UW student leaders engage with communities statewide

Students leaders at UW gather on a beach as part of a trip where they learned about issues facing communities statewide (Courtesy Photo)

The week after finals, a group of incoming student leaders at the University of Wisconsin-Madison travelled the state by bus to learn more about connecting both to each other and Wisconsin’s communities.

Twenty-eight student leaders, two student coordinators from the Wisconsin Union Directorate, and two chaperones took part in the first-ever Wisconsin Experience Bus Trip, where they visited various local businesses, volunteered on projects, and connected with communities beyond campus.

Dean of Students Lori Berquam helped spark the idea and coordinate the trip, and stayed connected with students through Twitter throughout the trip despite not physically being on the bus.

The students were selected based on their leadership in a wide range of campus organizations, including the Associated Students of Madison, Recreational Sports, and Gospel Choir. Kim Ebner, one of the two student organizers of the bus trip, said they tried to make sure both big and small organizations were represented, and ended up with a completely randomized group.

Kelly Wang, a rising junior at UW-Madison and incoming vice-president of the Assembly of International Students, said one goal of the trip was to enliven the Wisconsin Idea, which she described as “how you can put what you learn from the school into paying back the community.”

Emily Paulson, the other student organizer, said the biggest goal was to bring student leaders together that wouldn’t normally interact.

“A lot of these students are from orgs that never collaborate,” she said. “In order to appeal to everyone on the trip, we wanted to structure the trip in a way that would expose people to maybe one thing that they’re familiar with, but then ten things that they’ve never seen before.”

The first stop on the trip was volunteering in Wauzeka to restore the Mississippi River Valley environment by removing invasive species. Paulson said putting volunteering at the top of the itinerary was a deliberate choice.

“That served as the first thing to bring everyone together, without having to do obvious icebreakers and name games, because people bond on their own when they have to work together,” she said.

Wang agreed, calling the four-hour experience a “really great community bonding experience.”

The students bonded outside volunteer work as well, creating group text conversations to coordinate free time activities in the evenings and having spontaneous conversations about integrating their organizations that amazed the student coordinators.

“They were having conversations about how their orgs could collaborate on maybe day two or day three,” Paulson said. “And those were conversations we wanted to spark as part of the planned discussion questions at night, but they were having those conversations on their own.”

Paulson and Ebner noted the camaraderie between the students.

“You would expect in a group of 28 people for them to break up into separate groups of people, but they all hung out in the evening when they had the free time,” Ebner said.

She believed this was in part due to their positive attitudes and leadership skills. “I think it’s when you get that many leaders together and that many outgoing personalities that they all just wanted to make sure that everyone was being included.”

In planning the itinerary, Paulson and Ebner were concerned with balancing a serious, educational trip with one that would be fun and meaningful.

“A lot of it depended on how much they decided they were going to get out of this trip. We’re sitting there as we’re planning it going, OK this could be really, really great, or if the students aren’t feeling it could really go downhill fast,” Ebner said. “But they were into it the entire time.”

The students travelled to a wide variety of locations, which included visiting a paper mill in Stevens Point, exploring Lambeau Field in Green Bay, stopping at a family-owned dairy farm Kewaunee, and learning about lake research while having some fun splashing around in a bog.

The trip exposed Wang to communities in ways she described as “eye-opening.” Visiting a Native American reservation and speaking with tribal leaders about their challenges showed her the struggles of that community she hadn’t realized before, but instead of concentrating on the differences, she chose to focus on the similarities and how she can use this experience with her own organization.

“For me, especially because I’m going to be the Vice President [of the Assembly for International Students] next year and we’re going to be facing a lot of students from different backgrounds, so we’ll have to reach out to them and help them solve their problems, and that’s really relevant to this,” she said.

The trip made many students consider integrating their organizations with others.

“At first glance, looking at where these students all come from in terms of their organizations, it’s not really obvious as to how they can collaborate in the future, but I think they want to so bad,” said Paulson.

The students seem to be finding ways, however. According to Ebner, some students were already collaborating on the trip, with the Badger Catholic director from the Union talking to a student from the Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics about having a debate later this year.

Students hope to integrate their organizations with the community outside of campus as well, speaking of volunteer work perhaps in middle or high schools.

Despite the lessons learned, the students came away with good friends and fun memories.

“Looking at the itinerary and thinking about the professionalism of the trip, because it was a professional seminar, it was very academic and very serious, but everyone had so much fun,” Paulson said. “I think that surprised a lot of people. I don’t think they expected to have as much fun as they did.”

Wang agreed the experience was an enjoyable one, saying “We all think we got this great opportunity to be on this trip.”

The Wisconsin Experience Bus Trip is slated to reoccur next year.

“This is going to move forward as a student-led, student-planned seminar for the students on campus,” Paulson said. “That’s a really important piece: that it’s run by students for the students.”

After bonding with fellow student leaders, visiting diverse communities like the Native American tribe, and learning ways to integrate her organization with the greater community, Wang’s main takeaway was the fundamental similarities between people.

“Before for me on campus as an international student, I always noticed the differences between people on campus,” she said. “But on this trip we were all Badgers, we’re all human beings, and we’re all doing great things.”