Wilkaris+Silvestre

Alpha Epsilon Phi has decided that this year’s 2011-2012 honors in action project will be Commit to Complete. Our specific goal is to help peers reach their highest potentials and convince them that the completion of their college degree is vital. The problem, that we are going to help solve, arose because the United States was the number one country in the world with the greatest number of college graduates. Now, our country has become number 12th. Alpha Epsilon Phi’s honors in action project will focus on raising the level of our college graduates. Also, we want to increase the ability that other countries have of increasing their education by providing them with opportunities that can allow them to grow as individuals that have a greater opportunity to advance their knowledge. Programs that we would like to establish under our Commit to complete category are: visiting ISTE Classes (success 101), participating in Dump the Digital Divide, helping implement a peer leadership program, and establishing a commitment day.

The purpose of visiting ISTE classes would be to give them the knowledge that graduating before transferring is what would give a student at Bergen the most success. There are two main reasons that graduating before transferring benefits a student in New Jersey. Number one: There is a law that was established in 2008 stating that all credits from a community college must be accepted without question from a four year university in New Jersey, **if** the college student completes their degree. Number two: Most students that transfer before completing their degree, end up not completing their bachelor’s either. It is better to graduate with your Associate’s degree, and actually have a degree, especially if you only need one or two semesters more to have that guarantee. Also, there are the obvious reasons: you can check off that you have an Associate’s Degree when applying to jobs and Associate’s Degree=higher salaries. A student may analyze it, transferring after completing, is the best option they have if they want to be successful. This project would be completed by making a power point that could be handed off to any member of our society.

Dump the Digital Divide has an excellent purpose of addressing one of the needs that prevent students from reaching their highest potentials. As we all know, the internet is the leader in dissemination of information. There is a lot of information that is not getting to many students in the world. Establishing this program would give students the opportunity to have an opportunity to rise above and beyond all that they could have before. We will be simply providing the students with the essential tools that they need to excel, tools that many schools think are unnecessary are worthless after a couple of years, but other students may find to be amazing. We need to find out if technology students are willing to repair computers to help our cause. Thankfully, we already have connections with schools that are in need of this technology. We can reach out and help them internationally. Having a peer leadership program would also address one of the reasons that students have not risen to their potentials. This program goes in conjunction with ISTE (success 101) classes. We need to ask our president, Stefani, for more information about this program. Also, I think it would be wonderful if we had some type of leadership conference for students to raise their abilities and talents. We can have this as service learning, we can learn more about becoming great leaders, and then teach others to do so as well. We can even go to high schools and bring a small workshop.

The establishment of a commitment day would be the perfect project. It goes directly to the point of stressing that we need to complete our college degree. For this project, we have the support of Professor Wyn Wyn Kyi, who wants us to invite her to one of our meetings. Also, Bards and Scribes, a club that performs poems and music, is willing to participate with us. They suggested writing a piece that would exhort student to commit to complete. This project would involve creating a banner that would be signed by students that commit themselves to reach their ultimate success at Bergen, achieving their college degree. I think this should be one of our first opening projects because it would raise awareness of the focus of Alpha Epsilon Phi this year.

It was suggested by Professor Wyn Wyn Kyi that we post unto www.whitehouse.org what we are doing at our college to achieve the national goal of Commit to Complete.

One of the most important things we need to achieve is to have other clubs and faculty supporting our cause. There is one transfer counselor that would be willing to give a transfer seminar and talk about committing to completing. After all, he did convince me a while ago.

The impact of our service would lead to better students, more opportunities, and a rise on graduation rates. We need to be committed.

__SERVICE PROJECTS __

COMMIT TO COMPLETE

ISTE CLASSES

AFRICAN SCHOOLS

LEADERSHIP PROGRAMS

What is the need? The United States used to be the number one country in the world with the greatest number of college graduates. Now, our country has become number 12th. Alpha Epsilon Phi’s honors in action project will focus on raising the level of our college graduates. Also, we want to increase the ability that other countries have of increasing their education by providing them with opportunities that can allow them to grow as individuals that have the opportunity to advance their knowledge.

What are the different possible actions related to the Issue you chose?

<span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">What specific actions will you take and why?

<span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">Whom will you serve? (demographics, numbers, location, etc.)

<span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">What organizations exist in the world and locally that are engaged in service similar to what you aim to do? Organizations that are participating in the Commit to Complete are the United Nations, President Obama’s national campaign to raise the level of college completion.

<span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">How can you use what you learn from your analysis of their work to proceed with your project? Using our analysis, we can decide what groups of people need the most focus, and we can lead our peers into successfully completing their college degree.

<span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">What is the specific impact you intend to make? Specifically, we want to raise the number of students graduating from community colleges.

<span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">What are the details of your strategies and plan? Our best strategy is to have other clubs and organizations that will participate with us. We need to make people want to commit. I would say, that we need to go all the way with flyers and campaign and a day that they will remember because everyone would want to commit.

<span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">How are you going to measure the impact (quantitative measures and qualitative measures)? I think the best way to measure our impact is to count the names of people that commit themselves to this project. Also, we should try to see how many of the people committed, graduated.

<span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">What are the specific results and impact of your service? The impact of our service would lead to better students, more opportunities, and a rise on graduation rates.