USU students give to community through Mack Park service project
Over 50 people participated in a Utah State University student community service project. From painting pavilions to cleaning up the sandpit, Mack Park in Smithfield received some much-needed sprucing up on the weekends during September through November of 2015.
Seven USU students came together to complete a service project for their Managing Organizations and People class; group leader Charity Wayman along with Keri Breunson, Michael Peters, Austin Watts, Bailey Purser, Paige Kirschbaum and Adel Alharbi.
“For our service project we definitely wanted something that would last, we didn’t want to just rake some leaves,” Peters said. “We wanted something where we could go back and still see the fruits of our service years later.”
Over 100 hours of community service was completed between the seven members, and an additional 30 hours were completed by people in the community.
“We wanted this project to be an ongoing commitment, and we felt if we got the community involved it would be sustainable. Hopefully people will want to continue to keep Mack Park clean and in good shape,” Peters said. “People that live in neighborhoods surrounding the park showed up, as well as members from a real estate company.”
The hours of service went to painting two pavilions, covering up graffiti, painting parts of the horseshoe pits and cleaning them up, picking up garbage, cleaning the sandpit area and painting the benches throughout the park.
The project took a total of four Saturdays to complete, and everyone involved had to improvise with the limited provisions.
“This project took a lot longer than we originally anticipated,” Wayman said. “We really wanted to get our hands dirty and make a difference in our community, and we really feel like we achieved that.”
Mack Park is one of Smithfield’s older parks, second oldest after Central Park. There are three people that make up the Smithfield parks’ staff and with a new park — Sunset Park — put in this year, Mack Park needed some work, according to Smithfield park director Jess Daines.
“In the 10 years that I have been working for Smithfield, the pavilions and benches have never been painted; it is also the first time in a long time that USU has gotten involved doing service for our parks,” Daines said. “These students were reliable and did an awesome job; everyone was really pleased.”
Mack Park is used for a variety of events such as weddings, receptions, birthdays, family parties, pictures, Friday movie nights in the summer and many other events. Pavilions are rented out seven days a week, April through October.
For the students involved, the Mack Park service project was a lot more than just an assignment for a class.
“I definitely learned how to have new leadership abilities and this will be a great opportunity to talk about how I worked well with a group of people to a future employer,” Peters said. “Being able to see the finished project and know that we left a lasting improvement in the community sure was worth the early mornings and hard work.”
Wayman said the management class is only one of the classes she needs to take for her service learning scholar program.
“This class was very impactful and it became my favorite due to the service project; it definitely helped ease me into service projects since I will have to do plenty more with my major,” Wayman said. “From this project, I learned how to work with a team to accomplish a goal.”
— jillian.mccarthy@aggiemail.usu.edu