In an effort to showcase the talent, involvement and impact students are making within the campus community, Positively Geneseo interns sophomore Sinead Haegeland and junior Shannika Campbell spent this semester putting together the Positive Geneseo Highlight Book. This book—which began last year but was further expanded on by Haegeland and Campbell—contains information on 45 students of all class years and many majors.
Each student was nominated by someone and asked to complete five short answer questions. Their best answer was then published in the book.
“The last interns started the book but they never actually published it and they didn’t really finish it all the way, so we wanted to make it complete,” Haegeland said. “So we made a form for anyone to nominate their friends and [explain] why they should be nominated; basically a way for people to spread positivity on campus.”
Haegeland and Campbell received approximately 85 nominations. Each nominee was contacted and asked to answer five questions about their time at Geneseo.
“One [of the questions] is, ‘What’s your proudest achievement? So that’s like one thing they did throughout college, and then, [another question is] ‘When did you feel you were making an impact?” so that was more of a specific moment,” Haegeland said. “We kind of tried to make them share as much as we could.”
In addition to their answers, the book contains a picture of each nominee with their name, major, class year and campus activities listed.
“I think it encourages students to try harder and get involved and share experiences,” Haegeland said. “And I think—with the Phigs thing and everything—I was thinking that one negative thing happens on campus and everyone hears about it, but no one hears about the good things that everyone is doing. And there’s so many people doing good things.”
Campbell shared Haegeland’s optimistic view of the student body and of the project itself.
“A lot of students are doing such good things on campus … but not a lot of people know about it,” Campbell said. “I think it’s a really important thing to recognize that everybody is doing these amazing things on campus and it gets people to want to be involved and want to make an impact on this campus before they leave.”
Although work for the Highlight Book is almost complete, the interns are still focused on spreading positivity throughout campus for the remainder of the semester.
The book will be posted on the Positively Geneseo webpage and hopefully on the Geneseo college website as well. One way the interns are promoting the book is through “Senior Spotlight,” a weekly post on the Positively Geneseo Facebook page.
“It’s about everything the person does and any [senior] can get nominated,” Campbell said. “When you read people’s senior spotlights … it’s just such an amazing thing to read.”
The endearing spotlights are posted each Sunday, although Haegeland said that the goal is to post one spotlight a day during the last week of the semester. A nomination link is located at end of each post.