Emily Williams, a first semester senior and an active EC student, is doing her part to give back to the community that she calls home. Find all about her involvement on campus and her senior service project with the 1804 society. Just as importantly, find out how you can join Emily in her efforts and take part in her amazing plans to help the students of the Notre Dame Education Center!
Emily (right) and fellow 1804 member, Juliann Gavin
Her Campus at Emmanuel: Tell us a little bit about your involvement here at Emmanuel.
Emily Williams: My involvement on campus tends to run around campus ministry as a member of the 1804 Society and as a Eucharistic Minister in the chapel. This semester, I also participated in the student task force with Dr. Joe and many other students addressing issues on our campus. As a student, you will see me running from campus to campus as I am cross-registered with schools across the COF, and I’m often going to events across all the campuses, too.
HCE: Wow, that’s great. Can you give a brief overview of 1804 for anyone who might not be familiar with what you guys do?
EW: Emmanuel’s 1804 Society is the ministry leadership group on campus. We serve our school as ambassadors and liaisons between the school and community. We embody the six pillars of the Sisters of Notre Dame: education, goodness, leadership, community, service, and tradition. We are run by a cohort system (I am a member of cohort 4), and as a cohort, we complete different levels throughout the program. During the first year of the program the focus is on education and tradition of the society, so we learn about SND traditions and how they have influenced the world and try to learn from said influence. Then, during our second and sometimes third year, we will perform a year of service. One of my service sites was Mission Grammar, a local elementary school where many students perform either service learning, pre-practicums, and sometimes student teaching. My second service site was at Notre Dame Education Center, where I was tutoring in a mathematics classroom to adult learners preparing for their HiSet exam, which is formerly known as the GED. During our final year of 1804, we perform a senior project that is encompasses all of what we have learned during our time in the society. Overall, 1804 Society is striving to share the word of the SNDs through little ways to remind ourselves and everyone why Emmanuel College is so wonderful and so different amongst all the college choices.
HCE: That is commitment! I didn’t realize how involved this club really is. So, tell us about your senior project!
EW: My senior project is targeted for my service site, the Notre Dame Education Center (NDEC). NDEC is a lovely place that caters to all kinds of learners and peoples, and it is run by the goodness of the people who work there. During my time tutoring, the teacher was always trying to show the students different websites and sources to be able to study or practice at home, including study videos. I tried to do the same and provide some more resources when I was providing one-on-one tutoring, but what I realized was that most of the students either got lost in the abyss of the generalized websites or they didn’t have access to the technology at home. One overarching theme was that most of the students did have access to tablets or smartphones. Another issue was that the videos can be really long. Personally, I don’t have time for a 45 minute long video, so how are these students going to?. Therefore, through all this observing, it came into my mind: why don’t I create a math app for the school, designed specifically for this group in mind around their curriculum? That way, when they are doing their homework, they can just search for the relevant video and spend less time finding the source and more time focused on their education and success. The project is supposed to enable a better resource and make studying helpful, and not stressful!
HCE: Nice! What do you hope to accomplish with this app?
EW: Accomplish to me is a big word. I want to help improve someone’s understanding of math. I am a math major and kind of love it (but sometimes I don’t), and I know it can be really hard! Some calculation-based concepts are really hard to get the first time around. Therefore, I want to be able to provide another tool to the toolbox of math knowledge and be able to make a difference in someone’s education. Simple as that.
HCE: How can EC students help support your efforts?
EW: Unfortunately, developing an app is not free. EC students can help the efforts by going to my gofundme page and donating. If every student at emmanuel donated 50 cents, the goal would be reached by now! Donating really helps me out because instead of stressing over the financial situation, I can focus on developing the app itself.
Donate to Emily’s GoFundMe page by following this link: www.gofundme.com/NDECApp!