“At the University of Dayton, we’re very driven to teach our students about servant leadership,” said Trevor Collier, dean of UD’s school of business. “So we thought, what better way to do that and to have a service project the first weekend the students are on campus?
UD freshmen moved into their dorms on Friday. Classes start today for all UD students.
Collier said Habitat also worked with UD in bringing the project to campus instead of UD needing to transport several hundred students to a different part of the city.
Davd Mauch, development director for Habitat for Humanity, said the work the students are doing in building frames for interior and exterior walls will save several weeks of work for the site. Fischer Homes was the corporate sponsor for the event.
Having that many people work together in just a few hours makes work go far more quickly than it would if there were just eight workers on one site, which is more typical, Mauch said.
“If everybody feels good about it, we would love to be able to do this on an annual basis,” he said.
Mauch said specific families for these two homes haven’t been picked yet, but several families are in the process of qualifying for a Habitat house.
Qualifying Habitat families pay back the amount of money at which the home is appraised, but they don’t have to pay interest. They also must work on Habitat homes for a specific number of hours and save taxes for the house before they can get it and make under $50,000 per year for a family of four.
UD freshman Jack Bronsil said service was a large part of his work as a high school student. The event is helping him give back and meet his fellow freshmen, he said.
“When I first heard about it, I was happy to, one, connect with my community and helping them, but also connect with all the students that are working here,” he said.
Lauren Herrick, another freshman at UD who was helping on the project, said service was part of what attracted her to UD. While she said she’d never used a hammer before, she was happy to be outside and connecting to her fellow freshmen.
“I’m not really much of a handyman myself,” she said. “I can barely use a hammer, but everything’s been so well organized.”
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