UChicago Service Day Reflection

At the beginning of the fall quarter, incoming and second year students flooded the doors of the Keller Center to participate in UChicago Service Day. Coming from a service background with AmeriCorps, I was pleased to see so many students wanting to get involved in their community.

Dean of Students Kate Biddle set the tone of the day by telling students that the regressions they run, the data sets they work on, and the challenging courses they tackle help ensure the communities they are serving today can have a better future.

While some groups worked in community gardens or cleaned up the streets and sidewalks in the neighborhood, my group painted bathrooms at a nearby charter school so that the school could later put inspirational quotes on the stalls. While we painted, we learned about each other’s backgrounds, and students shared what each hoped to learn from their time at Harris. Service Day definitely started the new quarter off right by getting students and staff out into the local community to both make a tangible impact and reflect on the reasons we are here.