So my practicum this semester, I’m working at Ivy Tech Community College-Central Indiana. It’s provided me some really great experiences with diverse populations of students that I certainly don’t get exposure to at DePauw. I really like the exposure to the different range of students that are at the institution because it provides me with a little perspective on life. These students have some very interesting stories and it’s great to see them perserve through all of the difficult things that are going on in their lives. Just in this semester alone, I’ve interacted with a SGA president in his upper 30s, an organization president who is a senior taking classes solely for enrichment, and a traditional aged college student.
I’ve really enjoyed my experience so far and I’ve really gained a lot of experience with working in an entirely different institutional environment. I’m really enjoying the challenge of working with a different population of students. It’s definitely not the same type of student that I work with at DePauw (quite the opposite, in fact).
Recently, a dialogue has begun at Ivy Tech regarding students for their campus involvement. Currently, a program exists that reward students for their involvement in the campus community called, “Ivy Bucks.” Students earn points by attending organization meetings, being an organization officer, going to campus events, and doing community service. At the end of the semester, students can use these points to bid on items at the “Ivy Auction.” Examples of things that have been offered in the past to participants in the Ivy Auction are tickets to Indiana Pacers Games, city bus passes, school gear, etc…
This is a very interesting program. I think that it particularly works at a community college because it gives students an extra incentive to attend the events on campus. I like that it provides a great way to give students incentives for attending programs that they normally would ignore and not attend. I would be interested to see how this would work at a more traditional institution. While it certainly is a effective program to implement in order to get more students at events, my only concern is whether it reinforces the millennial concept that students should be getting something for everything that they do (everybody gets a trophy). What do you think?
What do you do to encourage student engagement on your campus? How do you think engaging students on two year campus is similar or different than engaging students on a two year campus?
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