Emily Taylor, IUK

New for 2021, Indiana Campus Compact is honoring undergraduate students at our partner institutions who are new to community engagement and have shown, by action and leadership, their passion and ability to be a positive force in their communities. The Indiana Campus Compact Student Community Action Leaders recognition is designed to help emerging student leaders—who have made a commitment to community engagement through collaborative action in the community while addressing their scholarly pursuits—build a lifetime of leadership in community engagement and action.

In her nomination letter, Christina L. Romero-Ivanova said, “Emily was a student in my Spring W200 Using Computers in Education course and participated in our teaching digital storytelling to students at a local high school after-school program. In this space, Emily was able to help nurture mutual sharing and helped high school students to be able to formulate a digital story based on a crucial event from their lives. She was able to truly listen and provide a witnessing to students’ experiences. Through this, she and her classmates were able to build trust and provided a segue of hope by helping high school students to “speak” their experiences.” When discussing her work Emily said, “Many school corporations and places of work do not acknowledge the importance of processing emotions in a healthy manner. Digital storytelling is one of the many ways we can support people who have gone through a difficult time. Supporting one another will create a sense of community and connectedness. It will also broaden the narrow-minded perspective of stigmas and stereotypes that are present in modern day society. This assignment seemed to be simple yet, morphed into something so powerful and needed in our community. I loved this experience so much that I plan to incorporate it into my future career as a teacher. I would like for my students to understand the capabilities of themselves and be able to put themselves in others’ shoes in order to support their peers.”