Students aid Springfield in city visioning plan
By Ana Pierce
CO-NEWS EDITOR
A team of nine students is continuing to put together reports and analyze data from the recently publicized Springfield Visioning Survey that students were requested to take.
Evangel has been part of Springfield’s attempt to improve the community per requests of its younger citizens. For the first time ever, Springfield is involving students of higher-education institutions and public high schools to take part in community visioning.
According to a press release by the City of Springfield, “The City is making a special effort to involve younger members of the community in the long-range planning effort because they represent the area’s future workforce, voters and community leaders.”
Evangel students have found this exercise not only to have potential to benefit the community, but also to assist them in their personal career preparations. Stephen Robertson, senior management major, is one of these students.
“Mr. Bernie Dana introduced me to the Springfield Community Visioning competition and asked that I participate in the competition. Knowing that I will have to formulate strategic business plans in my future career, I could not resist this opportunity,” Robertson said.
Bethany Sprenkle, junior psychology major, is one of the three student leaders for this project. The survey has also helped Sprenkle in her academic preparation for the future. “They picked me [to be one of the leaders] because this is my research project for Research II, and it’s been really nice to get first-hand experience. I definitely feel like I’ve learned a lot through this whole process,” Sprenkle said. However, students are not only focused on how the Visioning Survey can benefit their own learning; Evangel students are concerned with the benefits this will bring to the community.
Camille Reid, sophomore and part of the visioning team, said that Evangel has the potential to give different ideas to the city. “At Evangel we are blessed and privileged to have many people of diverse backgrounds and upbringings that will be able to contribute in many ways to the success of this project,” Reid said.
Robertson elaborated on the potential that Evangel’s contribution has to further the community. “We don’t want to just tell you how to live and say, ‘If you’re a Christian, everything will turn out.’ Instead, we believe that we must plan things. And why not have Christians helping the city of Springfield formulate a strategic plan? God says he’ll give us the wisdom of the Holy Spirit. And if it was God’s spirit who ‘hovered’ over the earth at Creation and was the one doing the work, then the Holy Spirit can definitely drop things in our minds to help us improve our city.”
The written report to assist the City with new decisions and plans was submitted last Wednesday. “We put lots of graphs and statistics in it as well as suggestions to the city for ways they can improve the four categories that students found to be the most important in a city,” Sprenkle said. The four categories included the downtown area, city infrastructure, economy and environment.
Sprenkle’s group will give an oral presentation on Tuesday. “Basically, we’re hitting the highpoints of our report and talking about some extra things that weren’t in the written report.
Every school that’s involved will present that day, and before we all leave they will tell us who the winner is,” Sprinkle said.
Sprenkle and Robertson both agree that there are many benefits to being the winners of this competition. “If we win, we’ll be interviewed by the city and be the honorary guests at a Springfield Cardinals game,” Sprenkle said. Regarding the positives of winning,
“It will look great if Evangel wins this competition because it will not only let the city of Springfield know that we are receiving quality education, but it will also let those living within the city know that we, as Christians, want to get involved in helping better
this community,” Robertson said.