HWS News
26 October 2018 • Service Brownell '17 Joins AmeriCorps
Benjamin Brownell '17 believes his four years of experience as an America Reads tutor and coordinator while a student at HWS helped him secure a position as an AmeriCorps education coordinator at the Boys and Girls Club of Bend, Oregon. He starts the job this week, joining an impressive cohort of Hobart and William Smith alums serving in AmeriCorps.
Brownell will help run the educational component of the Boys and Girls Club's afterschool program. "I'll be implementing educational action plans, tracking individual progress and communicating with club members and their families," says Brownell, who graduated with a major in English and a minor in media and society.
Since graduation, he has been working as a one-to-one aide at Happiness House in Geneva, which offers programs and services for children and adults with disabilities. There, he collaborated with teachers and specialists to ensure progress for a pre-school student with Down Syndrome.
"Working for AmeriCorps," says Brownell, "is an exciting next step. AmeriCorps offers me the chance to continue to make an impact on the local level and work toward something that is truly beneficial to young people," he says.
In his work, Brownell anticipates tapping into the resources and knowledge he acquired about childrens literature from Professor of Education Charles Temple's classes.
At HWS, Brownell spent a semester studying in Galway, Ireland and was a member of the Hobart cross country team. He was also counselor and camp coordinator at Camp Whitman in Penn Yan, N.Y. for several summers, helping to facilitate activities for traditional school-age campers as well as adults with developmental disabilities.