20 TOWER | FALL 2024 Alongside Meloney and Doll-Myers is the third leg to the Designathon tripod, Kathy Traylor, the Art and Design Department secretary who is responsible for reserving the rooms for the event and coordinating meals throughout the day. “We start the morning off serving students a hearty breakfast because we want to make sure they’re well-fed, so their energy levels stay at a high for the next 12 to 16 hours,” Traylor says. “We learned over the years that we need have to high-energy foods – good, healthy foods – because Designathon is an endurance game,” Meloney says. “I also like to have a couple of games going for the students, like this year’s chair race down the hallways, just to get them out of their seats and more involved with the entire group,” Traylor says. While Traylor coordinates logistics and Doll-Myers organizes student teams and designs promotional artwork for the event, Meloney takes charge of the initial email to clients. The email reaches about 200 nonprofit groups several months before the event, inviting them to complete their Google form applications. Once they’re approved to participate, the organizations are invited to attend the opening and closing ceremonies of the event on Zoom. The opening ceremony usually begins about 9 a.m., when students meet the clients for the first time and find out what their projects are. About 9 p.m. later that day, students go back into breakout rooms on Zoom to present their final work to the client. Christi Terefenko, executive director of VOiCEup Berks, a volunteer organization dedicated to providing meaningful volunteer and service opportunities throughout the Berks County community, says that this is the organization’s first year participating in Designathon. “The team I worked with for Designathon went beyond merely creating a logo for a budding youth program. Their vision exceeded my initial proposal and inspired me to think bigger,” she says. “We will use these designs to launch a new initiative aimed at collegeage adults, helping them to connect with their community and with each other.”
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NzcxOTE=