SNHU alumni volunteers are a vital asset to our community, helping at events, mentoring students, speaking in classes, organizing service projects, and so much more. We're proud to recognize outstanding members of our community who make an impact every day, strengthening the SNHU experience and improving the world around us.
If you know a volunteer who deserves to be celebrated, please email us with the nominee's name, class year, and a brief description of the ways he or she has contributed.
James O'Brien ’16 ’18G continues to outdo himself with giving back to SNHU. Not only has he volunteered at our Homecoming weekend every year for the past few years, he also opted to work multiple events each time he participated. James loves to connect with both online and on campus students, faculty, and staff. He finds great value in sharing his online educational experience as well as encouraging others to join efforts to help at SNHU. Check out our Q&A below with James and you might find yourself raising your hand to volunteer too!
Volunteering at SNHU for various events allows me to not only give back to the school, but to also reconnect with many of the outstanding people who have made my time at the university memorable. By volunteering I am able to meet more people, not just from the online community, but also connect with those that attend school on the main campus. That is what makes Homecoming weekend so much fun! Not only am I working with the amazing staff, but I also get to share with campus students how the Global Campus (online) program works and express how thankful I am to live close enough to participate on campus for these types of events.
I would have to say the thing that I enjoy the most about volunteering is meeting people. Being able to connect faces and personalities with names that I have seen either in courses or in emails (from academic advisors and events committee members) allows me to create new friendships. This then gives me the ability to network into other groups that I otherwise may not have known existed.
Through my years at SNHU, I saw some of the greatest impact of my efforts when I was a peer leader and when I was on the executive committee for a couple of groups/honor societies for SNHUConnect. While being a peer leader I was tasked with helping students in the Applied Statistics group. Students would post questions or problems that they were having in their courses and it would be my job to help answer them or point them in the direction of someone who could. It was always nice to see comments posted thanking me for helping or for figuring out where they can go to find the answer. To me, this meant I was actually making a difference in someone else’s academic journey.
I wouldn’t say that anything unexpected happened during the activities I volunteered for. I would have to say that making the connections and meeting the people that I have over the years was my expectation. I wanted to create a larger network of people — not only for my usage, but that I can refer others to.
Absolutely. I love spending time on and off campus working with the group of people I have had the privilege to work with over the years. It is almost like a family reunion when we are able to meet up and work the events. Our goal is to make every SNHU student and their family’s experience as SNHUper as possible.
Of course! I try to encourage others to get involved with volunteering by talking with them at the events I am participating in. I connect with them by chatting about my reasons of why I like doing what I’m doing and let them know if they really want to get the full-circle experience at SNHU, then volunteering is a great way to do that.
Past Volunteer Spotlight Honorees
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