{"id":69624,"date":"2023-07-18T14:32:27","date_gmt":"2023-07-18T21:32:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=69624"},"modified":"2023-07-18T14:32:27","modified_gmt":"2023-07-18T21:32:27","slug":"community-engagement-puppies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/community-engagement-puppies\/","title":{"rendered":"Louie wants you\u2014to use your community engagement hours"},"content":{"rendered":"

Confession: I bribed my team with puppies.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It started with an email from the Staff Advisory Council reminding members that we have 16 hours of community engagement time and summer is a great time to use some of those hours. It\u2019s also a great time to get together with my larger NAU Communications team, including NAU-TV and NAU Social, who I don\u2019t get to see as much, and do a little team bonding over a little manual labor.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Two
Jonny and Oliver strike a pose for the puparazzi. Oliver hopes that his ears don’t give away that he is in fact Batdog.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I emailed my team with my first confession\u2014I hadn\u2019t used any of my community engagement hours yet!\u2014and asked if anyone was interested in a group project. A lot of people were interested, I looked around for opportunities (the Center for Service and Volunteerism has a <\/span>list of organizations<\/span><\/a>, local and statewide, that need volunteers) and we landed on High Country Humane Society. We\u2019re all dog- and cat-lovers and, even though we didn\u2019t have the training to actually help with the animals, it was still a great opportunity for our team.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Plus, they said we could play with puppies. Done. We\u2019re in. We might leave with a puppy for a team mascot, name it Puplic Relations and let it provide news pupdates in <\/span>The NAU Review<\/span><\/i>. Let\u2019s do this. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Because we were such a large group, they had a special project that needed lots of hands. We proceeded to spend a morning, during the hottest stretch of days Flagstaff has seen in a while, scrubbing out dog kennels. It was hot, sweaty, grungy, hard work, and y\u2019all, we <\/span>loved<\/span><\/i> it. It\u2019s so gratifying to see something get clean through your work, and knowing that the adorably adoptable dogs would be shown off in style is such good motivation. Plus, the shelter employees were SO grateful for our work. The number of times we heard \u201cwe couldn\u2019t have done this without you!\u201d made us feel special. Our team even got a shoutout on their social media page!<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So what I\u2019m saying is, you too can get a little dirty and give back to the community and use your community engagement hours to do it. Here\u2019s how to use community engagements hours and make it fun:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

1. Teamwork makes the dream work.<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

It\u2019s just easier, and more fun, to do community service as a group. All it takes is an email to your colleagues to get the ball rolling. From there,\"A schedule a service project at a local nonprofit, throw on your favorite NAU T-shirt and enjoy the opportunity to spend time with coworkers outside the office. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

2. Find a good volunteer opportunity.<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

The <\/span>CSV volunteer list<\/span><\/a> is a great resource because they\u2019re all approved for community engagement hour use. Opportunities include preparing food, reading to kids, tutoring, prepping sandbags and more. Whatever your team\u2019s interests, there\u2019s a good volunteer opportunity for it. When you identify it, work with the contact on the webpage. Depending on the size of your group or specific skills in your group, there may be different opportunities for harder-to-fill projects as well.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

3. Log your hours in the system.<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

When you input your hours on your time sheet, remember to add where you volunteered and what service you did in the comment section.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Learn more about how to use community engagement hours at HR\u2019s website.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

4. Send us a picture! <\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

We want to see how your teams are using community engagement. When you\u2019re out, snap a pic and send it, along with where you volunteered, to <\/span>NAUcomm@nau.edu<\/span><\/a>. At the end of the year, we\u2019ll share a selection of photos of our Lumberjacks out serving the community.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Northern<\/p>\n

Heidi Toth | NAU Communications
\n(928) 523-8737 | heidi.toth@nau.edu<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Confession: I bribed my team with puppies.\u00a0 It started with an email from the Staff Advisory Council reminding members that we have 16 hours of community engagement time and summer is a great time to use some of those hours. It\u2019s also a great time to get together with my larger NAU Communications team, including…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":69628,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1816],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lumberjack-lifestyle"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}