A+ in Giving -- C.W. Post Students Working to Benefit Others

C.W. Post students Vidhi Doshi (left) and Neha Bansil sold flowers in the C.W. Post student union, Hillwood Commons, to support local charities.

Brookville, NY – As a rule, college students are busy. Besides attending classes, many often work full- or part-time jobs, participate in activities, and must find time to study and complete class assignments. But some special students from the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University are making it a priority to help others by giving their time. Here are just some of the stories of C.W. Post’s finest.

Credit for Caring

Students who take the master’s-level Organizational Behavior course with Associate Professor of Management David S. Jalajas are given the option of writing a term paper on a topic of their choosing, or designing and conducting a community service project. Over the past two years, the students have raised nearly $10,000 and have collected more than 500 pounds of food, assisted in the delivery of meals, entertained children at Schneider Children’s Hospital, donated boxes of books to an after-school program, created a multi-language menu for international students at C.W. Post dining halls, collected hygiene products (soaps, toothpaste, razors, etc.) for the Salvation Army, and collected used cell phones for use by victims of domestic violence.

“The efforts of these students have been extraordinary,” Professor Jalajas says, “and the stories they tell after completing their projects are heartwarming.”

This semester about two-thirds of the students have opted to participate in volunteer work and present their experiences to the class. The students are sorted into groups of four, and must decide together what philanthropic group they would like to support and how they are going to go about doing it.

Commuter Student Association members collected 10,000 recyclable soda can tabs to benefit Ronald McDonald House. Here, Dan Pelletiere and Melissa Dean display the collection jar.

Mindful of the 2006 holiday season, Farmingdale resident Mark Merzbacher and his group decided to collect food to donate to Island Harvest in time for Thanksgiving. Aside from collecting food in their neighborhoods and at work, the students also set up a station outside of an Islip Pathmark one Sunday afternoon. Fresh Meadows resident Vishal Patel and his group also collected food for Island Harvest. The weekend before Thanksgiving they stationed themselves at Pathmark in Glen Cove and collected more than 300 pounds of food, including six turkeys.

International student Neha Bansil, who resides on campus but originally hails from New Delhi, and her group took a four-pronged approach to raise money for the Ronald McDonald House, including working at a local church during services, selling jewelry, toys and flowers in Hillwood Commons, collecting the caps off of Poland Spring water bottles and the flip tops off of soda cans, and enlisting the help of the manager of Dosa Dinner in Hicksville, who donated 25% of the total sales one weekday at lunch. Additionally, the group spent time at Ronald McDonald house, playing with the children and entertaining them.

Working from the knowledge that it costs about $75 to feed a family on Thanksgiving, Lynn Schnatterly from East Meadow and her group sold roses in Hillwood Commons to benefit St. Elizabeth of Hungary Roman Catholic Church in Melville with the goal of feeding four families.