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| Students from Ulysses High School partner with KDOT staff from southwest Kansas to keep their community and highways clean for their senior service learning project. |
While
many high school seniors are focused on senior pictures, graduation
announcements and deciding what their next steps will be after high school
graduation, three Ulysses High School seniors are partnering with KDOT District
Six staff to keep their community and highways clean as part of their senior
service learning project. When Connor
Beims, Austen Everett, and David Vasquez
had an interest in a project geared towards the outdoors, Senior English
teacher, Jodi Pfingsten visited with them about the highways and KDOT’s Adopt a
Highway program. As
part of the project, Connor, Austen, and
David will be working with local organizations in Ulysses and Grant County to
revive the Adopt a Highway Program by making organizations aware of the program
and coordinating sign-ups and clean-ups in the Ulysses/Grant County area. They will be contacting all organizations
that have signed up for a route in District Six to update contact information,
to determine when the last clean-up was, and to confirm the organization’s
interest in participating in KDOTs Adopt a Highway program. According
to Pfingsten, all students at Ulysses High School are required to complete five
hours of community service each year.
During the students’ junior year Pfingsten likes to have the students
perform their five hours of community service in one area in the community so
the students begin to build relationships.
As seniors, the service project must incorporate an outside agency and
contain a project management variable which teaches students to take a big
project and break it down into smaller short-term
goals with varying responsibilities.
This helps students develop communication skills and learn how
relationships work.
According to Joe Finley, KDOTs District Six
Maintenance Engineer, many of the Adopt A Highway organizations signed up a
number of years ago and haven’t reported any clean-ups or been contacted in the
last several years. “We are excited to
have help with this program in Southwest Kansas and especially interested in
having this group of young men show an
interest in the program. We are anxious
to get their input on how we can revive the program and make it more appealing
to younger generations today”.
For more information on how you can get involved, check out our blog form earlier this year:
http://kansastransportation.blogspot.com/2017/04/adopt-highway-keep-kansas-clean.html
KDOT crew members shared what it is like to work for the agency, what
they see on a daily basis in work zones, and how to operate the various
equipment and vehicles. They encouraged them to pursue careers that
will help keep Kansas infrastructure strong and the economy growing. 
