ADP takes home awards

     Last month, students involved in the American Democracy Project at GCSU, traveled to Kennesaw State University in order to attend the American Democracy Project South Consortium Annual Meeting.
     While GCSU was once only one of the original seventy public universities to become nationally involved in the ADP, it is now one of 224 public universities partaking in the American political and civic engagement to develop successful citizens.
This year, GCSU submitted two projects to the ADP Consortium. The first project, entered in the Co-Curricular category, was entitled, “What a Relief: An ADP Alternative Spring Break Project.” This project involved the participation of facility and student using organizational efforts to overcome obstacles, as well as demonstrating leadership skills to impact the community. This project won second place, and GCSU was awarded $200.
     The second project submitted in the Campus/Institutional Award category was titled, “Encouraging Newspaper Literacy in Milledgeville, Ga.” 
     This award is judged on criteria such as the involvement and collaboration among facility, staff, student, and external organizations, the particular obstacles being addressed,  organization of the project, the overall outcome of the project, and the impact it has on the community.
     The “Encouraging Newspaper Literacy in Milledgeville, Ga.” project was a cooperative effort, reaching 250 public school children, with aid to mentorship and journalism. This project won first place at the ADP South Consortium Annual Meeting, and GCSU was award $300.
     Three GCSU students also participated in a Student Think Tank competition. Senior Justin Mays, junior Tom Andris, and freshman Chris Thibodeaux, along with four of their peers from Texas State University and Western Carolina University, won first place with their project titled “Diversity Day,” or “D-Day.”
    This year’s Student Think Tank addressed the promotion of cross cultural communication on campus, including the relationships of race, nationality, ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, age, religion, etc.
     Hoping to implement their project in the spring semester, Mays and his teammates plan to meet with university deans, professors, and Registered Student Organization (RSO) presidents before their D-Day launch date.
     “We are going to try to get a lot of (professors) together and deans of the respective schools and talk with them, and see if we could get any ideas from them and if they would be interested in doing this” Mays said. “Then we are going to contact the presidents of the student organizations on campus, and have a meeting with them and see if they would (be interested).”
     “We are hopefully going to pull (D-Day) off maybe April 08,”  Mays said. “We are going to have a field day type event; we’re going to have activities and stuff to do that would pair up people from different ‘cultures.’”
     Should the project be a success, the New York Times, along with the ADP will help to finance the students’ trip to the ADP National Conference in Snowbird, Utah in June 2008.
     “One of our next projects is going to be a Presidential Persona Debate, where eight students take on the personas of the candidates, and we’re doing that in cooperation with the College Republican and Young Democrats,” Kaufman said.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Nov 30 2007. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry