The leaders of LEAPS have decided to make the job title of community liaison more official starting this semester, Kimberly Hyde, codirector of LEAPS,  said.

The change from volunteer LEAPS leaders to community liaisons was enacted so that the student volunteer groups would be led by someone who was familiar with the site, she said.

Community liaisons are students who act as trained leaders during the day of LEAPS, Mary Kathleen Baldwin , assistant director of community involvement & service-learning, said. Throughout the semester, community liaisons oversee interaction with student volunteers as well as the volunteering sites.

The idea of community liaisons evolved from the idea of group leaders, Hyde, a junior biology and chemistry double major,  said. Group leaders in the past were assigned to volunteering sites but at times were just as uninformed as the LEAPS volunteers about the sites the group volunteered at.

Community liaisons meet once every two weeks in order to train for the service day, community liaison Mariah Green  said. The students are trained in leadership and assigned sites by their superiors, which they must become involved in. The community liaisons contact their assigned site, and talk to them about how many volunteers and what supplies the organization may need. , Green, a sophomore biology, major,  said.

Community liaisons attend at least three volunteering opportunities on the LEAPS calendar throughout the semester, Green said.

The leaders ultimately act to help ease the burden of site control on the executive team, she said. 

Hyde  said the first deadline to become a community liaison has already passed, but the application will open again by the end of November.

LEAPS will take place on Nov. 5 and is open to the entire TCU community, including faculty, staff, students, professors and alumni, Baldwin said.

Paige Schmidt , a sophomore nursing major and community liaison for LEAPS, said she loved being a part of LEAPS because it is an event on campus that unites the entire university.

“It just helps us for that one morning or that one afternoon to fully tell Fort Worth that TCU wants to help out as a whole,” she said. 

Baldwin  said she thinks that it is important for the TCU community to realize that they are part of a larger community. It is easy to get caught up in our daily routines and to ignore the Fort Worth community that is the university’s community as well, she said. 

Students can sign up to volunteer for LEAPS through my.tcu.edu. Registration for the event ends on Nov. 1, Hyde said.