Vision for the 21st Century: A Plan for Excellence

---

Staffers use release time volunteering

---

by Carolyn Skei

Three big-hearted staff members are using a new university policy in supporting their favorite community projects. The result is that life is better for hundreds of individuals ranging from juvenile offenders to persons with Down syndrome.

Steve Wemmer, Pete Wilson, and Barbara Melton were already giving many hours of their own time as volunteers, and now a university policy provides matching release time for them to continue their good work.

Melton, a licensed vocational nurse in Health and Psychological Services, works two weeks each summer for United Cerebral Palsy as the camp nurse at Camp Mountain High. Under the new policy, she contributes a week of her vacation time to work at the camp in June; the university gives her a matching week off in August to work at a second camp session.

"The camp is for adult clients with cerebral palsy and other conditions like Down syndrome," Melton said. "They're just precious people, and they really enjoy the camp. It gives them a chance to spend a week in the country."

Melton said she first learned about the release time opportunity as a member of the Staff Assembly board. "I had already been volunteering for a couple of years," she said. "Once I heard about the release time, I just kept asking questions until someone knew the answers."

In Fresno State's Health Center Melton works with the doctors and nurse practitioners, "performing minor procedures." At Camp Mountain High in Fish Camp, she attends to 40 to 45 campers. "I give them their medications - there are a lot," she said.

The camp work is very rewarding for Melton. "Occasionally I think Why am I doing this? But by the time we leave, I just can't wait to do it again," she said.

Wemmer and Wilson are two other staff members who are always eager for another stint of community service. Air conditioning and refrigeration mechanics in Plant Operations, they volunteer two to three days at a time, about three times a year, in a program started by football great Bill Glass to help prison inmates.

At a variety of weekends sponsored by Bill Glass Prison Ministries, Wemmer and Wilson have worked one-on-one with inmates in facilities at Corcoran, Pleasant Valley and Avenal, as well as at Fresno Juvenile Hall and the Fresno County Jail.

"We work with inmates to give them the understanding that there are other men . . . who will sit down and talk and be a friend," Wemmer said. The worldwide ministry's Weekend of Champions brings to each prison a group of sports stars, entertainers and speakers, along with hundreds of volunteers like Wemmer and Wilson.

"We go to chow with them . . . sit in the cells with them," Wilson said. "The average age in prison is 23 years old . . . . There's a tremendous void there. We try to reach them and let them know that they are special - in spite of what the judge has told them, or perhaps what their fathers have told them."

The volunteers share life skills, moral values and a sense of personal worth. "And it really does work," the two agree. "The biggest thing we try to give them is hope . . . . The guards can't believe what we do ­ it's magic!" Wemmer said.

President John D. Welty said the release time program was formalized on campus "to encourage all of our employees to participate in community service and model this behavior to our students."

"It is my hope that every member of our university community will become involved in some form of community service. If we do so, we can make a major difference to thousands of people," Welty said.