Freshman Marie Johnson will serve as next year’s GOAL Program Coordinator, GOAL leaders announced Feb. 14.
Johnson will step into her role, after the current coordinator, junior Allison Deckert, takes over for graduating senior Alexis Garcia as the GOAL Program director.
“I think it’s vital that students don’t just spend all their time on this 400-acre square of land their entire time here,” Johnson said. “I think it’s so vital that people get into the community and see what’s really going on out there. How can you sit in a classroom and learn about the good, the true, and the beautiful and not actually figure out how it applies to real life?”
The director is responsible for the GOAL Program’s public relations, managing the leaders of the 23 individual GOAL programs, and communicating with both college leaders and the community. The coordinator works behind the scenes, sending emails, writing the weekly newsletter, receiving weekly reports from the leaders, and approving volunteer hours.
Deckert said as director, she hopes to foster more collaboration among the leaders of the individual GOAL programs.
“I would like to see the GOAL leaders as more of a team rather than separate, independent entities,” Deckert said. “They’re all striving for the same goal, but they’re doing it all separate from each other right now. So it would be cool to see them sharing ideas and troubleshooting and brainstorming together.”
Deckert will also prepare Johnson to take over as director.
“I’m excited to get to know her and work with her,” Deckert said. “It was an incredibly hard decision, because all of the applicants were so well-spoken, and they all had great ideas. In the end, we really liked Marie’s vision for the GOAL Program and some of the specific ideas that she had.”
Johnson said she wants to continue growing the GOAL Program and get more students involved. She said she hopes to organize a school-wide volunteer event, giving students across campus a chance to volunteer, even if they are not regularly working with a GOAL program.
“There’s always room for growth,” Johnson said. “There’s always a need in the community, whether we haven’t found it yet or haven’t found a way to meet it yet.”
Johnson helped start a program similar to GOAL, when she was in high school. The organization collected all the school’s volunteer opportunities in one place, making it easier for interested students to find and join programs that fit their interests.
“I saw a lot of small, independent volunteer organizations,” Johnson said. “There were all sorts of little clubs, and classrooms would do soup drives, and just all sorts of cool little things that I thought should really have a place to shine.”
Johnson said she hopes to help Hillsdale’s GOAL Program shine, too.
For Deckert, the GOAL Program has defined her college experience, she said.
“Having the chance to step into somebody’s life, and give them something that they need and couldn’t otherwise get, and experiencing their gratitude is so unlike anything else here,” Deckert said. “Being able to live outwardly focused, that’s the essential part of volunteering for me: getting outside my own head and seeing that other people have needs besides my own.”
Deckert added that acts of service put a Hillsdale education to action.
“I see volunteering as a natural extension of what we’re doing in the classroom at Hillsdale,” Deckert said. “When you’re studying the liberal arts, you’re learning through history, politics, and literature classes about what it means to live a good life. You’re learning about virtues like passion and courage and strength and wisdom. All of this knowledge is really good to have, but it doesn’t really benefit us or mean anything unless we put it into action.”
