During Winter Term, Katie Franck took a trip with Periclean Scholars to Honduras and helped in a local hospital to fight malnutrition.
In November 2006, Franck received the first Community Impact Student Award at the annual North Carolina Campus Compact student conference.
According to the NCCC, this award is only given to “one student per NCCC member institution who exhibits outstanding leadership and innovative approaches in their community service or service-learning endeavors both on their campus and within their community.”
For Franck, community service wasn’t confined to her time at Elon. She was taught from a young age that giving back to the community was an important part of life.
“I have been doing community service since I was little,” Franck recalls. “When I was 2 or 3 years old, we started going to this orphanage in Thailand. We’ve been involved with that orphanage since then and we still go back most years.”
While Thailand isn’t a typical place for an American student to volunteer, Franck has had a wealth of experience living abroad.Because of her parents’ international teaching jobs, Franck has had the opportunity to live in various countries including Thailand, Egypt and Kenya.
In her experiences with community service, Franck has had the chance to work with impoverished families, children and senior citizens, among others. She enjoys working with children most, but said that every type of service has something to offer.
“I think with each type of service, you learn something different about yourself and you gain something different from it,” Franck said. “Working with Adopt a Grandparent, for example, you may not be crawling on the floor playing ‘lion’ but you definitely gain a lot of insight from someone who’s 85 years old and has lived through so much.”
Most recently, Franck was active with the Leaders in Collaborative Service program at Elon. She serves as a liaison between the Burlington Housing Authority and the university. In working with BHA, Franck is responsible for maintaining the after school program for children and making sure that volunteers for the program have a meaningful experience.
Franck, a sociology major, feels that she has had a meaningful experience serving others at Elon and appreciates that there are outlets for students to be active in service.
“Coming into Elon, it was my first time living in the [United] States and so I decided that I wanted to live in the Service Learning Community,” Franck said. “That was probably the best decision I made, just because I came in with a community of 40 people and I really found my niche there. Then I continued to be a mentor on the floor and became involved with EV!”
Now, as a member of the graduating class of 2007, Franck is faced with the question all seniors dread – what are your plans after college? She isn’t sweating the small stuff and is taking it one step at a time.
“I am going on an adventure called life. It’s a journey,” Franck said. Post-graduation, she will work as a counselor at a summer camp south of Asheville.
Afterwards, Franck is looking into working with the Peace Corps or Habitat for Humanity, but has not committed herself anywhere, yet.
Like many graduating students, Franck has made a home for herself at Elon in the past four years and will miss being here.
“I’m going to miss a lot of things about Elon, but mostly the community of friends, faculty and staff that I’ve gained from being here. I’ll miss the support network and being able to walk across campus and see familiar faces. I feel like I’ve found a home in America."