Elizabethtown College educates students to make an impact by serving others | Opinion

By Betty Rider

For those pursuing higher education, choosing a assemblage tin beryllium 1 of the astir impactful decisions 1 tin marque successful their life. This prime tin acceptable the trajectory of one’s vocation and beingness for years to come. Most notably, a assemblage provides students with experiences, and it is those experiences that signifier their growth, some personally and professionally.

Every assemblage has a motto. At Elizabethtown College, our motto Educate for Service is unique. We bash not conscionable work it oregon accidental it. We unrecorded it. Service is simply a ne'er a request of our students, faculty, oregon staff. It’s a privilege. It’s successful our DNA.

We stock our knowledge, talents, and vigor done community-based projects. Whether we are developing a enactment instrumentality for a paralyzed puppy, volunteering our clip to assistance successful restoring communities, oregon cracking 58-year-old acold cases—we are a assemblage unified successful making heavy societal interaction connected the lives of others.

It is wherefore Elizabethtown College’s annual “Make A Deposit, Make A Difference” run is truthful overmuch much than a slogan. It introduces our incoming students to our motto earlier they adjacent acceptable ft successful our classrooms. It sets the code for the service-based ngo that volition usher their acquisition for the adjacent 4 positive years astatine Etown and showcases the powerfulness of a assemblage dedicated to confidently serving the world.

In the yearly campaign, the assemblage matches deposits made by first-year students who volition enroll arsenic members of the Class of 2027 betwixt a definite timeframe. This year, the run runs from Jan. 11 done March 18, and the College has acceptable a extremity of raising $15,000 and volition donate its proceeds to a section non-profit organization.

This year’s recipient of the Make A Deposit, Make A Difference proceeds is Keystone Pet Enhanced Therapy Services (KPETS). KPETS is simply a unpaid squad that aims to beforehand well-being by sharing the powerfulness of human-animal interactions successful south-central Pennsylvania and bluish Maryland. It’s an enactment that is adjacent to the Etown community, arsenic they often bring therapy pets to our campus, peculiarly astir the engaged last exam weeks, to supply therapy and accent alleviation for our students.

The effort aligns with the College’s motto Educate for Service, which was adopted successful 1915. Educate for Service expresses the field community’s content that the pursuit of cognition is astir noble erstwhile utilized to payment others.

What amended mode to take a College successful pursuit of being a force for good successful the world?

Betty Rider is president of Elizabethtown College.