The Center for Community Engagement opened its doors this semester to help place work-study students into different agencies.

The center is working on placing around 60 to 80 work- study students with 14 different agencies, said Josh Daly, the interim director of the center. Both the number of students and the

number of agencies has increased with this work-study program since last year.

The agencies that students will be working with include the Audubon Nature Institute, The Edible School Yard, Freret Neighborhood Center and Green Light New Orleans.

Daly targeted eligible work- study students and introduced them to the program. Likewise, each agency was able to reach out and connect to the interested students. This excited a fairly large number of students, said Daly.

“The students actually had to express interest first. I basically sent out an email to all work- study eligible students and got about 180 students who replied back with a form saying they were interested. We had to cut it off at 180, saying that we only had 60 to 80 positions,” said Daly.

This new center is still in the building process, said Daly.

“It’s a building year in a lot of ways. Really it’s about building relationships right now. The more exciting stuff where people will begin to see the center will come starting this spring,” said Daly. Daly is working to make this program run as smoothly as possible and has high hopes. This semester is about tackling any challenges that may intrude upon this program.

“There is a challenge getting students to and from the different programs. Really it challenges the reach that we have as a university to be able to serve those partners who may be more distant from us geographically. So one of the things that we are trying to tackle is to be able to enhance transportation resources,” said Daly.

Connor McCullar can be reached at [email protected]