Major Project 1 reflection post

Here at Liberty, everyone stands behind the mission to create Champions for Christ. This message stands as the foundation for what drives the university forward.

In every department, faculty and students look to this motto for inspiration and to understand their purpose for studying at Liberty. One way that Liberty creates the championship mindset is pushing students to use their academic studies as a platform for advancements in the Kingdom of God.

Because of this mindset, the Engineering Missions and Research club was developed by students and engineering professors, creating an outlet for engineering students to make an impact through what they can create. This club stands as a way for future engineers to get involved with missions work by assessing the need of an organization that helps people in other countries and creating a solution to their problem. All of the students involved joined the club because they wanted to use their skills in engineering and actually impact people around the world, sharing the Gospel through these inventions.

For the Major 1 project, I wrote a feature story about this club and what they do. I talked with the club president and other members of the club, hearing their heart behind the work they do and why it is important for them to be involved.

Currently the club is focusing on providing alternative power generators for churches in Venezuela, creating a water-filtration system for an orphanage houseboat in Cambodia and partnering with Hope to Walk, an organization that provides prosthetics to people in third-world countries that cannot afford them. Through these projects, each engineering student gains experience in helping real people along with living out their call for missions work.

This idea for the project fell into my lap when a girl on my hall told me about this club she was apart of. Liberty is always pushing their students to get involved into missions, but I often think we forget how every single department on campus can play a role in impacting people for Christ with the academic gifts they obtain. In this club are a group of engineers who are just as passionate about missions works as global studies majors, yet can impact people around the globe in a unique way — through engineering.

My idea for the project stayed the same throughout the entire process of developing the story. In terms of social media emphasis, I did not have time to create the promotion videos I envisioned at the beginning, but I still thought out a logical social media campaign that I wanted to use for the piece. Overall, everything worked out in terms of connecting with sources and completing the story on time.

I enjoyed writing this story and sharing the hearts behind this club that not many Liberty people know about. I would choose this option again, but I think for the next project I will choose a different option to branch outside of my comfort zone of writing stories.