Hallmark Awards Resources
Sample of a 2002 Scholarship Hallmark Award-Winning EssayBeta Beta Sigma Chapter
Napa Valley College
Napa, California
Beta Beta Sigma: Crawling, Walking and Running on the Human Drive for Community
Beta Beta Sigma's vision and growth in our "Drive for Community" helped an eighty-year-old woman see her mother's face for the first time, an at-risk teen in Napa's Juvenile Hall imagine a better future, and a child in Tortuguero, Costa Rica, explore the world using a computer. From these moments, our chapter learned the power of our ties to the community and how Beta Beta Sigma's scholarship projects can strengthen those ties. Moments like these marked the developmental stages that our chapter has gone through this year, as we have crawled, walked, and finally run toward our goals. Whether counting inventory for the Red Cross, racing outriggers at a Polynesian Festival, or mediating discussions at Community Conversations from the Heart, our chapter has developed rapidly in its pursuit of "Community."
We learned about the honors study topic and our capabilities for sharing it in our community during the "Crawl Phase" of our chapter's development, as we focused on projects that related both to Scholarship and the Honors Study Topic. One project encouraged reading development for children. To address this need, we read to the first-graders at Yountville Elementary School on several "special" dates including Halloween, Thanksgiving, and the anniversary of the Yountville Earthquake of 2000. An earthquake may seem an odd focus for the honors topic; however, in our area, it represents the ultimate in the "drive to community," bringing us together through shared experience.
We increased our awareness of the honors topic by attending celebrations of Cinco de Mayo, Dia de Los Muertos, Halloween, and Christmas. At the Cinco de Mayo and Dia de Los Muertos events, chapter members enjoyed songs, dances, and costumes that are commonly part of the celebrations, viewed altars honoring loved ones, and sampled traditional dishes. At the Halloween Carnival, hundreds of community members came together at the Napa Fairgrounds to celebrate Halloween in a safe environment.
Costumed chapter members ran attractions at which children won treats. Beta Beta Sigma has participated since the inception of the Carnival. We exchanged "Secret-Santa" gifts and enjoyed a traditional Christmas party at our advisor's home. Sharing these events inspired still greater efforts to further the Honors Study Topic.
The more ambitious projects of our "Walk Phase" were aimed at bringing the community together to promote scholarship. Awakenings, a project carried over from last year, brought at-risk youth to our college, so they can realize that they have a place here. Members visited teens at alternative high schools, halfway houses, juvenile hall, and homes for unwed mothers to talk about the benefits of higher education. Over four days, forty such youths received campus tours, sat in on classes, and enjoyed the lunches we provided. Many of these teens left resolved to get their lives on track and with the information they needed to use Napa Valley College to do it.
Beta Beta Sigma worked with two faculty members to bring Faces of America, a National Endowment for the Humanities project, to our community. This project uses shared photographs to celebrate family history and the community's collective identity. One student's search for photographs turned up the previously lost image of her great-grandmother, herself the daughter of a slave. Pictured was a nineteen-year-old bride, clutching flowers. Shortly, she would die in childbirth. Her daughter would see her face eighty years later, for the first time, because our project inspired a student to search an attic in Oklahoma.
To participate in Faces of America, students, staff, and faculty provided a photo and a one-page explanation of its significance. Members arranged a display of more than eighty photos in our Quad, and over several hours, hundreds of people stopped and looked at the photos, read the captions, and voted on which three photos they liked the best. The winners were given cash prizes. We also displayed the photos at graduation where hundreds more community members got to see them. People were struck by the power of the photos and left with a new understanding of our community. These photos have been displayed on campus and in the community several times. Our chapter will host an exhibition of the photos at the Vallejo Historical Museum beginning March 16th and in downtown Napa in April. These projects were the starting blocks that launched us down the track to further achievement.
By the time we entered the "Run Phase" of our development, our chapter was achieving beyond expectations. As part of our Five Star Project called Unity our goal was to proclaim that diversity is a priority on our campus. To that end, we invited Dr. Wong, a charismatic speaker that we heard at our Regional Honors Institute, to give a presentation on diversity and discrimination. Teachers brought classes. Passersby stopped to listen. Students lined the aisles. They sat with rapt attention for three hours as Dr. Wong showed them, with methods ranging from Socratic to humorous, how we all discriminate in various ways. He followed this with disturbing slides depicting the history of racial relations in our country. Many left teary eyed and with a completely changed world view. All left with knowledge of where they could make improvements in their community relations.
Still celebrating diversity, we joined the college and ASB presidents at a Peace and Unity Ceremony attended by hundreds of community members. Together, we offered our campus and assistance to help with Community Conversations from the Heart. Community Conversations stemmed from the Napa Valley Peace Table. It focuses on bringing multicultural, multigenerational community members together to learn how to communicate and to listen to each other so they can learn how connected they are. Realizing this helps them to find common ground when dealing with community issues. It also focuses on young leaders of the community teaching the older leaders. Having young people voice their opinions brings a new perspective in the search for solutions. Community Conversations helps educate people on forgiveness, non-defensive communication, and listening so that people can work together peacefully to make things happen. Through Conversations from the Heart, our chapter has helped bring people together to neutral territory, i.e., the college, to search for compromises and resolutions to community problems such as housing and childcare.
With our Computers for Costa Rica program, our chapter's growth took to the air and crossed international boundaries. Last year, one of our members visited a stark, ill-equipped school on the tiny island of Tortuguero off the coast of Costa Rica. In response, our chapter solicited donations of computers and money, and two officers flew to Costa Rica to set up the computers. When it was time to transfer to their chartered flight, it was discovered that the computers were too heavy for the small plane. Unperturbed, our officers scraped together resources to charter another plane and delivered the computers. These computers will benefit all of the children of this isolated island. Determination like this marked the final stage of our chapter's development in the service of scholarship.
Whether ushering for programs like Journey to a Hate Free Millennium, selling flowers at Scholarship and Graduation ceremonies, or volunteering at the International Bird Rescue Research Center, Beta Beta Sigma is running toward our goals of promoting scholarship and a better understanding of "Customs, Traditions and Celebrations: The Human Drive for Community." We have shared our sense of community from Napa to Tortuguero, Costa Rica. We have learned that we can do amazing things, even "impossible" things, if our vision extends far enough and our sense of community stretches beyond our own horizons.
