She cared

Chris Morse grew up in Amherst, N.H., a so-so student. His fourth grade teacher spotted his potential, the only reason, he says, he’s now at MIT. Recently he searched for her on the Web and wrote to say thanks. “She cared, and caring can change your life,” says Morse, who now wants only to be a teacher and has earned MIT’s Goodwin Medal, awarded to a grad student with great promise as a teacher. He sees himself working in a small New England town “where people know me and I know them. I want to be involved in their lives and be an integral part of a community. The most important part of any society is education, but learning is nothing without connection,” he says.

“We live in a world where you don’t really get anywhere if you don’t think of yourself — and you’ve got to think of yourself — but not just,” says Eleanor Kane, president of the student environmental group Share a Vital Earth (SAVE). “We all talk about a breath of fresh country air; what are we going to do when we have to drive 50 miles to get one? We need everyone to work together to turn off their lights, everyone to recycle aluminum cans, everyone to drive less and use less water.”

Kane, who grew up in the California desert says: “In school they drilled into us, take short showers.” Now in her sorority house often she asks: “Why is the water running?” My friends say: ‘I don’t know. Why not?’ The thing I’d like most to contribute to the world is to educate people to know they do make a difference,” says Kane, who along with SAVE members collect reams of wasted paper from the student computer center, bind it and sell it as notebooks. They encourage the dining service to reuse paper and plastic and not to use throwaway dishes, and they sponsor a lecture series with the department of environmental engineering, where professors and other concerned scientists talk of their research.

Norris Vivatrat knows that making a difference in the world requires action. He recently organized 88 undergraduates in a Hunger Hike, sponsored by MIT’s 30 fraternities. Students set out in groups and passed out free brown-bag lunches to homeless people in Cambridge and Boston. “Long-term it’s not going to solve their problems,” he says, adding a meal won’t change their lives but it will change their feelings about people caring.

He also recently created at MIT the Youth Empowerment Society, where students involve local middleschoolers in service projects, including visits to hospitals or nursing homes. “The idea is to teach the value of community service when they’re young,” says Vivatrat, who grew up in Houston with a wide open heart and who has been active in countless community service projects. “It’s great getting other people involved because there’s so much potential at MIT,” he says.

Renee Lau realized she most wanted to help others when last year as a freshman she co-authored a scientific paper that was published in Nature. “It was a big surprise, because when I read Nature I don’t always understand it. I was thinking of a future in research,” she says, adding when the future arrived so fast it changed her dreams and her life.

“The professor who co-authored the paper treated me like an equal, and I didn’t know anything. It made me think, gee, don’t ever look down on people,” she says, adding her biggest lesson was that when you respect and care for others, watch what they can do.

Now she’s switching her major to management. She wants to run a benefits office. For too long, she says, her father, a Chinese immigrant who works as a dishwasher, told her stories of those who’d had their hours cut, benefits cut, jobs cut. “Research helps society, and I might do it again someday, but right now I want to help people one-to-one.

“I have so much work at MIT, I do not have time to make friends. In the future, I want to live in a more laid back environment,” says Lau, adding that running a benefits office, she’d love to implement the 30-hour work week, establish day care in the workplace, involve families in daily work.

“I wish people had more time, took the time to listen and cared about each other more. To live in a society where we love and are loved in return is all I ever could want; it’s much more important than any amount of money.”

by Liz Karagianis « Previous | Next »

On Topic: public service, students