Experience First Students serve the local homeless need.
Published: February 20, 2024
Author: Julia Roat-Abla
Kelli Pryor’s EXPF120 students began their GU experience with a lesson in service. The first-year students raised nearly $300.00 during the fall semester for area homeless by making and selling woven bracelets to GU community, friends, and family.
Kelli’s class saw a need to support homeless and displaced people in the Greenville area. They came to school aware of the homelessness impacting their hometowns and seized the opportunity to help folks in the Greenville area. But they didn’t want to give some money and be done with it. The students devised a creative way to raise funds by making and selling the bracelets.
By the end of the semester, Kelli’s class contributed $295.80 to the Bond County Ministerial Alliance Benevolence Fund, which provides resources for homeless and displaced persons in Bond County.
Experiential Learning and the Experience First curriculum are integral to matriculation at GU. This fall, each of the XXX students entering GU participated in the EXPF 120 class. The creation of courses like EXPF120 helps students fulfill the university’s mission of Christlike character and service from the moment they step onto the GU campus. Experience First classes offered at the 200 and 300 level continue to provide intensive experiential learning for students throughout their college career.
All of GU’s EXPF (Experience First) classes are geared to move students toward compassion and empathy for others. Instructor Kelli Pryor says the EXPF120 class lays the foundation for the GU experience. “It pushes students out of their comfort zone,” she says, “They learn it’s not all about you.
While students receive support as they transition into college life, the exercises in teamwork, career development, and personal growth are filtered through the lens of how students can impact the world around them.
Alea Val De Verde, a Kelli’s EXPF120 class student, valued the opportunity to learn how to work with others in her group while serving the Greenville community. She says, “We took concepts we learned, like conflict resolution and collaboration, and used them to complete our project. It helped us figure out how to work well with others to accomplish the same goal.”
Integrating experiential learning with character and service at GU is an investment in the lives of students that will shape their college and post-college careers.
Kelli sees the EXPF120 class as just the beginning of the transformation of students’ perspectives and the impact they can have on the world around them. She says, “It can expand their thinking for their own life. They can do this in their communities in the future. We don’t know how this will flower, but we can nurture what will grow from this today.”
Download dsc0024.jpg
