Students clean woods during KT Weekend

     On Saturday, April 23, a group of students and alumni gathered together to participate in Kin Takahashi Weekend. This event is a student led version of KT Week, which is a week in the summer when MC alumni gather on campus to do service projects that improve the MC campus.

The event was primarily led by two student organizations – the Non-profit Leadership Alliance (NLA) and the Environmental Action Team. They first met together in October to start planning the event.

During the planning process, they were trying to get as many organizations involved as possible. They also reached out to the Director of Alumni Affairs and Stewardship, Angela Miller, to help get alumni involved with the event.

At the event, the volunteers worked in the college woods. Projects included widening the trails, working in the orchard and cleaning up the abandoned spring house. Now the trees in the orchard are more protected and the spring house can be used once again.

Both Emilie Perez, president of NLA, and Hannah Kirby, president of the Environmental Action Team, were very pleased with the outcome of the hard work the organizations put into the event.

“It’s really community building experience,” said Kirby. “It strengthened the MC community and gave a sense of accomplishment to the volunteers.”

Perez said she was happy with the turn out for the event and that there was a good mix of both students and alumni. She also mentioned how wonderful the alumni were who participated in the event were. The alumni actually provided snacks for the volunteers during the event.

Kirby looks forward to getting more alumni involved in next year’s event. She talked about how she hopes the event will grow from year to year. As it does, she expects more alumni and students to gain an interest in it, which will ultimately lead to a larger number of volunteers.

After all the work was done the volunteers gathered at McArthur Pavilion to enjoy a sustainable lunch that the Environmental Action Team planned with the help of Metz Culinary.

Kirby considered the lunch a success and was pleased with Metz and the work they did to help with the event. The Student Programming Board also got involved by setting games up for the volunteers to use during the lunch.

Maryville College students and alumni gave back over this weekend and encourage others to get involved. NLA is looking forward to next year and invite people to come to their meetings.

“Give back that’s the biggest thing, even if it’s in the littlest ways,” said Perez