Sam Reinhardt, United Way of the Piedmont’s AmeriCorps VISTA of the year 2023-24 will be joining us as our new Community Engagement Specialist. She will support Engage Upstate (Office of Service Learning & Community Engagement) efforts and report to Dave Marlow.
At the UWP awards ceremony, Dr. Bennie Harris observed that, “Sammantha exemplifies the spirit of the AmeriCorps VISTA program, embodying the values of volunteerism and service to America.” This embodiment of volunteerism and service make Sam an outstanding choice to serve as USC Upstate’s first Community Engagement Specialist.
In this role, Sam will focus on providing community engagement information on and off-campus including seeking internship opportunities primarily in the non-profits in Spartanburg County; organizing events for students, faculty, staff, and community members; publicizing programming and successes, and maintaining the community engagement software and website. She will also guide and support our two new AmeriCorps VISTA members, Horace McCollin & Lyndsay Powell. While both VISTA members will support Engage Upstate as a larger entity, Horace will lean toward supporting our data collection efforts with Collaboratory and Lyndsay will lean toward supporting our communications efforts including improving both the content and readership of this blog.
Back to Sam, here’s a blurb submitted in support of her candidacy for UWP VISTA of the Year,
Sam has invested fully and enthusiastically in her VISTA service. She clearly gets the concept of reciprocity in partnerships, is committed to our community, and takes authentic joy from serving others. She has not only embraced opportunities for involvement presented to her but has also sought out opportunities beyond. Her work is detailed and professional. Others in our organization have noticed her contributions and have begun inviting her to contribute as a participant and speaker at various events related to her VISTA service.
Sam has worked very closely with the Spartanburg Area Conservancy (SPACE) on a project which involves students in service through a variety of academic courses in a public space close to campus. In this project she has served as a nexus for interaction amongst our community partner, faculty, staff, and students. In the fall, her efforts supported over 250 individuals offering their service investing a total of over 750 hours and an estimated value to the community of over $20,000. Even more significantly, SPACE has been able to leverage our partnership and the significant increase in donated service hours in successful and pending grant funding requests which will further their important impact on our community. This is but one example of many impacts Sam has effected in the few short months she has served as an AmeriCorps VISTA member.
Sam Reinhardt has been amazing in working with us this year. As a recent alumnus, familiar with our program, she hit the ground running and has only gone up from there!
Sam has been pivotal in ensuring reciprocity between our university and the Spartanburg Area Conservancy (SPACE). Early on she developed a great connection with SPACE staff, and she has built on that relationship to ensure smooth operations for our jointly offered programing.
Communication has been a significant element in ensuring our nascent Engage Green project with SPACE has been a success, and Sam has served as information hub for our connection to the partner, for reaching students and for keeping connections with faculty. She has accompanied many groups of students as they have gone out to serve at SPACE’s Upper Chinquapin Greenway and all members of SPACE’s 3-person staff have told me how much they appreciate her service. In the past year more than 300 students have served a total of more than 12,000 hours with an estimated value to the community of over $20,000. Additionally, the work she has supported has enabled SPACE to apply for grants previously beyond their reach as they can now demonstrate the ability to put people on the ground to carry out projects important to granting foundations and organizations.
Communication between my office and our students (as our primary constituents) was a key need highlighted in our VAD. Unfortunately, our University Media Communications group has severely limited the modalities in which my office can communicate electronically. Even so, Sam has found creative means of maximizing venues we are allowed and has increased the visibility of our programming significantly.
Sam’s contribution extends much further. A VISTA’s primary role is to increase the capacity of an organization, and Sam has jumped into our sometimes messy and convoluted striving to do good, learning our practices and desired outcomes and proactively suggesting process improvements. My own capacity as Director of Engage Upstate: Service Learning and Community Engagement has expanded tremendously. Whereas I’ve become accustomed to constantly fighting fires and meeting immediate needs, because of Sam’s service, I have been able to step back, observe the bigger picture and begin again to dream and strategize for the future.
I’ll close with one specific example of a long-term dream that has become reality only because of Sam’s contribution. For several years, I have been dreaming of proposing a new course that would allow students to become involved in Service or Community Engagement in a low-stakes manner, available to all regardless of their field of study. Early in Sam’s tenure I shared this dream with her. She took on the project, researched the academic literature and existing practices at other universities. She took the question to the VISTA convention and investigated the experiences of her peers. Finally, she explored Upstate’s policies and demonstrated to me that my dream has been done at other institutions and would be possible at Upstate. Thanks to her efforts, Upstate now has an Interdisciplinary Studies course entitled “Community Engagement” on the books for this Fall, open to all majors and designed to appeal to a wide range of students – from those who have an existing desire to learn more about the community in which they live to those who may simply find themselves in need of a non-major course to fill out various requirements for financial aid or graduation.
Please join us in welcoming Sam, Horace, and Lindsay to their new roles with us. Reach out to any of us as you find the need!