The Power of Community Service and Leadership
FSC Celebrates Inaugural Community Engagement Week and 2nd Annual Day of Service
Farmingdale State College (FSC) was proud to recently host its first annual Community Engagement Week—a six-day series of curated, service-oriented activities and events held both on and off campus. The 2024 theme was “The Power of Community Service and Leadership.”
The week kicked off with an FSC Honors Program beach clean-up project led in partnership with Program Director Katelynn DeLuca, PhD, at Caumsett State Park followed by the launch of FSC’s new Volunteer Corps and Student Nonpartisan Voter Registration Coalition. Midweek, FSC’s Athletics Department Men’s Golf Team held a sports clinic for FSC students who are members of the Office of Disability Services, and FSC’s Title IX Office hosted Take Back the Night, an evening-long sexual assault awareness event which featured a resource information fair, campus-wide march, and presentation.
“We are thrilled to this year offer our first Community Engagement Week to FSC’s campus community,” said Yetunde Odugbesan-Omede, PhD, director of the Office of Community and Civic Engagement (OCCE) and professor of global affairs and politics. “These carefully planned campus events and community service activities are designed to elevate community engagement, foster social responsibility, and engage students in collaborative service projects, including those addressing food insecurity, environmental sustainability, and veteran needs.”
Additional Community Engagement Week events included a campus Giving Garden volunteer opportunity led by the Office of Sustainability, an off-site service opportunity at the Long Island Coalition for the Homeless (LICH) Veterans Community Garden in Amityville, and an end-of-week student webinar for social advocacy and leadership training.
FSC’s 2024 Day of Service
The week-long celebration culminated with FSC’s 2nd Annual Day of Service, which featured “wonderful, esteemed guest speakers who talked about social responsibility, civic engagement, and the purpose of making sure that we use our platforms and our positions to make the world a bit better,” said Odugbesan-Omede. The panel, moderated by FSC President John S. Nader, PhD, included:
Kathryn Good, head, United Nations Non-Governmental Liaison Service
Jimmy Jack, CEO, Habitat for Humanity Long Island
Ezinne Okoro, global chief inclusion, equity & belonging officer, VML
Teresa Regnante, CEO, United Way Long Island
“Here at Farmingdale State College, we are very proud of all we're accomplishing through civic engagement and community service,” said President Nader. “We will continue to excel today, at our Day of Service, as we have excelled throughout Community Engagement Week.”
Throughout the panel discussion, held in the Campus Center Ballroom, the guest speakers shared their personal backgrounds and thoughts on community service and leadership in their professional lives.
“You have to talk to the people who are next to you. You have to figure out how to solve problems together, and you have to care,” said Good. “My story ended up with me living in different countries, being the odd person and having to make the effort, live outside my comfort zone and try and fail a lot.
“And then, finally, I got to have a career where I could create those opportunities for other people,” she added. “For young people to study abroad and have experiences and do service programs that have a social impact agenda, get input from experts, and then take that back into their communities.”
“Service is really at the core of who I am and what I do,” said Okoro. “To whom much is given, much is required. Right? And we hear about that, we hear about good karma. And those are the things that I think about when I look at myself. I have been afforded a lot of privileges and pride, and I feel like it is my duty and obligation to give back to others.”
Okoro added that she learned the importance of service from her family, who emigrated to New York City from Nigeria when she was 6 years old. “Service for us was, how are we giving back to people in Nigeria. It's always been something that I saw, but interestingly enough, I don't think we ever called it service. It's just what you felt like you had to do because you are now in a space of privilege and you're in a space where you're doing better than the people that you were with a couple of years ago. So, I think about those things, and even in the corporate space, I always lead with service first.”
FSC’s 2024 Day of Service also featured its second annual Community Service Awards, which recognized outstanding contributions from FSC faculty, staff, and students, and the newest recipients of the Community Engaged Future Grant supported by the Office of the Provost.
The special day-long event concluded with a service project alongside community partner AHRC Suffolk. FSC faculty and staff volunteers assembled over 100 food and toiletry kits, which were later donated to Long Island families in need and to FSC's Food Pantry.
For more information, please visit the webpage of FSC's OCCE, a division of the Nexus Center for Applied Learning & Career Development.
