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From their very first days on the hill, Hamilton students dedicate major portions of their college careers to community outreach and volunteer service. The Hamilton College COOP, or Community Outreach and Opportunity Project, provides Hamilton students with countless rewarding opportunities to volunteer and lend a helping hand to those in need.

Spring break is a time for relaxing, catching up on sleep and taking a break from studies, but for some Hamilton College students it also means serving others.  Ten groups equaling 100 students are spending a week of their break volunteering at one of 10 nonprofit organizations through Alternative Spring Break (ASB), March 15-28.

Hamilton serves. This simple two-word sentence can have a multitude of meanings depending on who you ask.  For some, it is simply a slogan plastered onto a crisp blue t-shirt. For members of the Community Outreach and Opportunity Project (COOP), though, it holds much more significance.  For these individuals, “Hamilton serves” is a lifestyle.

A BOCES special education class of New Hartford High School students had the opportunity to test their green thumbs with a visit to Hamilton’s Taylor Science Center greenhouse on March 2. The visit was coordinated by Hillary Joy Pitoniak, greenhouse and invertebrate care technician, with the help of Kara Pintye-Everett ’17, who is a COOP service intern at Madison-Oneida BOCES.

Hamilton community service programs HAVOC and COOP collected food, gifts and other items to make the holidays a bit happier for some local families. The Hamilton Association for Volunteering, Outreach and Charity (HAVOC) sponsored a holiday Mitten Tree, bearing gift requests from children with a need.  The children’s gift requests came through House of Good Shepherd,  Johnson Park Center (JPC) in Utica, Upstate Cerebral Palsy, Siegenthaler Center (Hospice) and Rome DSS.

Aaron Astor ’95, an associate professor of history at Maryville College in Maryville, Tenn., shared his knowledge of the Civil War in Tennessee with a group of Hamilton students volunteering at the Cumberland Trail for their Alternative Spring Break trip on March 24.

Spring break doesn’t just mean fun in the sun for all college students. One-hundred Hamilton students are spending a week of their spring break volunteering at one of 10 nonprofit organizations for Alternative Spring Break (ASB), March 16-28.

Since it started in 2011, the Community Outreach and Opportunity Project, or COOP, has been buzzing with activity. It’s a win-win relationship. Hamilton students want to help their neighbors and effect positive change; and their neighbors, in the greater Mohawk Valley, provide numerous opportunities for activities like tutoring, working in soup kitchens or building houses, to name a few. In fact, the number of interactions with local organizations has grown annually, requiring the COOP to increase the number of it senior fellows.

Many Americans might find the Affordable Care Act difficult to understand, and some may feel daunted by the task of enrolling in health insurance under the new law, but a group of Hamilton College students is helping make the process easier for the surrounding community.

As the first semester of their two-year tenures wind down, eight COOP Service Interns can look back in pride. They look forward with even greater excitement.