Engagement and Empowerment

The chief role of the JCSC is as an engagement professional, encouraging uninvolved students to become involved in Jewish life on campus. By meeting new and uninvolved students, and forming meaningful one on one relationships, the JCSC Fellow at Albany acts as a "maximizer," in an attempt to "Maximize the number of Jews doing Jewish with other Jews." Through the target group of FYSH (First Year Students of Hillel), which has been extended to include any uninvolved students, the JCSC Fellow, in conjunction with the FYSH leadership board, can engage an incredible amount of new students. Engagement is an ongoing process, consuming much of the JCSC Fellow's focus during the course of the year, whereas there will seemingly always be uninvolved students to target.

Often times, students that become engaged in Jewish life on campus want to take on leadership roles. This transition from engagement to leadership is called empowerment.

There are countless opportunities for the JCSC Fellow to empower students at Albany.

The Fellow assists Aviva in leadership development of current student leaders. This involves such things as co-programming of leadership activities that are implemented at Student Leader Meetings and the compilation of leadership materials.

The Fellow is the point person for the Jewish Life Liaison (JLL) program, acting as supervisor for all Jewish Life Liaisons. The Fellow encourages the JLLs to set goals, engage in a visioning process, and create successful Residential Hall programming. In addition, the Fellow supervises the Liaison's proper use of the JLL budget.

The JCSC Fellow also works with students to create programming for FYSH (First Year Students of Hillel). This year, freshmen students took on leadership roles to plan FYSH programming. Next year, many of these same students will be available to give guidance on FYSH programming. Furthermore, many new freshmen students can be engaged through FYSH programming and eventually empowered to take ownership over programming.

Additionally this year, the JCSC Fellow acted as the advisor for the student group Hamagshimim. As a Hamagshimim Fellow, the Fellow assisted the student leaders of Hamagshimim in programming, budgeting and leadership development. There will not be a Hamagshimim Fellow next year.

Next year, the JCSC Fellow can take on the role of advisor to one or more of the student groups. Because there are several Jewish student groups on campus, any empowerment work that the JCSC Fellow does greatly assists Aviva.