DAN QUAGLIANA
News Editor
While teaching future educators is the main goal of the College of Education, Health Sciences and Human Services, the college and its associated student-run clubs also hold events to bolster student engagement.
One such event that was held earlier this month was the kickoff conference for the Youth Activation Committee (YAC).
Every year, a public school district in Western New York is selected to host the kickoff event for the YAC.
The Youth Activation Committee is an organization affiliated with the Special Olympics.
Their main goal is to promote unified sports in public schools.
Unified sports are sports that allow students with special needs to participate in school sports with a youth leader.
“YACs [also] take responsibility for promoting and sustaining their school Unified Sports teams,” according to the Special Olympics’ website.
Last April, the Dunkirk City School District was chosen to host this year’s event, and they reached out to Fredonia’s College of Education to help.
All three student organizations within the College of Education, which include the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC), Teacher Education Club (TEC) and Kappa Delta Pi Education Honors Society (KDP), helped Dunkirk in hosting the event, which was held on Oct. 6.
CEC is an education-based club that focuses on working with students with disabilities and strengthening young professionals that work with them, like teachers and speech pathologists.
TEC is a club for teacher candidates to understand the field of education and to make professional connections.
KDP is an education honor society that offers membership to junior- and senior-year students from all majors in the College of Education that meet certain requirements.
Traditionally, the YAC summit is located in a school within the district that hosts it that year, but Dunkirk decided to take advantage of the college campus on their doorstep. This “gave them added publicity for the event,” said Kennedy Neckers, the president of CEC and a senior early childhood/childhood education major.
Executive-board members of all three clubs were heavily involved in planning the event, along with professors, coordinators and graduate assistants in the College of Education.
“There were seven schools in attendance [this year], and over 100 students and student athletes,” Neckers said.
There were over 20 volunteers from SUNY Fredonia, which included education students and the entire women’s soccer team.
The summit included icebreaker activities for students to get to know each other as they arrived, as well as assorted breakout sessions, which students could choose based on their interests.
These breakout sessions were hosted by professors from not only the College of Education, but the School of Music as well.
“It was really incredible to see local school communities come together with the university to host such a large event,” Neckers said.
She noted that plans are in the works to make the summit an annual event.