Meet Josiah
An Advocate for Community Engagement—or ACE—helping people in our local community hands-on, and matching students with volunteer opportunities through IU Corps, the most robust university public service network in the nation. Check this out: IU students exceeded 1 million service hours last year. No other Big Ten school can say the same.
Spend a day with Josiah and learn more about IU Corps.
Description of the video:
[VIDEO: Josiah Zintsmaster gets ready for workout class, drives to class]
Josiah: Volunteering and being able to work with people out in the community has really helped me realize that life is so much bigger than what we feel like sometimes. When I wake up in the morning, it's bright and early, I typically wake up at 5:00 AM, and then my roommate and I get ready and we go to a 5:30 AM bootcamp class together. Which is phenomenal, the people there are just incredible and getting to work out with.
[VIDEO: Josiah talks with others, performs several different exercises]
Good morning! How are you?
I don't know.
I think so.
For me, working out is such a stress reliever and it just starts my day on the right track and I know that I'm setting myself up to have a productive day.
[VIDEO: Josiah drives home, gets ready for class, works on computer in kitchen, drives to campus]
So I head back to my house after the workout and I get ready for my day. Typically I try to be as quick as I can. I get dressed and I head out to the kitchen. I make my breakfast and, while I'm eating my breakfast I update the roster here at PALS for the volunteers for that day. So I try to do that by 7:30 in the morning. And then I have the wonderful pleasure of 8:00 AM. So I head to campus around 7:30 in the morning and catch a bus or walk and head to Kelley.
[VIDEO: Josiah talks to his mom while driving, gets coffee, rides on bus, enters building]
Good morning.
Good morning, mom. How are you?
All right. Good morning.
Good morning.
[VIDEO: Josiah sits in horse barn, speaks to camera]
My name is Josiah Zintsmaster and I'm a student at the Kelley School of Business. I'll be graduating in 2022 and I am the advocate for community engagement here at People and Animal Learning Services, or PALS.
[VIDEO: Josiah walks inside Kelley School of Business, speaks to camera]
What are your plans for Thanksgiving?
Going home on Saturday. [inaudible] what's your project?
Being a student at Indiana University is so dynamic and changing that it just keeps you on your toes. Being involved in Kelley is something that I'm passionate about because it really is pushing me so much farther professionally than what I knew was possible. I grew up on a small farm and so the professional world definitely seemed like a foreign place to me, and now it's what I'm living every day.
[VIDEO: Josiah drives to and walks into PALS, speaks to camera]
Being a Cox Scholar is the reason I'm at Indiana University. I am in the situation where I have to pay for my own schooling. And so, this gave me the opportunity to come here, it gave me the opportunity to be in Kelley and all those doors that have opened there. But more importantly, it has given me someone to look up to. Jesse and Beulah Cox provided this entire scholarship and he paid for his own schooling. He really started from running his own business in school to get through school, to the point where he donated $72 million that IU matched to create this scholarship.
Going into business, I think it is vital for us to understand the people that ultimately are affected by the decisions we make in business. And so, I see volunteering as an opportunity for me to give myself that big picture view of life and what's going on and surrounding yourself with people with different perspectives and point of views is vital to really having an encompassing approach when you go into anything.
Gloves.
All right, enjoy your meeting. Let me know how it goes.
[VIDEO: Josiah works in horse barn, leads horse around]
At PALS, I'm the ACE. So my main role here is helping connect students from Indiana University to PALS complete their service learning hours.
PALS is a horseback therapeutic riding facility for clients with different conditions and disabilities in the community.
That's against my brand.
Here we are all about making sure that we focus on what clients are able to do, not what they're unable to do. So they come out here and it's a facility where, no matter what, we are empowering them to do what they can and to reach new heights. Sometimes clients come out and they don't even know what they're capable of doing. Then they finally get to see that through a lesson, or they need that level of support behind them and a welcoming environment.
PALS sees volunteers coming in from a variety of different avenues. One avenue we use is IU Corps. IU Corps is an organization with Indiana University that helps students get connected to all the volunteer opportunities in the community. So it's almost like a portal that really helps connect the students to the volunteer opportunities out there.
All right.
[VIDEO: Josiah and friend inside coffee shop]
Whenever I grab coffee with a friend, it's always fun because yeah, we're there and we're studying a little bit, but we're always talking about what's going on in our lives, maybe some of the challenges we had that day, we're always hyping each other up, we're trying to always gas each other up and celebrate the successes together. But I would say my favorite part about being with my friends and grabbing a coffee or dinner or whatever it is, is the relationship that we're facilitating and knowing that we're spending that time together, even if we're studying or doing something like that.
[VIDEO: Josiah in and outside horse barn]
During our time at IU, we only get four years to take everything out of it that we can, and I would argue that volunteering is a way that you're taking everything out of your four years here, that you can. After a volunteer shift, I always go back to campus and it's so much richer. I've learned that volunteering has an impact on people more than you'll ever realize.
[VIDEO: Josiah works with students in computer lab]
As a volunteer, I would give the advice of making sure you understand the social issue that you're addressing in the clients that you're seeing, and also staying with the community and finding other people that volunteer and share those values. I know at IU Corps, there are so many people that come out here who are eager to volunteer and be connected with the community, and just putting yourself those people is so important.
As students, we get really caught up in what's going on and what's affecting us that day,
[VIDEO: photo of Josiah, Josiah works on laptop, Josiah leads horse]
but there's so much to life and so much to be grateful for every day. And I think volunteering and seeing clients and getting to work with them makes me appreciate it at the end of the day so much more. And also, just knowing where people find joy and being able to connect with them on that.
[VIDEO: IU trident]