At a glance
The Building Trades Department and his students will present "Restoration after Katrina; ASC Wellsville Volunteers Keeping On."
The Building Trades Department and his students will present "Restoration after Katrina; ASC Wellsville Volunteers Keeping On."
For the third year running, Ellis has taken students for a “Semester in the South,” helping to rebuild the cities on the Gulf Coast that suffered the ravages of Hurricane Katrina and its tragic aftermath. This past semester the students partnered with Habitat for Humanity in Bay St Louis, MS, where they were building new “green” homes for six weeks before they moved on to the Episcopal Service Organization in New Orleans where they rebuilt flood damaged homes for six weeks.
A Hornell native and former Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal, Ellis has been a general contractor in the area for the past 20 years. Now in his 10th year as a faculty member at the Applied Technology campus in Wellsville, he has always required some community service of his students. After school hours and on weekends, Ellis and his students have built wheelchair ramps, fixed roofs, painted, etc. for many non-profits and needy people.
Joining Professor Ellis in his presentation will be four senior building trades students: Brandon Richardson of Batavia, Logan Rappalye of Watkins Glen, George Pesesky of Elmira, and Sean O’Donnell of Buffalo.
While the presentation will consist of slides and commentary by students, Ellis hopes that what the audience will see is the amount of empathy developed for another culture and the engagement and learning that occurred when his students sought to help the people they met.
Forum director Joe Flynn comments that “Such skills-based community service and civic engagement is a shining example for all students and faculty at Alfred State College.”
The New Horizons Forum, sponsored by the School of Arts and Sciences, showcases current scholarly, creative, and public service work by faculty, students, professional staff, community members, and invited guests. It is guided by a campus-wide team of advisors whose goal is to enrich the intellectual life of the institution.