From First Week to Forever

The clang of hammers echoes in the San Antonio heat. Sweat trickles down foreheads, laughter bounces across a half-painted wall, and the smell of fresh-cut lumbe drifts through the air. It’s the week before school starts. Before syllabi, before study sessions, and before residence halls feel like home, a group of new acquaintances is building something together. This is the San Antonio Plunge, a Trinity University tradition where incoming first-year students dive headfirst into service. For more than two decades, it has been the University’s invitation to begin their college journeys with orientation and with purpose. A five-day immersion experience sponsored by Trinity’s Chapel and Spiritual Life Office, the Plunge brings students into the city to serve alongside community partners during the day and gather for meals, fellowship, and reflection at night. It’s a chance to sweat, laugh, and learn together while also getting to know San Antonio as home not just for the week but also for the next four years.

Rooted in Service, Reaching Beyond

Guiding the program now is University Chaplain and Everett H. Jones Chair of Ministry Alex Serna-Wallender ’08, M’09, who knows firsthand the impact of starting college through service. For Chaplain Alex, the Plunge is more than a week of volunteering—it is one of Trinity’s clearest expressions of what it means to belong. “The vision from the very beginning was simple but powerful,” he says. “Give students a chance to build community by serving their new community. From day one, they see San Antonio as more than a backdrop for their education—they see it as a home where they can contribute meaningfully.”

Chaplain Alex knows the experience personally. He joined the Plunge as a first-year student two decades ago, and the program gave him lifelong friends and mentors. “Participating in it profoundly shaped who I am,” he says. “To now help cultivate that same experience for others feels like a gift, a way to ‘pay forward’ what I once received.” 

Over the years, he’s witnessed strangers become friends in a matter of days, watched students grow in confidence navigating both the campus and the city, and seen many of them return year after year to lead. “The Plunge models the kind of culture we want for Trinity: one that balances learning with giving, discovery with responsibility, and individual growth with community care,” Chaplain Alex says. 

As the program nears its 25th anniversary, his hopes for future participants are steady and forward-looking. “I want students to carry with them a conviction that service and neighborliness aren’t just college activities but also lifelong practices. They’re what endures.” 

By the end, what begins as a group of strangers working side by side becomes a community of new Tigers whose first leap into college is also a step toward something bigger than themselves.

The First Leap

As a San Antonio native, Justin Rodriguez ’29 was already familiar with the city in which he would spend his next four years. But stepping onto Trinity’s campus, surrounded by new faces, he needed more than geography to feel at home. So when he thought about how to make Trinity feel like home, his answer was simple: “I wanted to meet people who cared about giving back,” he says, “and I wanted to see how my efforts could impact the city I love.” 

His group crisscrossed the city during the week of the Plunge, swinging hammers in the morning, packing meals in the afternoon. One project stays etched in his memory: a wheelchair ramp built for a woman who hadn’t been able to enter her own home.

When she and her family thanked us, it hit me—this wasn’t just a project,” Rodriguez says. “It was making life better for someone else. ”Nights in the Plunge brought reflection circles. Stories of housing insecurity, immigration, and educational disparities surfaced—not as statistics, but as lived realities. For Rodriguez, the week reframed what it meant to belong. “It wasn’t about proving myself,” he says. “It was about understanding my role in a community I’m part of.”

Foundations and Friendships

What Rodriguez discovered in his first week, other students have continued to find year after year. Sameed Aijaz ’26, a biochemistry and molecular biology major, saw that discovery deepen over four years in the Plunge.

By his fourth year, Aijaz had walked San Antonio’s streets many times, but each Plunge experience felt new when seen through the eyes of new first-years.

“The Plunge taught me that service isn’t just about helping,” Aijaz says. “It’s about noticing, listening, and learning from the people you work with.”

Now a mentor, Aijaz led this year’s evening circles, nervously at first, notebook twisting in his hands. But soon, conversations flowed: stories about families, schools, and challenges of the city.

“Those conversations changed me as much as they changed the students I worked with,” he says.

Through the Plunge, Aijaz discovered a guiding principle he now carries into every corner of life: Grace abounds. Plans fall apart. Paint spills. A project takes longer than expected. But patience, flexibility, and empathy transform obstacles into lessons. 

That same blend of resilience and connection also drew Maddie Mueller ’26, an engineering major, back to the Plunge year after year.

She joined the program as a first-year student because she loved volunteering throughout high school and with her church. Moving into Trinity early was a bonus—an extra beat before campus swelled with students. What began as participation soon grew into leadership, and Mueller has returned as a Plunge leader ever since.

From painting playgrounds to navigating buses back to campus, she found that her Plunge experiences weren’t held together by service alone. “The people keep me coming back,” Mueller says. “Every year, I meet genuine, kind-hearted individuals who make the experience worth it.”

Small moments linger: shared laughter at work sites, the quiet satisfaction of a finished project, the tradition of late-night churros after the final dinner. “Working side by side naturally bonds people,” she reflects. “It’s never forced—it just happens.”

The Plunge also grounded Mueller in San Antonio’s realities of food insecurity, housing struggles, and neighborhoods she hadn’t seen before. She carried that perspective into new service, from helping with basketball clinics to volunteering at Morgan’s Wonderland, a local accessibility-focused theme park. “The Plunge is eye-opening,” she says. “You leave with a new perspective on both service and yourself.”

A Full Circle

To Lea Watson-Vick ’15, the Plunge wasn't just a week of service; it was the spark that shaped her Trinity journey, her career, and ultimately her return to campus as the department assistant for Chapel and Spiritual Life.

“My very first Plunge felt like summer camp,” she remembers. “We were sleeping on the floor in big rooms, playing games, and working hard under the hot sun at sites like Habitat for Humanity. It was sweaty and exhausting, but it was also joyful. You met people who cared about the same things you did, and suddenly you had fifty friends before classes even started.”

           Working side by side naturally bonds people. It's never forced—it just happens."

Those early bonds carried her through Trinity. Nearly all her closest friends were “Plungees,” as she calls them, and the experience steered her toward urban studies and years of volunteering on San Antonio’s inner West side. “The Plunge taught me that Trinity isn’t just its campus,” Watson-Vick says. “You live here now, so you’re part of this larger city. You contribute. You form relationships that matter.”

After graduating, Watson-Vick built a career in nonprofit service, leading youth programs and camps in San Antonio. Today, she helps organize the Plunge each year as the Spiritual Life assistant, ensuring new students step into the same eye-opening journey she did. “For students, it’s easy to stay inside the ‘Trinity bubble.’ The Plunge gets them out, face to face with neighbors, learning how to build relationships. That skill, being relational, being present, is something you carry for life.”

For Watson-Vick, giving back to Trinity isn’t just about nostalgia; it’s also about sustaining a tradition that changes students and strengthens the city. “The San Antonio community has high expectations of Trinity students,” she says. “They know our students will show up prepared, curious, and capable. I wanted to make sure this program continues, for the nonprofits that rely on us, for the students who benefit from the experience, and for the community we’re a part of.”
 

Hands That Build, Hearts That Connect

Through the Plunge, Trinity students begin their journey not in lecture halls but in kitchens, construction sites, and city streets, side by side with neighbors. They paint walls, build homes, construct ramps, pack meals, deliver food, and much more. They listen. They learn. They connect.

Sometimes, the leap into college is less about diving into textbooks and more about diving into each other’s worlds. The Plunge is Trinity’s reminder that education goes beyond knowledge—it’s empathy in action.

And with each passing year, those first-week moments ripple outward into friendships, into careers, and into lives marked by purpose. What starts with one shared hammer, one shared story, one shared meal, becomes something far greater: a tradition that keeps shaping a campus, a city, and the students who pass through them year after year.

What begins in the first week lasts forever.