Shouldering the Load

For more than 40 years, the Trinity University Volunteer Action Community (TUVAC) has served as Trinity’s volunteerism and community service muscle, providing helping hands and material support to humanitarian causes throughout campus, San Antonio, and beyond.

Readers will see this acronym splashed across several other pages because TUVAC is one of the most visible ways the Trinity community extends its legacy of hope outside our skyline campus and into the world.

The 2017 academic year was a challenging one for TUVAC, says Scott Brown, TUVAC adviser and assistant director of experiential learning. With an ever-mounting list of natural and man-made disasters in Texas, Nevada, Louisiana, Florida, and Puerto Rico, the organization had to ask itself a tough question: Just how much can TUVAC take on at once?

The answer, Brown says, lies with TUVAC’s six student leaders—three volunteer coordinators, one logistics manager, a marketing manager, and an executive coordinator—along with the hundreds of students who volunteer their time, sweat, and cheer.

We sat down with Brown to find out more about what TUVAC looks for in its student interns and volunteers, and how TUVAC shapes Trinity’s spirit of resiliency and hope when times get tough in the outside world.

Can you describe the general spirit of TUVAC? How does it fit in with the spirit at Trinity?

Scott Brown: Regardless of their roles, our student leaders are all committed to community service and social responsibility. The fact that TUVAC has been around for 40-plus years certainly gives us a historical context for our legacy and a strong foundation to grow the program in response to our community partners’ needs and student interest. I inform every TUVAC leader that our organization is sponsored by the University, that we’re an organization that’s been around for decades, and that we’re now affiliated with the Center for Experiential Learning and Career Success. So, it’s more than just a student involvement position during the academic year. Our TUVAC students develop as leaders, gain practical skills, reflect on their experience, and motivate their peers to get involved in the San Antonio community through community service and other experiential learning projects.

What sort of students are you looking for? Who really shines with TUVAC?

SB: First and foremost, it’s passion: a general concern and interest in immersing oneself into the San Antonio community. As far as job-related tasks, we can teach and advise students in that regard, but it comes back to having a passion and seeing oneself as a responsible person in the community for students to be successful as a TUVAC leader. Our students are guided by two of Trinity’s core values—impact and community—and they want to instill those values and passion for civic engagement in others. The fact that we’re a University-sponsored organization also helps drive our mission in getting students connected to San Antonio. To that end, one of TUVAC’s goals is increasing students’ self-efficacy and awareness of what it means to be an active member in the community.

What has inspired you the most about being involved with TUVAC?

SB: I’m fortunate to advise TUVAC as one of my responsibilities in the Center for Experiential Learning and Career Success, in addition to coordinating service-learning and undergraduate research programs. What inspires me the most, really, is the students I interact with on a daily basis. There isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t enjoy coming to campus because I know in the office next to me are TUVAC student leaders reaching out to community partners, setting up volunteer opportunities, and promoting those opportunities to students every week. I’ve also learned over the past few months, especially with the natural disasters. There was a lot of interest not just with TUVAC students, but with students across the campus who wanted to do something and help in any way they could. Whenever we were approached by students and staff, our students never said, “No, we can’t do that.” We certainly talked about our capacity to take on these additional responsibilities and to make sure that we not only provide opportunities in San Antonio, but also in Puerto Rico and the hurricane there, or along the Gulf Coast and Texas (with Hurricane Harvey). The TUVAC students that I’ve interacted with like to gather information, think strategically about what resources they have available, and make calculated decisions. The students inspire me because the response is typically, ‘How can we help assist you?’ when requests come in from outside of our organization seeking resources or marketing help.

What, if anything, has surprised you about TUVAC’s response to the challenges and disasters faced by our city, state, and nation over the past year?

SB: I don’t know if I’ve been surprised because I knew coming into this position at Trinity that students like to push and extend themselves. In my experience, the TUVAC students are not only committed to enhancing their personal leadership capacity, but they’re also committed to improving the organization’s outreach. And so I anticipated them stepping up to the challenge. I know that we will talk toward the end of the semester about what will happen if these events occur again in the future, and how we can be more effective in our response, and how we can provide more opportunities for students who want to get involved. How can we be a better resource for a student who comes to us with an idea with what to do in response to a hurricane or other natural disaster? That’s part of the spirit of TUVAC—the desire to improve individually and as a student organization. I don’t think anybody could have predicted devastating hurricanes, earthquakes, and mass shootings all in the fall semester. Therefore, TUVAC never considered what our role would be helping mobilize students to assist in those relief efforts given our focus on providing volunteer opportunities on a more local level in San Antonio. I think our students did the best they could with the time and resources they had, their rigorous course load, and other engagements on campus. But I do know our TUVAC leaders will reflect on this experience, knowing these events could happen again in the future. So, how can we be better positioned to meet the needs of members in our community?

Were there any touching moments where you were able to really see that sort of ‘can-do’ attitude on display?

SB: Right after Hurricane Harvey—that was the first hurricane to come through—we had a student in Rockport, Texas, whose family was affected by the storm. She held a student worker position on campus in Alumni Relations and Development. I know the staff in that office helped the student, and TUVAC was able to work with leaders of SGA (the Student Government Association) and mobilize students for a food and clothing drive, donation drive, and providing direct service at the San Antonio Food Bank. The student was able to take some of the supplies in her vehicle and hand-deliver them to some of the first responders and to her family who needed them. Her story about how she was affected by the storm, how she wanted to make a difference in her hometown, and how the Trinity community stepped up, is one that certainly sticks out to me.

What does the future have in store for TUVAC?

SB: We’ll probably look at this semester as a case study, if you will, and raise the questions: What is TUVAC’s role in relief efforts, like the ones we’ve witnessed this past semester? How are other groups on campus contributing to relief efforts? We know those efforts are taking place, too, so what is TUVAC’s role in addressing that, and what is TUVAC’s role in working collaboratively with other organizations on campus to leverage or enhance our impact in what we’re doing? I do think TUVAC and other organizations will need to think about their collective efforts surrounding disaster relief efforts and whether the solution is building a coalition or at least having a plan in place for the next time something like this happens. There is a multi-pronged approach to service on campus, which can at times make it complicated to track and demonstrate the collective impact, but TUVAC leaders are putting mechanisms in place like (volunteer management platform) GivePulse to make it easier to gather that information and to illustrate what it is that we’re doing and contributing to the surrounding community. I do know that TUVAC will continue to provide as many opportunities as possible in the San Antonio community, whether that’s through environmental causes, youth and education outreach, or health and wellness opportunities.

Do you feel the Trinity community has an innate sense of duty in responding to these crises?

SB: I do. The Trinity community extends beyond campus boundaries and even outside of San Antonio. We have alumni all over, many who were affected by the hurricane devastation. Many students have family and friends in areas greatly affected by some of these crises. So I think students felt an innate sense of duty to respond to these crises in particular. Aside from natural disasters and other events, Trinity fosters a spirit of civic engagement by offering a variety of ways for students to get involved through community service. TUVAC, of course, is a great way for students to volunteer in San Antonio, and there are other programs, such as Tiger Breaks (alternative break program), Greek Life, service-learning courses, and course-embedded projects to name a few. The variety in these programs accommodates students interested in one-time events, recurring events, or those looking to apply what they’re learning in the classroom to real-world settings. All of this contributes to a culture of service at the University.