BJU set aside April 10 as a day of service to encourage students to volunteer for American Association of Christian School’s national competition being held on campus from April 9 to 11.

All morning and afternoon classes will be cancelled until 5 p.m., and students are encouraged to participate in any form of outreach with the extra time.  For three days, hundreds of high school students from across the U.S. will compete in the AACS national competition.

BJU needs students to volunteer for various positions in order to run the competition.

The speech section of the competition needs about 50 volunteers. The jobs will range from runners (individuals who are available to run errands), tabulation helpers and hall monitors to help people set up and tear down, organize paperwork for judges, give directions and answer questions.

The volunteering time slots range from one to one and a half hours and are mostly on Wednesday, although some time slots need to be filled on Tuesday and Thursday.  Anyone with a heart to serve is welcome to volunteer. If you are interested in volunteering for the speech division of the competition, look at the university-wide email Mary Ann Perez sent about AACS.

For the art section of the competition, six to 10 volunteers are needed to help move art work entries from the judging rooms to the exhibition space. Organizers prefer art and design students—especially upper-class art and design majors—to set up the art exhibition, but besides that, volunteers require no other qualifications.

Students interested in volunteering for the art section of AACS should email Jay Bopp ([email protected]), Chair of the Division of Art & Design.

The Bible section of the competition needs Bible quiz scorekeepers and judges. Though it would be helpful if students have experience with Bible quiz competitions, anyone willing to help can be trained for the volunteer positions in the Bible portion of the competition.

For the Bible competition, 25 one-hour time slots are available, starting at 8, 9 and 10 a.m. in four different rooms, plus one time slot from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. in a single room. Students can volunteer for multiple timeslots if they wish. If you are interested in volunteering for the Bible section of the competition, contact Dr. Dan Olinger, Chair of the Division of Bible.

AACS’s testing competitions has 10 time slots open for volunteers who are willing to move computers to the rooms in which the testing will be held or monitor competitors as they take their tests.

The only qualifications for volunteers are that they should be able to log into a computer and prevent cheating by observing competitors. Various time slots are available to sign up throughout the day Wednesday and on Thursday morning.

Accounting senior Matthew Myers participated in the Bible quizzes when he was in high school. Last year, when he saw AACS needed help running the Bible competition, he decided to volunteer. “Volunteering is a great way to show love to visitors and reflect well on BJU,” Myers said. “I think taking time to volunteer allows us to stop focusing on our assignments and other responsibilities and lets us focus on helping others for a while.”

Journalism and mass communication senior AJ Papagno wanted to volunteer for AACS. He had never gotten to experience the competitions in high school and was intrigued by the idea of students preparing all year for the quizzes in order to compete.

AJ said, “I think it’s always nice to help whenever there’s a need and be selfless when you can.”