-Manley or another faculty member as an advisor. Independent studies have included Microfinance in the U.S.., Welfare Reform, and the Working Poor.
Project SHINE ("Students Helping in the Naturalization of Elders") offers Hamilton students the opportunity to help local refugees & immigrants. Student participants work one-on-one or in small groups with adult learners in English or citizenship classes at the Utica BOCES ACCESS Site and the Adult Learning Center at MVRCR.
Jenney Stringer '08 began the Community Garden Project initially through a Levitt Summer Civic Engagement Fellowship. Jenney's vision for former refugees of the Soviet Union, Belarus, and Ukraine was to transform an empty lot of grass to a place where families of different background could create beauty and abundance in vegetable and flowers, gardening together in peace.