Professor Inspires Students to Plan N.Y. Service Trip

Rousing lectures by a UCLA social welfare professor who visited ground zero after Sept. 11 were the inspiration for 100 of her students to join her in a trip to New York City next week to do volunteer work and spend money to help the city’s economy.

Two seniors did much of the organizing of the trip after listening to adjunct assistant professor Jorja Prover’s lectures. Those going will spend an average of 16 hours on the four-day trip serving food to workers at the site of the downed World Trade Center towers, working at a free holiday store for the families of victims, and helping the Salvation Army and the Red Cross.

But they will also buy Christmas gifts, go to Broadway shows and eat in some fine restaurants as they heed New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s call for Americans to visit the city and spend, spend, spend.

Sarah Morgan, 21, a history major from Sherman Oaks, said she and Staci Duncan, 21, of San Jose were among those attending Prover’s lectures after the professor went to New York to train volunteers for the Red Cross.

“Just the way she spoke really inspired me and Staci,” Morgan said. “We really wanted to go there. The two of us felt we wanted to do something rather than just saying something.”

Duncan, another history major taking Prover’s social welfare course, agreed. “We get to work at ground zero. We get to serve food to all of the relief workers, and I’m really excited about that. It’s really great to be part of a community effort to do something to help.”

Morgan said she called the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, where she had stayed on a trip she took in the eighth grade, and it offered the UCLA party a rate of $193 a night for a room housing four students. United Airlines, she said, came through with a $281 round-trip fare for each person going.

Prover approved the students’ arrangements for the volunteer work at Nino’s, the restaurant serving many of the meals at the trade center site; the Lamd Store Project; the Florence Nightingale Health Center; and other places.

The students will also be carrying a quilt that two of them, Eleanor Choi and Jean Kim, completed from the drawings of teacher Tony Osumi’s third-grade class at Wilton Place Elementary School in Los Angeles to present to students of P.S. 234, an elementary school in Manhattan.

Prover expressed delight at the plans for the trip, saying, “Sarah and Staci have both been amazing. They didn’t just talk about wanting to help. They put things into motion. They’ve even arranged for buses to pick us up at the Newark airport.

“It’s wonderful to be a teacher in this situation. It’s what you dream of. The major thing will be to actually work at ground zero. Literally, we will hit the ground running from the moment we get there, working an 11 p.m.-to-8 a.m. shift that first night.”

At the same time, the professor has encouraged the students to shop in New York as well, telling them, “Go to the theater, go eat at restaurants, go on the tours, do your holiday shopping there.”

How did she manage to galvanize her students in her lectures after coming back from her first visit to New York?

“I was overwhelmed with what occurred and what was going on there afterward,” she said. “I used the first two lectures to my class to talk to the students about it.”

Prover said she thought originally that perhaps 25 to 30 students might sign up to go, but that they are filling virtually every seat United had available on the Sunday flight.

About a quarter of those going are males, the rest females.

“We’ve got everybody from student athletes to future scientists and everybody in between,” the professor said. “It is a diverse group.”