"Unusual Combinations"—Nick French '08

By Josh Tysiachney

During a speech at his high school graduation, Nick French '08 told classmates, "Opportunities will become plentiful, all we must do is seize them."

French didn't realize then how quickly those words would ring true once he became a student at Allegheny.

As one of the first freshmen selected to participate in the College's Bonner Leader program, he committed to provide more than six hundred hours of service to a community organization, America Reads. But an unexpected staffing change there left French—who had been on campus just two weeks—in charge of the literacy program, which connects Allegheny students with children from Meadville-area elementary schools.

Suddenly he was responsible for managing the program's budget, five tutoring sites, and more than twenty student volunteers—many of whom had worked with America Reads for several years. But with help from fellow students, community partners, and College staff, French learned the ropes of running a successful program.

"It was an awesome experience and it's opened so many doors for me," he says. Indeed, his two and a half years with America Reads led to a summer internship with Everybody Wins! D.C., the largest grassroots children's literacy and mentoring program in the nation's capital.

But literacy is far from French's only passion. A Spanish major and political science minor, he has assembled an unusual combination of experiential learning opportunities at Allegheny. "Nick has really taken advantage of a balanced education with both in-classroom and out-of-classroom experiences," says Dave Roncolato, Allegheny's director of community service and service learning, "and those experiences have worked well together in helping to shape who he is and what he wants to do with his life."

In summer 2005, French gained two very different perspectives on the immigration debate. He first interned with upper-level officials in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Citizenship & Immigration Services division. French then traveled to Mexico as part of a six-day study tour focusing on trade and immigration on the U.S.'s southern border. He learned firsthand how migrant workers were being affected by the policy issues he had worked on just weeks before in Washington.

The following spring French led students on a trip to VIVE La Casa, an organization in Buffalo, New York, that provides housing, healthcare, and legal services to international refugees seeking entry to Canada. Tasks like painting, caulking, and cleaning occupied much of the group's time. And French says the Allegheny group forged a bond with the refugees, involving them in projects and listening to stories of how they had come to arrive in the U.S.

"That interaction was the most important aspect of our trip," he notes. "A lot of times we tend to think of people who are from other countries as distant. It's not until you have a personal connection that you realize that they are just like you. They have the same problems, the same desires, the same struggles."

Those experiences have inspired French to redouble his efforts to learn Spanish, with the goal of studying at a university in Mexico for a year. "Other students have told me that, if you can spend an entire year down there, do it," he says, "because if you only go for a semester, once you get used to everything, it's time to go home." French in turn plans to focus his Senior Project on Mexican immigration to Pennsylvania, examining why many individuals settle in the state rather than more traditional receiving areas like Texas, Arizona, and California.

It may not seem at first glance that French's interests in community service and immigration connect. "But immigrants are among the people in the United States who have the most problems with literacy, specifically children who were foreign born," he explains.

And French appreciates the chance he's had to explore those different interests at Allegheny. "The way that everything has come together, it's made sense for me," he says. "I've been really blessed to come to a school where I've had so many different opportunities."

This is the first in a series of profiles that will focus on members of the Allegheny community—students, alumni faculty, and staff—and their unusual combinations of interests, skills and talents. To recommend someone for this feature, e-mail to magazine@allegheny.edu.