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It didn't take Pam Mason-King long to figure out the America Reads Challenge was for her.

One of the first volunteers in IUSB's America Reads Challenge, Meredith Nawrot, tutors Cody Brown of South Bend's Center for the Homeless. Photo courtesy of The South Bend Tribune and Rebecca Belling.

An elementary education major in Indiana University South Bend's Federal Work-Study Program, Mason-King had been selling theater tickets and answering the phone in IUSB's box office to earn her work-study hours. Boredom was a way of life.

When the IUSB financial aid department announced they would place work study students as reading tutors in schools, libraries and social services agencies, Mason-King was one of the first to sign up.

She and fellow elementary education major Meredith Nawrot opened a tutoring center in South Bend's Center for the Homeless in August. Without them, center officials said the tutoring room would have closed.

Since then, a dozen more IUSB work study students have undergone the rigorous tutoring preparation for the America Reads Challenge, which specifically pays college students to tutor young children in reading. Although being an elementary education major is not a requirement, many America Reads participants see the program as professional training ground.

One of the expected offshoots of this collaboration is that IUSB as an institution will become more approachable to under-represented populations.

Michele Albanys, a senior, found the program bolsters the skills she's learning in her elementary education classes. "We got a lot of good ideas on how to help these kids," said Albanys.

American Reads flourished in part because the financial aid staff believed strongly in the program and jumped on the job of organizing the tutoring component and making the program known throughout campus. But the very process of pulling it together, about the time Chancellor Ken Perrin took the helm, highlighted a shortcoming in IUSB's administrative and student services structure. And awareness of that shortcoming gave birth to IUSB's new Community Links office.

Community Links is to serve as the campus clearinghouse for outreach efforts, particularly those which place students in community-based positions that enhance their professional capabilities.

One of the models for Community Links was IUSB's new Strategic Directions Initiative, called The Community Associates, which will function under the Community Links umbrella.

The Community Associates is a consortium of IUSB representatives and community agencies that work with Hispanic and African-American organizations. Reasoning, on one hand, that the resources of these agencies grow ever tighter and that, on the other, IUSB is educating many of the students who one day will run these agencies, the consortium gathered to consider partnerships.

Working as a conduit between community agencies and IUSB academic divisions, the director of this effort will help form student placements specifically in minority-based services.

One of the expected offshoots of this collaboration is that IUSB as an institution will become more approachable to under-represented populations as its students roll up their sleeves and pitch in.

A case in point is a collaboration the School of Nursing has brought to the table, in which nursing students would be placed in agencies that assist Hispanic populations. While the IUSB students gain cultural perspective, the community would gain an awareness of the nursing school.

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