When junior Josiah Vega needed a job his freshman year, he wanted to avoid working for Saga Inc., so he pursued a job in his field of interest instead.
That’s where Hillsdale’s SOAR program helped him.
The Service Opportunities And Rewards Program, or SOAR, is a program in which the college pays students’ salaries for the work they do at non-profit organizations around the city of Hillsdale.
“It’s a win-win situation,” said Jemie Hannon, director of the program and senior financial aid officer at the college. “The community gets to have a caliber of employee they can’t afford and students get experience and a salary. It’s a resume builder and network creator.”
Hannon said the financial aid officers look for sophomore through senior students who are searching for jobs and have access to transportation. Each semester, the program places about 25 students at different organizations in the community.
“Freshmen normally haven’t honed their time management skills yet,” Hannon said.
The program started in 1993 to fix a job opportunity shortage on campus. At the time, students were having trouble fulfilling their Hillsdale Tradition Award scholarship work requirements, which mandates students work up to 10 hours a week.
Over the years, however, SOAR evolved from simply helping students find jobs into a paid internship-type of program, said Hannon, who began working with SOAR in 1999.
According to Hannon, the officers try to place students in organizations that accompany their academic interests.
Hannon cited examples like: students interested in early education work with the Head Start program, students interested in special education will work with the Greenfield Schools, pre-med students have found positions at the hospital, and students interested in ministry are placed at either Domestic Harmony, the Alpha Omega Women’s Care Center, or the Child Abuse Prevention and Awareness Center.
Vega, a history major and politics minor, found his niche with the Hillsdale City Council. He has worked for the city of Hillsdale the past two years.
Vega said his favorite part of the job is “getting to know the businesses around town. That’s what economic development is all about,” he said.
“I came to Hillsdale from Southern California where everything you’d ever need is within an hour away. Coming here it’s easy to say there’s nothing around, but there’s actually a lot here and the businesses do their best to provide,” Vega said. “We’ve got a lot of really cool businesses downtown — antique stores, the Filling Station — everyone should know that place, coffee shops, it’s a cool place to be, and it’s great to make connections with these businesses, more students should be trying to.”
Mary Wolfram, director of Hillsdale economic development, is Vega’s supervisor.
“[Josiah] has been a great help, and he’s learned a lot, which is what you’d want out of any job,” Wolfram said. “He’s very flexible and he’s been able to help wherever he’s needed.”
When Vega started, he worked only for Wolfram, but he now works for many of the city’s departments.
His two big projects this semester include organizing the historical documents and blueprints in the attic of City Hall for the planning and assessing department, and completing an application for an organization that benefits downtown Main streets around the country.
“It’s a great experience. It gives a sense of what city government is all about and how it works, and [the students] start to understand tax and bar code enforcement, planning and zoning, and a lot of different areas,” Wolfram said.
Wolfram said she will be looking for another SOAR student next semester to work at the city’s Mitchell Research Center in the historic Mitchell Building and give historic tours through the downtown.
While the program has expanded over the years, Hannon said she hopes “a nice donor will take interest in the program,” or that the college will find a way to give students transportation, which would expand the opportunity to students who don’t have cars.
“It really is a great program,” Hannon said, “and we want as many students involved as we can.”
According to Hannon, another benefit of the program that sometimes gets overlooked is it’s part in “healing old wounds.”
“These students are out there working and being representative of the student body, and it makes the community see that, yeah, you might have had a bad experience with one or two students a while ago, but that’s not all of the students. Likewise, some students have had bad experiences in town, and we’ve got to fix that a bit,” Hannon said. “I’m pretty darn proud of our students. To be able to have students who are kind of in a spotlight to show how kind, giving, and intelligent they are — any chance that we can do that it’s great.”
