Monday, May 12, 2008

Veteran's Oral History Project

The following announcement is sent by Audrey Grams, Service-Learning Coordinator at San Antonio College

Greetings ACCD Community:

I am very excited to tell you that San Antonio College and Service-Learning is working hard at a very important and innovative project. I alerted you about this in the Fall and Spring semesters. We are interviewing veterans for the Veteran’s Oral History Project. We have students from Phi Theta Kappa and students in Government, History and English classes working on this project this semester for service-learning for the summer I semester. We would like to include all faculty, staff, students and community members (and their families) from ACCD that would like to be interviewed. This national project began to record histories of WW2 veterans as they are dying at a rate of 1000 each month. We would like to get these first. We would also like to record as many other veterans as we can. It does not matter what you or they did or if they served during peace time or war time. You can actually even be an active military member. It is just important to records these histories. These interviews will be recorded on tape or video and transcribed and sent to the US Library of Congress.

If you are interested or know anyone interested in being interviewed, please have them contact Luis Sandoval, Volunteer Coordinator at the San Antonio USO at 227-9373 ext 11 AND email him at lsandoval@alamouso.org. He will put you on the interview list. Make sure you say you are from ACCD or want to be interviewed by one of our volunteers. It may be next semester until this occurs if we have a large response. The interview will only take 30-45 minutes. Interviews will take place at 420 E. Commerce St. (USO) unless one of our students needs to go to a residence due to the age of the veteran. The USO will supply the location, veterans, equipment and free parking.

In regards to students or volunteers at ACCD that want to interview veterans they know on their own, they should contact Sgt. Tracy English at 671-2211 or Audrey Grams, SAC Service-Learning Coordinator for all of the details about what you need to do to record these histories correctly so that they can be sent to the US Library of Congress or housed her at San Antonio College.

All hours served can be collected for the President’s Volunteer Service Awards.

If you are a faculty member interested in including this project into a service-learning project for next semester, please let me know. This is a great project that can apply to many subjects. Mini-grants are still available but you must contact me soon.