For Danielle Rhubart ’10, community service may open doors to a career. Her dream, to work in Washington, D.C., on issues such as poverty and social justice, has motivated her to be an environmental studies and sociology double major and energetic community volunteer.

Danielle, a Carthage (NY) Central School graduate from Deferiet, NY, was enrolled in the Making a Difference First-Year Program (FYP), which gave her the opportunity to work with locally blind and deaf citizens each week. “I learned that citizenship and engagement in the community are not privileges, but responsibilities,” she says.  

The following semester, her First-Year Seminar (FYS), Native American Youth and Children, included an “engaged learning” component on the Akwesasne Reservation, a Mohawk community about 40 miles from campus. “By the end of my first year at St. Lawrence I knew I wanted to continue this work,” she explained.  She became a community mentor through St. Lawrence’s Center for Civic Engagement and Leadership, counseling and volunteering alongside students at a local organic farm and at the Canton United Methodist Church Free Will Dinner Program each week.

Last fall she discussed with community members the ways in which teenagers in the North Country are affected by limited financial resources, emotional and academic support at home, and low self-esteem. Danielle and her mentoring committee brainstormed and researched ways for SLU students to connect with North Country youth, and developed a mentoring program called Next Step. “Next Step pairs St. Lawrence students with local 10th and 11th graders who are showing risks of being lost in the shuffle and potentially not fulfilling their potential post-high school,” she explains.

Danielle is a member of Omicron Delta Kappa leadership honorary and a choreographer for the Dance Ensemble. “There are endless opportunities for me to execute any ideas I may have,” she says. “If I believed there was a sector of the local population that we weren’t assisting, I know I could create a program to fit the needs of that population with the support and guidance of SLU’s faculty and staff.”