Hoosier Hills Career Center

As we enter summer, what better time to reflect on the local chapter experience and prepare for the new school year. Hoosier Hills Career Center is located in south central Indiana in Bloomington. This chapter has a Health Science and Project Lead the Way route for their students to follow in preparation as future health professionals. I was a student in both Health Science 2 and Project lead the way. Hoosier Hills is proud to be 100% affiliated with all of its health science pathways. This means that every student within the Project lead the way and health sciences classes were a part of HOSA at the local, state, and national levels. During the pandemic, it was difficult for the chapter to interact with HOSA much, but HHCC remained 100% affiliated and active.

During the 2021-2022 membership year the Hoosier Hills chapter was a great example of how to stay active throughout the entirety of the year. They started off by requesting and receiving the HOSA school presentation from myself, Lucie Sorenson, at the start of the year in all of the classes. Hoosier Hills elects class officers, rather than overall chapter officers in order to maximize their co-curricular usage of HOSA in the classroom. In the fall the health science classes decided to run a canned food drive for the Hoosier Hills Food Bank and were able to send a truckload full by the end of their drive. Also in the fall other classes were involved in clothes drives and volunteering at the local facilities. Then during the winter, there was another round of service projects. The chapter has 4 classes involved, Health science 1 and 2, then the last 2 years of the Project Lead the way. At this time of the year, even with all the students stressed over finals and the holidays, each class did its own service project. For example, health science 1 did adopt a family fundraiser and the biomedical innovations class wrote letters to members of the military. Then in the spring is typically when they are most active in the community. A fun fundraiser idea that was very easy to execute was selling sweets, like brownies and cookies around valentines day, and offered an extra service of delivering them on the holidays with a note and a rose. The most notable project from the year was the chapter fundraiser event to support the current national service project, Be the Match. For this project, it was necessary to have multiple steps and processes, and a lot of communication between the members, officers, and their advisors. The event itself was a game night at the main gym of Bloomington North High School. Local members and officers hosted booths for other local students and families to enjoy a night at the carnival. One of the booths was a Be the Match information booth. We had brochures, Be the Match merchandise like hand sanitizers, masks, keychains, and more, as well as swab kits. The swab kits were used to add people to the bone marrow donation registry, so if a match were to be found the potential donor would be contacted and asked if they are interested. In order to get the supplies necessary for the Be the Match booth, the students and their advisor had to reach out to a regional representative for more information. The communication process only took a few days between arranging a conference call with the representative and the students, having the meeting, and making a plan for the next steps. After the final fundraising event, the students took the accumulated samples and shipped them back to the Be the Match foundation, using a given label, and easy setup and instructions for packaging samples. The instructions were clear enough that student ambassadors were able to run the booth and obtain samples without the need for an adult. Overall all service projects were successful in giving the students leadership experience and giving back to the community.

For many years the Hoosier Hills Chapter was guided and co-led by Mrs. Barbara Hawkins. Mrs. Hawkins worked hard for her students to keep their best interests in mind and do whatever she could to make sure her students were prepared for their future in the health field. Mrs. Hawkins loves her students and loves working with HOSA. She believed HOSA was a great way for students and teachers with mutual interest to meet, as well as further leadership developmental skills needed for health professions. Mrs. Hawkins always motivated her students to try new things and always do their best. This year Barbara Hawkins decided to retire, but before her last Indiana State Leadership conference came to an end she was honored with an Honorary Life Membership. We can not thank you enough Mrs.Hawkins for the time and effort you put into your students and HOSA as a whole.