Miner Volunteer Corps launches

S. David Ramirez, Staff reporter • September 12, 2013

Gary Edens, vice-president of student affairs, speaks at the launching ceremony of the Miner Volunteer Corps.

The UTEP Miner Volunteer Corps, an arm of the Center for Civic Engagement, launched Thursday.

The new organization will focus on creating a pool of ready volunteers for larger-scale community events.

“We at UTEP believe that at our very core we are about giving back to the community,” said Gary Edens, vice-president of student affairs. “It’s a really exciting initiative because you’re on call.”

Edens, a UTEP alumnus, said that it was his student volunteer experiences that impacted his life and pulled him into the university community.

Community members and non-profits will be able to contact the Center for Civic Engagement to request Corps members for projects on and off campus.

“We want to build the Miner Volunteer Corps so that every time a non-profit or a community organization asks us [for help] we can say ‘they’re on their way, they’re ready and on call,’” said Azuri Gonzalez, director of the center for civic engagement.

Azuri said she expects the program to flourish and anticipates exponential growth in the inaugural group of students.

“From our founding nearly 100 years ago, this university has really always been about this community, this region,” said President Diana Natalicio during a speech at the launch.

Natalicio shared the history of UTEP, starting as a mining school meant to drive economic development in the region.

Through the years, a majority of UTEP students have come directly out of the community and that has been a driving factor to education amongst young people in El Paso, Natalicio said.

For more information about the Miner Volunteer Corp, visit the Center for Civic Engagement’s website at utep.edu/cce. Read the full article about the MVC in the Sept. 17 issue of The Prospector.

S. David Ramirez may be reached at [email protected].

About the Contributor

S. David Ramirez, Staff Reporter

S. David Ramirez is currently an English and American Literature major wrapping up his final year at UTEP. He has written for the Lakefront, the Thing Itself literary magazine, the Tejano Tribune and The Prospector. When not striving for journalistic excellence, he helps organize fandom conventions around the Lone Star State, including El Paso Wintercon and San Japan, San Antonio’s largest Japanese culture and anime convention. He hopes to spend his academic career educating the public about the dangers of Jane Austen and the medicinal benefits of reading the Brontë sisters. His research in popular culture studies has taken him across the nation and he hopes to continue presenting findings on music, media and literature at future conferences. David says his success is due to a pact with the dread Lord Cthlulhu of R’ley fame, but he may just be reading too much H. P. Lovecraft in his off time. He is currently applying to graduate schools for communication rhetoric or writing and rhetoric. If you, or someone you know, is on these admissions boards, please contact him directly.