VISTAs join the Civic Engagemnet Institute & PACE

North Carolina Campus Compact hosts two back-to-back conferences at Elon University in February. The first is the Civic Engagement Institute, a members-only, day-long conference that brings together multidisciplinary faculty, staff, student, and community partner teams from NC Campus Compact member campuses. This year's theme was: Becoming Citizens, Becoming Community and participants discussed community development and engaged citizenship. The second conference, PACE, is open to all and provides workshops on research, theory, and practice of community engagement and service-learning. More than 450 people from 50 institutions in 10 states participated over the course of the two days.

Top (L to R): A. Mitchell, A. O'Connor, W. Taylor, J. Trillo, R. Rogers
Bottom (L to R): S. Abdul-Rauf, M. Palmeira, J. Beckens, A. Piotrowski

North Carolina Campus Compact VISTAs were invited to attend and participate in both conferences. During one session, VISTAs got a chance to sit down together, share stories, trade trips, and bond as a cohort.

One VISTA commented, "The PACE conference was a great opportunity for VISTA bonding. At lunch we all crowded around one table rather than separate because it is so rare that more than two or three of us get together at a time. When it was suggested that we make our own fourth session and call it VISTA Pow-Wow, everyone that could, was on board. During our fourth session it was nice to have time to just enjoy each other’s company, hear funny stories, give each other advice on issues and just relax in a group of our peers."