For the Fall 2018 semester, the Office of Civic and Community Engagement expanded their department to add a brand-new position.

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Hannah Moran, Coordinator of Civic and Community Engagement was recently welcomed to the office for this opening. As someone with a diverse background in service, her job involves all things service within the Behrend community. From helping students find volunteer opportunities to helping clubs and organizations plan their own service days or projects, Moran is dedicated to helping students find a way to give back.

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Alongside her department, she also encourages service learning in the classroom so that students can connect what they are doing academically to something in the community.

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“So for example if you were an engineering student and you wanted to do something service related, you could create something that would benefit a community,” she explains. “It could be here in Erie or anywhere in the world.”

Her job also ties into Civic and Community Engagement’s role in their own programming with Hunger & Homelessness Awareness Week and Alternative Spring Break, which will be taking place in Puerto Rico this year. If a student group is seeking ways to incorporate service into what they do, she also advises them on what steps to take.

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But her passion for helping others to reach out did not set in without some experience of her own. With her roots planted in a life of service, Moran has always been dedicated to finding ways to benefit others. While attending Bennington College in Vermont – a school heavily devoted to liberal arts – she discovered that service was not as commonplace as she had been raised to believe.

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“I grew up in a really small town in Maine and service was really important and belonging to the community and helping others was a huge part of the value,” she states. “So when I got to college and didn’t have that I always kind of wished that it was more of a culture on campus.”

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This realization led her to focus her studies on art therapy work and conflict resolution through art. This background led her to dedicate two years to AmeriCorps in D.C., a voluntary civil society program with the goal of meeting critical needs in a given community. She spent her first year teaching in an elementary school where 100 percent of the children were living in poverty.

 

“The district we were in was very difficult but I always said if I could do that I could do anything ‘cause it was so hard,” she confesses.

 

Moran has used this mantra to get her through many other challenging experiences in life. Her second year in AmeriCorps was devoted to school beautification for corporate sponsors. She explains in an example that if AT&T wanted 300 of their employees to volunteer somewhere, she would plan a whole day of service around that in a school. The focus was on beautifying by painting murals and doing construction.

 

After moving to Erie from Germany for this new position, she emphasizes her experience with so many different cultures, communities, ages, and a broad scope of service in so many different areas. In all of this, education has always been really important and always been a sector that Moran has worked in. However, she is new to higher education work and is eager to embark on this new adjustment.

 

In her experience with AmeriCorps, she always worked with college students in planning large-scale service days and enjoyed the idea of it.

 

"I was always like, ‘Oh that’d be a cool job planning that for college students,’ and so when I was looking for jobs that was something I had my eye on and I always looked in higher ed,” she explains.

 

As for her journey at Behrend, Moran hopes to use all of her experience to make service and community more of a culture. She believes that it is incredibly important and is on the mind of many people who have a lot going on, causing them to think that they cannot incorporate more service into their lives. Because of this, she stresses that she focuses on working with these people to help them find their passions in order to be giving back while doing what they enjoy.

 

“I’m hoping to be that support system and be the advocate for service on campus,” she shares.

 

She encourages students to not be shy about going out into the Erie community. There are hundreds of organizations in the area looking for support and doing great things, she believes. But they need all of the support that they can get.

 

“Young minds and energy and passion and enthusiasm are endless here. So don’t be scared about going out in the community and offering what you have and being willing to learn from them as well,” she encourages.

For any person or organization seeking ways to dedicate time to serving others, Moran is more than eager to assist in discovering your passions and finding ways to put them to use in the community.