In honor of National Service Recognition Day on April 3, the Harris community came together to honor students, faculty, and staff who are current or former military service members, and those who volunteered from programs in AmeriCorps, Peace Corps, and Teach for America.

One of those participants was Ashley Aue, whose stepping stone to public service came while working on conservation efforts in Colorado’s state and national parks.

Ashley Aue, Class of 2019.

Aue, then an undergraduate, served in AmeriCorps State and National in the Rocky Mountain Youth Corps. Her work taught her flexibility and problem solving, particularly when the unexpected happened.

After Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005, Aue’s Colorado team was deployed to Mississippi to assist with relief efforts.

Aue, Class of 2019 in the MPP program, shared her service story with Harris students, faculty, and staff at the dinner event at the University of Chicago.

As Aue glanced around the room, she was surprised to see the number of Harris colleagues who had also served. Though she had no idea, she said she also feels at home.

Most recently, Aue lived in Guatemala where she founded Asociación Abriendo Caminos (Pathways), an organization that works with individuals with intellectual disabilities to teach job and life skills.

She chose Harris because she wanted to learn more about how to make services more efficient and sustainable. She says her service background is an asset in the classroom.

“What I can bring to other peers is to take concepts and offer practical examples of where they could be used in the workplace,” she says, emphasizing the transferable nature of the Harris toolkit to real-world work experiences.

Other students shared how their service opportunity instilled a passion for public service and a desire to return to graduate school to learn new skills and broaden their networks.

Ausannette Garcia-Goyette served in the Peace Corps and helped to build teaching capacity in the municipality of Chongqing, China. She taught under-resourced rural teachers who would go on to teach low-income children.

Once she finished her service she wanted to maintain her connection to China and began working for an NGO where she focused on reaching the youngest children first in order to improve societal outcomes.

Ausannette Garcia-Goyette, Class of 2019, poses with students during her time with the Peace Corps in Chongqing, China.

“Starting early creates the greatest opportunities for making a difference,” she says.

Among the many lessons the Peace Corps instilled in her, Garcia-Goyette says she learned cross-cultural communication which allowed her to communicate and understand people from backgrounds that were different than her own.

“A big part of being in Peace Corps is you’re thrown in to a situation with not a lot of resources,” she says. “So the idea of being a self-starter, being resourceful, and starting from scratch are valuable skills that serve you well in any setting.”