At the student involvement fair Monday afternoon, 28 new organizations will bring the total number of student groups to 735. These new organizations range from advocacy and political groups to academic social organizations, including Tee Off at Kelley and Read to Succeed.
Tee Off at Kelley lies at the intersection of golf and business. Golf has long served as a way for business executives to socialize while planning business deals, and Tee Off at Kelley is aimed at teaching its members to do just that.
Surya Vijayasankar and Aine Mattera, co-presidents of the club and juniors at IU, played golf together in high school. That’s where the idea for Tee Off at Kelley stemmed, Vijayasankar said.
“When I was playing golf in high school, there would be a lot of reserved tee time for people with business, and we would be able to network with them at times when we were both on the same hole,” Vijayasankar said.
Vijayasankar and Mattera said that the club plans to put on several golf outings and driving range sessions where they will take 20 to 30 people to practice the basics of golf. As the year goes on, they hope to work with the Kelley Student Government to put on a tournament each semester to attract alumni to come play as well.
Tee Off at Kelley was at the Kelley Carnival on Friday and will be at the Student Involvement Fair on Monday.
“We wanted to give any level golfer an experience to come on the course, practice, play and network,” Mattera said.
Among the new organizations are many volunteer-based clubs involved in the Bloomington community. Read to Succeed is a volunteer reading program that aims to help improve the reading comprehension skills of elementary school students in the area through the Boys and Girls Club of Bloomington.
Volunteers will mentor the children through guided reading sessions while creating a relationship with the young students, Read to Succeed's co-president Alex Eady said. It plans to continue to recruit and fundraise throughout the fall semester and will start its reading program in the spring.
Eady, an IU senior, said the initiative started in 2011 through the Hudson and Holland Scholars program and was open exclusively to those students. This year is the first time it will be open to all IU students.
"Seeing how this has impacted so many students, both IU students who really loved it and wanted to come back and then also the kids at the Boys and Girls Club love it so much, and that was just, we had to do something to keep it going,” Eady said.
A study of nearly 4,000 students published in 2011 by the Annie E. Casey Foundation found that students who do not read proficiently by third grade are four times more likely not to get a high school diploma, according to the study’s abstract. This study spurred Read to Succeed to action, and today it is looking for more IU students to get involved, Eady said.
Eady remembers what it was like volunteering as a freshman and sophomore in the program, having worked on the side of both volunteer and student coordinator.
“Being able to step in as an adult volunteer and say, ‘We can help you,’ for this short period of time, two days a week,” Eady said. "We can help you if you're not getting this at home."
Students can find clubs like Read to Succeed and Tee Off at Kelley at the Student Involvement Fair 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. in Dunn Meadow.
