Carson Bonner, Campus Carrier news editor
Nathanael Mooney, Campus Carrier staff writer
The Bonner Scholarship Signature Program is one of Berry’s more popular scholarship opportunities. The scholarship is a national program based in New Jersey and offers support to students with displayed financial need who have a desire to serve in their surrounding community. At Berry, there are usually 80 students in the program, who each complete 140 hours of community service each semester, plus an additional two summers with 280 service hours.
Each year, students within the Bonner program are put into Issue-Based groups and assigned a topic that they can connect to the Rome-Floyd area and beyond. Topics they cover could be related to immigration or the environment; anything that connects a broader issue to Berry and its surrounding area is acceptable. Students then find a way of presenting their findings to the student body. This year, each group held a panel of experts on their respective topics, including students, faculty and people from outside Berry.
“Each year, part of what we ask our Bonner scholars to do is get into Issue-Based groups and the idea is that they will pick a community issue that may even be on a global scale and bring that back to the county,” Director of the Bonner Center of Community Engagement Laurie Chandler said. “They do some baseline research on the topics that they’re interested in and sort of try to narrow their focus. There might be one about immigration, but there’s so much info about immigration, so we have to think of how we would find something to sink our teeth into that we can make an impact on.”
This year, topics covered accessibility, transportation in urban areas, urban environmentalism, living as an undocumented immigrant and minority owned businesses. Senior Bonner Scholar and program intern José Reyes was part of the group focusing on living as an undocumented immigrant. Part of their work included presenting resources and information to students at several Rome schools. This information was primarily directed at students who may be undocumented so they would know how to pursue higher education and opportunities after high school.
“It was a really rewarding process,” Reyes said. “It’s always amazing when we finish a presentation that we’ve put together and people will come up to us after and be like ‘thank you for doing that. I had no idea that this was an issue.’ or ‘I feel so seen with this presentation.’ It’s just really cool when everything comes together and people appreciate it.”
The panels are Cultural Events (CE) and usually take place during the end of the fall semester however, some can be delayed until January or February. The panels usually consist of 3-5 experts who answer questions from moderators. Towards the end. the floor is opened to the audience to ask questions and engage with the panelists. One of the tougher obstacles to overcome for the Bonner scholars is scheduling the panelists. The panelists are often working with busy schedules which makes getting everyone in one place at one time a challenge.
“It can be difficult setting a concrete time for presentations that involve speakers,” Chandler said. “Sometimes we have a few that say that they really want to participate but they wouldn’t be able to until February, so we have to be flexible in shifting things around.”
Each Issue-Based group is led by two members of the Bonner Leadership Team. Senior Anthony Velez is one of the leaders of the minority owned business group.
“We research it and then we get to go out and do a service plunge and we directly work with the population being served,” Velez said. “Before that we usually host a panel where we get to ask different experts questions and they are able to educate the Berry and Rome-Floyd community.”
Another integral part of the Issue-Based groups is to participate in a service plunge. The service plunge is when the members of the group go out into the community and do something to either raise awareness to their issue or to help combat the issue. The service plunge is sometimes opened to the Berry community as well to foster community engagement and provide information and resources to the public.
“We ask them to look for ways that they might serve their issue,” Chandler said. “They decide how they can share what they learned and how they can share that issue. One year, we had an environmental group and we had them place markers on storm drains to prevent people from putting trash in them. There is always a practical aspect of the topics. The work doesn’t just end with the panel or presentation. We have them put their topic and their work into practice.”
The end goal is to present all of the research and policy briefs at student symposium. The groups help students to engage with issues in their community and work to find solutions for these issues. Many Bonner scholars are inspired by their service sites and personal background when selecting which group they want to participate in.
This then allows them to be informed in topics they are passionate about and want to share with the Berry population. Brylen Cantrell is the senior class representative for the Bonner foundation and also one of the leaders of the disability and accessibility Issue-Based group.
“We are actually partnering with Habitat for Humanity in March and we are going to make a community member’s home more accessible for our service plunge,” Cantrell said.
The final Bonner panel will be held on Feb. 27 in the McAllister Auditorium at 6:00 p.m. and will be on urban environmentalism and methods of conservation.