To say that Brandon Thornton, a freshman Honors student majoring in Math Education, is involved on campus is quite an understatement! This involved freshman is a member of the Illinois State show choir and the glee club, a Golden Apple Scholar, a member of UNITE, and a participant in the multicultural mentorship project. All of these activities have helped Brandon to earn a spot as one of six students featured in the Student Involvement Center’s “Get Involved” book that will be given to Preview students this summer. As if being involved in these groups doesn’t keep Brandon busy enough, he was also recently elected as an on-campus senator for the Student Government Association. In fact, he earned more votes for on-campus senator than any other candidate!
As a Golden Apple Scholar, Brandon has had the opportunity to gain experience in teaching. Last summer, he worked with summer school students in an urban school in Chicago where he taught Trigonometry. This upcoming summer, Brandon will be working at the Illinois Math and Science Academy. He will be able to attend workshops and seminars focused on teaching and will be working one on one with faculty members. Brandon and other Golden Apple Scholars are hoping to go to South Africa in the summer of 2009 to do volunteer work and service projects as well as teaching in South African schools for a couple of weeks. As a Golden Apple Scholar, Brandon will be working in a school that is in need when he graduates, and the many experiences that he is gaining will certainly help him throughout his career!
Brandon is also a member of Urban Needs in Teacher Education (UNITE), an RSO that focuses on urban education. As a participant in UNITE, Brandon has been to Chicago schools where he was able to help around the schools and pair up with students to learn about their school life. Over Spring Break, members of UNITE went to Boston to visit urban schools and meet with education activists. He even got to listen to an education speaker at Harvard while he was there. UNITE has also been involved in various service trips and bringing students who would like to be teachers to Illinois State to show them around campus.
The multicultural mentorship project has Brandon paired as a pen pal with a 10 year old student in a Chicago school. In the fall semester, Brandon got to go to the student’s school to meet him and in the spring semester, the student came to Illinois State to see Brandon’s school.
Along with going to Boston, Brandon has been traveling all over the country lately. He went on the civil rights trip to Memphis and learned about many different civil rights movements. He also got to go to the Civil Rights Movement Museum and stand in front of the hotel where Dr. Marin Luther King Jr. was shot. He also went to Michigan for a conference with the Association of Residence Halls where he was able to meet with other students from Illinois, Michigan, and Canada. This summer, he’ll be going to a national conference with the Association of Residence Halls in Oklahoma.
Brandon’s interest in getting involved on campus was sparked by Camp LEAD, an Illinois State program that works on team building and developing your own leadership style. He has definitely taken the idea of getting involved on campus to heart and is using his involvement to give back to Illinois State and the community.