By MEAGAN BRUNSON
BYU organizational behavior students have not only earned grades this semester — they are making a lasting impact on the Provo community.
Students in Professor Warren Woodworth’s Organizational Behavior 320 and 321 classes this fall were assigned to implement and take part in a beneficial community service project that can continue after the class ends, said Hillary Jimenez, a teaching assistant for these classes.
“The project was supposed to be one that would keep itself going after the students leave,” Jimenez said. “This wasn’t just throwing in a pebble, we want to keep the ripple effect going.”
Jimenez said student groups have done service such as gathering books to send to a Nepal orphanage, supporting organizations like the Food and Care Coalition, designing Web sites to gather humanitarian aid for Honduras and Africa, and starting tutoring programs in Provo elementary schools.
“Professor Woodworth is amazing — he wanted students to experience real service, and the students have really put their heart and soul into this,” Jimenez said.
One group took a unique approach to the assignment, and is planning on making people around the Provo area laugh.
Matthew Doty, 25, a senior from Chicago, majoring in psychology, said his group is implementing a different kind of project than others he has heard about.
The group plans to have the Garrens comedy group come to BYU to perform for troubled teens in the area, and then go to their schools to do workshops geared toward helping them improve their self-esteem.
He said he thinks helping youth in Provo is very important, and his group wanted to focus on these local youth rather than doing something like sending aid to another country.
“We wanted to have an impact on the homefront,” Doty said.
The Garrens will come to BYU to perform for students from two residential treatment schools and then go to the schools later to do interactive, improvisational workshops with the students.
“The goal is to keep kids making good decisions and to help them with their self-esteem,” Doty said. “We hope the program will expand to other schools and turn into an annual thing.”
The group has organized the Garrens show at BYU for teens from New Haven in Spanish Fork and Youth Services International in Provo. The performance and workshops will hopefully happen some time in January of 2000, Doty said.
Doty said he thinks the Garrens performers will be able to reach out to these teens by helping them see that people can be happy and make decisions that will bring them success.
“We chose the Garrens because we knew they would provide clean comedy,” Doty said. “They have a great reputation of being hilarious, and they’re funny without incorporating anything that’s questionable.”
Carlos Gonzalez, 23, a senior from Orlando, Fla., majoring in economics, who is part of Doty’s group, said the Garrens were perfect to help them with this kind of service because they will be around and can continue the project, even though the students who organized it will no longer be in the class requiring the service assignment.
“We want to show these teenagers that there is a real, greater vision out there,” Gonzalez said. “Instead of falling for the wrong choices, they can make good decisions, and really go somewhere.”
