Centennial classes serve SHU community

Boxes were labeled by the person who donated the items and were stacked along SHU’s walls. Photo courtesy of C.Joyce.

Seton Hill University’s 100th senior graduating class is wrapping up their senior year. With graduation close, different senior seminar classes took part in projects to give back to the Greensburg and SHU community. Two projects included were the 100 SHU boxes and Greensburg block party.

“We wanted to make it so everyone felt involved, and you won’t be involved if you don’t like what you’re doing, so we wanted to see what everyone really liked to do. Everyone wanted to do something that gave back and kind of involved the community and Seton Hill,” senior Crystal Joyce said.

David Droppa’s Senior Integrative Seminar class took on the 100 SHU boxes project, with Joyce and DeShaun Herzog as student leaders for the project, benefitting the Westmoreland County Food Bank.

“I came up with the idea to do 100 boxes because it’s the 100th year for Seton Hill,” Joyce said. It was to commemorate Elizabeth Ann Seton and the education the students were given.

Joyce, a senior business administration human resource with a minor in finance, said they started it “so that we can give back to the community, kind of make everyone work together and then kind of give back, and then we’re also going to make it tangible by going and volunteering.”

Though the food bank doesn’t have any spots to fill for them to volunteer there, the group planned going to Feeding the Spirit, or another food place downtown where they cook the food for the people.

Though they didn’t quite reach 100 boxes, the group really tried to help bring everyone together. “We did hit 57 boxes plus 400 and some dollars worth of donations that we’re going to give all to the WCFB,” Joyce said. “Which I think ends up being close to like 90 or 80, high 80’s number like if you’d make that number of money donations into boxes, so really close. I’m super proud of my class for what they did.”

Droppa’s class has made a competition of it, giving a pizza party to the club/team that donated the most. Brownlee third floor is getting a pizza party for donating the most.

Droppa said they were amazing: “They are smart, focused and had real passion for two things: participating as students in Seton Hill’s 100-year anniversary celebration, and helping to meet the needs of food hunger for residents of Westmoreland County, so that’s where the project name, ‘100 SHU Boxes’ came from.”

“This project is evidence that a small group of dedicated, hard-working students can do something to change the world for people who are less fortunate. It has been a tremendous pleasure working with them,” Droppa said.

Another senior seminar class that gave back to the Greensburg and SHU community was Zari Price’s group, who organized the Greensburg block party that was held on April 15.

With the Seton Hill step team, SHU commercial band and many community bands straight from Greensburg at the block party, 150 individuals were able to attend to enjoy the raffles, art vendors, music and entertainment provided.

“We wanted to find a way to reach out to the community and to also improve Seton Hill’s relationship with the community and the best way to do that in as much planning time as we did was take a baby step forward and throw a big party for them,” said Price, who was the student leader for her senior seminar group.

Price was optimistic in the programming board or someone taking on the block party in the future. “We do have a bunch of stuff that happens in the fall, but not a lot happens in the spring for the community. Like in the fall we have a tailgate and all that stuff, so it’d be nice to have something like this in the springtime not only just for families, but anybody can go and hopefully it’ll be a lot bigger the next time someone decides to take on something like this,” Price said.

Joyce said she’s proud of what they got to learn, how to improve and what their strengths and weaknesses are, and she’s proud of this last experience with SHU. Joyce wanted to express her thanks to SHU and Greensburg for all they’ve done. She said she’s proud of what she’s done for this project because sometimes it’s hard to bridge the gap between Seton Hill and the community. There’s often a divide, but she feels the projects helped.

Published By: Stephen Dumnich

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