Student Activities Partners With Community Members to Host a Hands-On Activity Series

Liberty’s Student Activities department is bringing in experts from the Lynchburg community to share knowledge and offer students hands-on experience as part of a four-part workshop series.

The workshop series will offer sessions on indoor plant care, coffee brewing, cake decorating, and pottery making. Three of the sessions will be held in-person, and the coffee brewing session will take place via an IGTV video. The in-person sessions have a maximum capacity of 25 people. 

Avery Watts currently serves as the Special Events Coordinator for SA and helped create the workshop series. She has worked at Student Activities for four years.

Watts said that due to the COVID-19 pandemic and restrictions on in-person gatherings, Student Activities can no longer host large events. However, the Student Activities team still wanted to create events that were available to Liberty students. Watts saw the bright side of what the smaller session sizes will afford to students. 

“Workshops don’t take 200 people. We can take 25 students and have them learn and grow,” Watts said. “I love how small these events are because the instructor gets to be super personal.”

Watts said Student Activities picked the topics covered by the sessions based on students’ needs and wants. 

“We always want to create new and relevant things,” Watts said. 

Putting together the workshop series took a lot of research and organization for Watts. This process involved reaching out to Student Activities’ community partners, which Watts said was her favorite part of the process.

“We want to teach students, but we can’t teach something that we’re not fluent in,” Watts said. “I wanted to reach out and involve the community, someone who knew what they were doing.”

Watts anticipates how the topics covered in the workshop series will bring together students that might not be interested in other events, such as a bingo or a movie night.

“Student Activities in general does such a good job of connecting different types of students,” Watts said. “We think this is a cool opportunity to reach students we don’t usually reach and have new and creative activities for them.”

Renee Farmer is a Feature Reporter. Follow her on Twitter at @reneefarmerr.