The following feature story appeared in the campus publication Mosaic in September, 2001.

Quiet catalyst for bringing about change

By the time Alicia Flynn ’02 stepped into her first class at Trinity, she had already completed her first College-sponsored community service project during a pre-orientation program at Hartford’s Immaculate Conception Shelter. Since that time, Flynn has developed her passion for service into an integral component of her college experience, both on campus and abroad.

Flynn became interested in service as a high school student at Governor Dummer Academy in her home state of Massachusetts, where she volunteered at the local emergency room for three years prior to matriculating at Trinity. One major factor in Flynn’s decision to come to Trinity was the College’s location in a city—a feature that presented Flynn with a variety of service opportunities.

“I was looking for a small school that felt like a community to me and that had good academics, and what made Trinity really stand out was that it was in Hartford and that they were doing the Community Service Initiative,” Flynn recalls. “I was fascinated by the percentage of opportunities and how many people were interested in trying to be involved. It seemed like those were the types of people I wanted to be around.”

Leading by example
Building on her early success in service-based activities, the soft-spoken Flynn has become a quiet force in many facets of Trinity’s student community service activities.

“She leads by example and she’s not looking for recognition,” says Joe Barber, associate director of community service. “She’s someone who certainly sets a very good example for others.”

This summer, Barber enlisted Flynn to develop a new manual to help organize and streamline the operations of the Community Outreach Leadership Team, or COLT, the governing body for all student service groups and initiatives on campus, which is made up of a coalition of student service leaders.

“The community service office gives anyone who is interested the opportunity to take the initiative with projects and to start their own projects,” says Flynn. “I don’t know that I would have necessarily thought of myself as someone to jump in and run anything.”

Flynn says her efforts with the manual will help organize and facilitate the interaction and coordination of student groups and the Community Service Office.

“She’s been instrumental in establishing a structure for COLT that will serve the students and community better,” says Barber. “She’s playing a really big role in making sure that COLT and the office are much better able to act as a catalyst to get students involved with the community.”

Flynn says her involvement in service has augmented her academic life by providing a different framework for looking at the topics and theories taught in the classroom.

“It’s a way of understanding the theories that are important to us in a tangible way,” Flynn says.

While Flynn’s contributions to service at Trinity are impressive, her ability to integrate extracurricular interests with her rigorous academic pursuits is truly exceptional. A double major in religion and anthropology, Flynn conducted an anthropological study of the interaction between her fellow student volunteers at the Immaculate Conception shelter and the shelter’s clients. The study was part of Associate Professor of Anthropology Jane Nadel-Klein’s “Research Methods in Anthropology” course, which requires every student to submit a grant proposal at the end of the semester, related to the research they have conducted.

Study and service abroad
Flynn developed the tendency to take on her subject matter first-hand, and her academic and service interests, not surprisingly, called her overseas. Following a semester of intensive courses in language and Nepali culture, Flynn traveled to Kathmandu, Nepal, where she spent the spring semester of her sophomore year as one of seven Trinity students at the College’s Kathmandu Global Learning Site. Immersed in Nepali culture, Flynn wrote a series of papers on religion and culture, while completing an independent research project. She spent much of the semester living at a nunnery, where she was able to satisfy the program’s service component by teaching English to her hosts.

“I really, really enjoyed it,” Flynn says of her time living with the nuns. “They were amazing and wonderful people. I keep in touch with them still.”

Flynn reflects on her experience in Nepal as an integral component of her college experience and recommends study abroad to fellow students as a means to broaden perspectives and build on what is learned in the classroom.

“I think it’s really important to get out of the country to understand how fundamentally differently people schedule their lives,” Flynn says. “It’s a great opportunity. I think it’s great that there are so many different options that the College is trying to open up right now.”

Conducting “door-to-door” research
As she begins her senior year, Flynn has an impressive list of goals planned that relate to both her academic life and service interests.

Her senior thesis will combine both of her majors and will examine the views of Americans on missionary work and the spread of religion in general. Flynn plans to accompany a religious group in the area during its “door-to-door” missionary activities and hopes to conduct interviews with members of the religious group and those being solicited at their homes.

While Flynn completes her thesis this year, she hopes to apply for a Watson Fellowship. The fellowships are one-year grants for independent study and travel outside the United States that are awarded to graduating seniors from a select group of 50 institutions. Flynn says she will also consider joining Americorps for a year before eventually enrolling in graduate school.

Flynn urges fellow students to get involved with service activities at Trinity and suggests that such involvement can have more impact on students’ lives than they might predict. “If you’re willing to actually throw yourself into an opportunity, one day can change your whole outlook on life and on why people are in the positions they are in,” Flynn says. “It can be one of the most important things people learn in life.”

–Michael Bradley