Every year, six seniors at Elon University are chosen to participate in the Elon Year of Service Fellows Program; a post-grad opportunity allowing them to live and work in Alamance County, and give back to the community they lived in during the four years of their undergrad experience.
According to Laurie Judge, co-chair of the Elon Year of Service Fellows Program, the first cohort of fellows was named in 2015. This year marks the 10th cohort of fellows who have participated in the program.
The program is open to all majors, but a majority of applicants tend to have earned their degree in biology or public health, according to Judge.
The program offers positions with the Alamance County Health Department, the City of Burlington and with several initiatives started by Impact Alamance; a local foundation that invests in bettering the quality of life for those in Alamance County.
According to Judge, when the program was initially started, there were only four fellows in each cohort and each position was exclusively involved in the healthcare field.
Elon has plans to grow this program even more in the future by doubling the number of graduates in service-year positions according to the Boldly Elon plan.
Judge said this program not only allows students to gain experience in the workforce, but it also allows Alamance County to grow and strengthens the relationship between the county and the university.
“It shows that Elon really cares about being a community partner and a good neighbor to Alamance County,” Judge said.
Judge also said another goal of the program is to encourage recent Elon University graduates to stay in Alamance County or North Carolina.
“Roughly 70% of our fellows have either stayed in North Carolina or are studying in North Carolina the year after their fellowship,” Judge said.
Though graduates work for nonprofits in the area, they are considered full-time employees of the university and receive their salaries from the university as well.
According to Judge, the fellows make around $18 an hour, which is more than other common post-grad service programs like AmeriCorps—a federal agency that connects members with different organizations to help improve communities across the country—and Teach for America—a program where members of the organization teach full-time for at least two years in an under-resourced school.
Abby Lee
As a fellow in the Elon Year of Service Fellows Program Abby Lee hopes to give back anything she can to the Alamance County community.
Within the program, Lee is working for Impact Alamance, specifically their Wellness Collaborative.
In her role, Lee has been working on writing grant proposals,organizing a wellness summit and is currently helping to write a grant for new basketball courts in Mebane.
“Hearing how much a simple basketball court could affect a community in such a positive way is amazing,” Lee said.
While at Elon, Lee double majored in political science and public health.
She said she “fell in love” with the program after hearing a fellow from a past cohort speak about their experience during one of Lee’s public health classes.
“I feel like as an Elon student Alamance County gives us so much,” Lee said. “I really liked the idea of being able to give back to the county that we live in for four years,”
According to Lee, Elon is very different from the rest of Alamance County, and the program has allowed her to see things from a different perspective and learn new things every day about Alamance County.
“The Elon Bubble is a real thing,” Lee said.
The “Elon Bubble” is the idea that many students at the university tend to stay within its bounds and not get involved with the larger community they are living in for the four years they are students at Elon.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median household income for the town of Elon is $82,717. In comparison, the median household income for the city of Graham, which is also located in Alamance county, is $54,783.
Lee also wanted to stay in the Elon area after graduation because of the friends and connections she’s made within the community.
“This gave me an opportunity to stay put for a while,” Lee said.
Sam Hinton
As a North Carolina native, Sam Hinton was looking for a post grad opportunity that would allow them to stay in the region and help those living in itThe Year of Service Fellows Program offered just that.
While at Elon, Hinton double majored in public health studies and political science.
Hinton also wanted an opportunity to stay in Alamance County after spending part of their undergrad experience researching impacts of immigration enforcement on healthcare utilization within healthcare and social services departments.
“I became really invested in the service work that’s happening in Alamance County and was really interested in getting first hand experience in that work,” Hinton said.
As a fellow, Hinton works for the Alamance County Health Department doing individual research and shadowing some of their coworkers on larger projects.
Hinton decided on the program over other options post-grad because they wanted to get firsthand experience in public health and service related work.
“What I’m looking forward to most about this year is what I can learn from the people around me and the environment I’m in,” Hinton said.
Hinton also mentioned their desire to stay in the Alamance County area specifically, even after their fellowship is over, in order to provide “ground level” work and service to the community they spent 4 years in.
“It’s important for Elon to have its students and its community members be a part of the greater Alamance community,” Hinton said.
Anna Matawaran
As Anna Matawaran begins her work as a fellow in the Elon Year of Service Fellows Program, her main goal is to break out of the “Elon Bubble” she lived in for the past four years during her time at the university.
During the summer before her senior year Matawaran participated in a program at Elon called Campus Alamance, where she interned at Haand Pottery in downtown Burlington and got to know people who lived in Alamance County.
She said that her experience inspired her to get even more involved in the local community and apply for the Year of Service Fellowship Program.
“It’s easy to live here for four years and breeze in and out of Alamance County without really getting invested in much of the community beyond the university and that wasn’t really something I wanted to do,” Matawaran said.
Matawaran majored in sociology and minored in communications and now holds a position at Impact Alamance working with For Alamance.
According to Matawaran, For Alamance is a partnership between Impact Alamance and the Harwood Institute that works to build up local leadership in Alamance County.
Matawaran said that one of the reasons she wanted this particular role was because Impact Alamance and For Alamance’s mission to invest in grassroots organizations and empower local leadership spoke to her.
“I thought that was really awesome and I think that it ties really well into what I learned at Elon as far as my sociology degree,” Matawaran said.
Matawaran is also utilizing her communications minor by working with the For Alamance marketing team to ensure that people living in Alamance County are aware of the many different initiatives going on and the ways in which they can get involved.
Whether she’s promoting community events or funding for a new park in Alamance County, Matawaran hopes that her work will help make a difference.
“These different initiatives really make a difference in the quality of life that people experience in Alamance County,” Matawaran said.
Juliana Buter
For Juliana Buter, the program is the perfect stepping stone between college and the working world.
After graduating with a degree in political science and a minor in communications, she wasn’t quite sure what she wanted to do after graduating.
When she was recommended to apply for the program by director of the Kernodle Center for Civic Life Bob Frigo, Buter realized it was the perfect opportunity to see if working in government was the right path for her.
As a fellow Buter is working at the City of Burlington’s economic development department.
Prior to this position, Buter interned with the Chamber of Commerce of Alamance County the summer before her senior year at Elon. This gave her a peek into the world of economic development and was another reason why she decided to apply for the program.
“I wanted to dive right in to something similar and kind of navigate local government a little more and see if that was something I was interested in more long-term,” Buter said.
According to Buter, the economic development department supports existing businesses in Burlington and tries to bring new industries to the city.
In her position, Buter is focusing on getting the Elon community more involved with the city of Burlington.
She also works on social media for the City of Burlington’s Economic Development department and the Burlington Downtown Corporation.
So far, Buter has been learning about the intersections between government and other industries and all of the nuance that goes into making a decision in government.
“There’s so many decisions and so many factors that go into placing a business at a location and it’s so detail oriented which has been so cool to see,” Buter said.
Buter hopes that during her fellowship she can play at least a small part in helping to build up Burlington and to create more connections between the university and the city.
“People in local government are giving back to their community every single day. They amaze me with all of the work that they put in on a daily basis,” Buter said. “Especially at Elon, we don’t venture into Burlington as often as we can and should, and I think that will be an important aspect of what I do for the next year is trying to build that relationship with the Elon community.”
Aniya Scott
Though Aniya Scott hopes to find herself on the clinical side of the healthcare field in the future, her position as a fellow is allowing her to see the industry from a different point of view.
Scott works at Alamance Regional Medical Center, assisting the healthcare administration team, which oversees the operations of the medical center.
Scott majored in biology while at Elon with hopes of pursuing a career on the clinical side of the healthcare field.
She said that she chose the Elon Year of Service Fellows Program because she knew it would be the “perfect opportunity” to get hands-on experience within the healthcare field.
Though she has only been in the position for about a month, Scott said this fellowship has helped her realize the importance of administrative work in a hospital environment and how it can affect patient care.
“I thought that it would give me a different experience: the non-clinical side, which helps provide an overall understanding to help provide better care for future patients,” Scott said.
One of Scott’s goals while in this program is to grow professionally. She said that while Elon does have a lot of built in professional development opportunities for students, nothing beats actually getting out into the working world.
“I want to be able to take the tools and the knowledge that I learn here and apply that to my future career,” Scott said.
Scott has previously been involved with providing service to Alamance County by doing community work through her sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., and working with Elon Academy, a non-profit college access and success program for academically promising high school students in Alamance County with a financial need and/or no family history of college.
She said these experiences gave her an understanding of the Elon and Alamance County culture. Scott also said her fellowship in the program has given her a way to see the holistic impact the fellows can make on the community.
Jasmine Walker
From the moment she first heard about the Elon Year of Service Fellows Program, Jasmine Walker knew what her plan post-grad was going to be.
In fact, the program was the only job Walker applied to when thinking about post-grad opportunities.
“I put all of my eggs in one basket,” Walker said.
As a fellow, Walker now works for Alamance Achieves, a nonprofit started by Impact Alamance that seeks to improve outcomes for children living in Alamance County. Their four key goals are kindergarten readiness, academic progress, high school graduation and career success.
Walker is working closely with Tyronna Hooker, Vice President of Education Programs for Impact Alamance on programs like “Ready Freddy,” which aim to help children and parents in the Alamance Burlington School System with the transition to kindergarten.
Walker is also an Alamance County native and she said a big reason why she applied to this program in the first place was to be able to give back to the county she grew up in.
“It’s cool that I can support the ABSS school system, which is literally the school system that I went through,” Walker said.
During her time at Elon, Walker majored in human service studies, and minored in poverty and social justice.
Walker said she would sometimes hear her fellow students mention how they had little interest in learning about Alamance County as they’re just here for the university.
“I’d always try to tell them, ‘No, this county really needs your support and love,’” Walker said.
Walker is looking forward to learning more about the ABSS school system and getting hands-on experience in a field she is passionate about.
After her fellowship, Walker hopes to get her masters degree in social work.
“I’m just super excited to just work and help support the same children that I was as a child,” Walker said.