LAWRENCE IOURNAL-WORLD
STUDENT LIFE
SATURDAY, AUGUST 17, 1996 13D
Organizations, students benefit from relationship
- Several campus and community organizations help Kansas University students help others.
BY ANN MARCHAND SPECIAL TO THE JOURNAL-WORLD
Lorraine Claassen grew up in a family where community service was heavily emphasized. The daughter of agricultural missionaries, Claassen now helps students find their niche in the volunteer community.
The Hestston senior is co-director of the Center for Community Outreach, an organization that promotes student involvement throughout the Lawrence community. Although she prefers working with low-income groups, Claassen supports any endeavors in which students "help others help themselves."
Many organizations in Lawrence aim to place students in environments where they can make a difference. Several organizations request only a few hours or an afternoon per week.
The main resource for students is the Center for Community Outreach, which is funded by Student Senate. The center, which is in the Organizations and Activities Center in the Kansas Union, is an umbrella organization out of which several community service programs are run.
The center, funded in part by student fees, sponsors several events throughout the school year. One is the "Into the Streets" information session, a weeklong event that presents many different volunteer opportunities to students. Claassen says that on a campus the size of KU's, "the question is whether you can find them!"
Life lessons
The center also offers two organizations that place students
directly in touch with the community around them: Students Tutoring for Literacy and Teach For America.
Students Tutoring for Literacy is a campus-based organization that sends students to various sites in Lawrence, said Emily Heath, an Oskaloosa sophomore and president of the organization. About 80 tutors are spread among 13 sites around the city to help people of all ages become functionally literate. The organization works with elementary school children, international students and low-income families.
Teach For America is an organization that places students ir classrooms where a teacher requests an extra hand. Jennifer Kimball, a Ulysses sophomore and organization president, said volunteers help teachers in overcrowded classrooms. Teach For America is a
national organization with chapters on several college campuses throughout the country.
Kimball described the organization as "a mutually rewarding experience" because children gain extra attention, teachers have their burdens reduced and students gain the satisfaction of helping others.
Kimball's favorite aspect about helping schoolchildren is seeing "cute little kids smiling when they catch on to something."
Another program that will be incorporated into the Center for Community Outreach in the 1996-97 school year is the Jubilee Cafe. It runs from 7 a.m.to 9 a.m. every Tuesday morning.
Amy Turnbull, Lawrence junior and a frequent jubilee Cafe volunteer, describes it as "a student-initiated and student-run restaurant-style, free-meal program for homeless and low-income people."
Watkins addition makes center country's largest
Volunteer work sometimes benefits the volunteer the most.
Got a cold? Think you're coming down with something? Break a finger in a basketball game?
Then you might want to head over to Watkins Student Health Center, the student-funded health care facility on Kansas University's campus.
The center accepts the students' medical insurance. And students can purchase an optional health insurance policy through the Student Senate, he said.
- Watkins Student Health Center offers students a chance to visit a physician on campus.
About 81 percent of KU's students use the center at least once a year, said James Strobl, director of health care services.
"I think the students know that we're accessible right here on campus and they can come here between classes," he said. "We're inexpensive compared to most places, in terms of our pharmacy because we buy on the state contract."
The center, which is getting a new addition this summer, was first started by students in 1906, Strobl said.
Students are not charged for routine visits, but they are charged for minor surgery, such as stitches, X-rays or for medication, he said.
From 1912 to 1917, Dr. James Nalsmith, the father of the game of basketball, was the university physician at the health center, Strobl said.
Jubilee Cafe feeds breakfast to about 40 to 50 people each week in a community where soup kitchens don't start serving until noon.
Students can get X-rays, prescriptions, laboratory tests, physical therapy and educational and counseling services at the center, he said. The center employs 10 physicians and 11 nurses.
The center, just east of KU's Robinson Center tennis courts, is open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays, from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Saturdays and from 12:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Sundays.
After 4:30 p.m. on weekdays, there is a an after-hours charge of $30.
in 1931, Elizabeth Watkins
BY DAVE TOPLIKAR
JOURNAL-WORLD WRITER
For students who don't have time during the week but would like to help others in different parts of the country, the Alternative Spring Break program offers a chance to help others in needy areas of the United States.
Hands across the water
provided the money to build the university's first hospital in the 20,000-square-foot building that is now Twente Hall.
The current health center building, constructed in 1970, has 62,000 square feet.
Claassen's group helped in the nation's largest homeless shelter in Washington, D.C., while Heath participated in a group that aided low-
Strobl said the addition will bring the total number of patient examination rooms from 17 to 41. The number of treatment rooms for specialized procedures will increase from three to nine, he said. Those are rooms where patients might need to lay down for treatment, such as receiving intravenous medication.
"That makes it the largest student health care center in the country." Strobl said. "Now in 1996, we're adding 20,000 square feet more. That was voted through by the KU students."
Students approved a $15 fee per student per year for 12 years to cover the costs of the $4.5 million addition and renovation, expected to be completed in August.
"We're not a hospital," he said. "We're an early care facility. A hospital or an emergency room is a legal connotation and requires very specialized medical equipment that we don't have because we don't have enough demand for the use of it."
"The big, big change that students will notice the most is the appointments," he said. "Currently we see about 25 percent of our students by appointment, and we hope to do minimum 80 percent. That should cut the wait for our students."
semester class based on their chosen spring break site. They learn to function as a group and develop a plan of action for their trip.
income minority families in El Paso, Tex.
One of the other major changes is the center will go from four wheelchair-accessible restrooms to 23 to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, he said.
He said when he first became director in 1983, the center had 15,000 visits to doctors from students a year. That's grown to about 45,000 in 1995, he said.
"This is totally funded by students," Strobl said. "We don't get one dime of state money."
KU's Alternative Spring Break program is curriculum-based. Participants enroll in a spring
In Lawrence, the Roger Hill Volunteer Center is an off-campus clearinghouse for volunteer opportunities. Located at 211 East Eighth, the Roger Hill Center tailors one's interests to a volunteering.
"We've tripled the number of patients," he said. "I think we've gotten greater dependence on our physicians by our students."
Heath said more students could make a difference in their surroundings.
many of them probably would not have."
It works with any nonprofit organization in Douglas County and has handled as many as
"There are tons of various agencies in Lawrence ... many areas where there is no intervention from KU, but there could easily be," she said.
Lanaea Heine, formerly coordinator of the Roger Hill center, said she became involved in community service for selfish reasons.
"When I was a student at KU, I realized I needed community involvement to list on my résumé," she said.
1. 000 volunteers at one time.
That work paid off. Heine has been coordinator of the Roger Hill Center since its establishment in April 1990.
Heine is always grateful to gain
"There are agencies that wouldn't exist without student help," Heine said.
Volunteer work sometimes benefits the volunteer the most. Heath said volunteerism "broadens KU students' perspectives on life and forces them to see things
new volunteers. She estimates that a large percentage of the people who come through the Roger Hill Center are KU students, although the center is an important community resource as well.
BLACK & WHITE, OVERSIZE,
BLUELINES, BLACKLINES,
SALES. SERVICE AND SUPPLIES
Turnbull agreed, borrowing heavily from the Center for Community Outreach slogan: "The power of one can make a difference."
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