This leap year, Amarillo College is celebrating its purposeful values: Family, Fun, Innovation, Wow and Yes through a special series we're calling by Leaps and Bounds.

Bookending the intro to their Turn Center video are, from left, Victoria Taylor-Gore, Marissa King and Brent Cavanaugh.

Opportunities for Amarillo College students to do a little résumé building through unpaid internships abound. However, those that pertain to service-learning are the ones Victoria Taylor-Gore, dean of AC’s School of Creative Arts, truly Values.

Take Bruce Moseley, no stranger to the AC Family, who requested the sort of Innovation he knew the College could generate. Taylor-Gore, ever a proponent of AC’s Culture-of-Caring, naturally said Yes.

The result was a Fun and heart-warming five-minute video meant to Wow those in attendance April 1 at Turn Center’s annual Celebration of Hope fundraiser.

And wow them it did. Turn Center, a non-profit that provides physical, occupational, and speech therapy services to children across the Panhandle, enjoyed it’s most lucrative gala ever.

“In the five years of this event, which is our biggest fundraiser of the year, this was easily our most successful,” said Moseley, who last summer relinquished his role as coordinator of AC’s Legal Studies Program to become executive director at Turn Center. “We had an incredible 40-percent increase in giving this year. That’s huge,” he said. “The video was a highly important piece of our fundraising effort, no doubt.

“I’m so thankful to Vicky for so graciously agreeing to spearhead this effort, and to Brent Cavanaugh and their enthusiastic intern, Marissa. It was a lot of work that clearly made a difference.”

Cavanaugh, instructor of photography, and intern Marissa King of AACAL, served as videographers and interviewed the many Turn Center therapists featured in the short film. Taylor-Gore spent many hours editing the slick video.

Maybe it padded the résumé of only one AACAL student thus far (there was a need to expedite this initial project), but it appears to have opened the door to many – AC students and faculty, alike – who will be given the chance to participate in future publicity needs of Turn Center. The School of Creative Arts has decided to “adopt” the entity that “turns lives around, one success at a time.”

“We were thrilled to do the video, but Bruce also asked us to consider projects related to graphic design, printed materials, posters, even a Christmas brochure,” Taylor-Gore said. “These are opportunities that our students and faculty can take on as class projects or even on their own.

“While we don’t promote making students a resource for free labor, this is different. It’s a non-profit with a wonderful mission. It gives us a chance to promote AC’s values and at the same time involve our students in service-learning activities that, yes, will look good on a résumé, but in more ways than one.”

Cavanaugh agrees. “Students can come away with good portfolio materials while having spent valuable time learning graphic-design techniques or how to operate video or photography equipment in a real-world situation and for an excellent cause,” he said. “Turn Center will present opportunities and, if they fit in the curriculum, great.”

AC was a Turn Center partner of sorts long before Moseley asked for help with publicity. The Occupational Therapy Assistant Program has for years sent students to the Center, where they’ve completed fieldwork requirements along the way to certification. Some Turn Center therapists got their start at AC.

AC is where Marissa King, the intern from ACCAL, plans to get her collegiate start next fall. Should she become immersed in yet another Turn Center project, it would surprise no one.

“It was so cool to see what those people do, how they help kids with Down syndrome and other disorders,” she said. “It’s really amazing. I had no idea. At first I was just tagging along to help out, but wow, it really opened my eyes.”

May 14, 2016