From Feb. 20 to Feb. 23, National Honors Society (NHS) stood by the school entrances with boxes and signs, encouraging students to donate their used books. This effort was part of a used book drive organized by the club, with all donations going towards the AAUW book drive occurring later this spring. 

All books collected from the drive will be donated to the larger AAUW-led book drive occurring from May 11 to 14 at the Penn State Agricultural Arena. The American Association of University Women, or AAUW, is a nonprofit organization that promotes equity for women through education, advocacy, and research. 

“AAUW is an organization, it’s not just a State College organization, but they have a State College branch here. Basically, they provide a lot of opportunities for women, especially within education,” NHS vice president Sam Li said. “So, the books that we donate go to a book sale, and then they’ll sell the books to the public. And then, the money that they get from selling the books goes towards opportunities for women, like scholarships and things like that.”

This mission aligns with NHS’ four core pillars: scholarship, service, leadership, and character, particularly the service and scholarship components. 

“Well, [the book drive] aligns with the pillar of scholarship because of AAUW’s principles of empowering women to seek educational opportunities,” NHS advisor Jen Rand said. “It’s also service to the community in that the book sale is an opportunity for community involvement, and further, it allows our NHS members to engage in a service opportunity.” 

The event involved participation from many NHS members, from the leadership team to normal club members. 

“One of the big things is we need people at the upper entrance and the lower entrance collecting books in the morning,” NHS vice president Sam Li said. “So there’s like five people per day, five at the upper and five at the lower, and we’ve had members sign up for days that they can come and kind of stand and advertise at the tables.”

The club leadership hoped that having students working the tables would encourage fellow students to contribute their used books. While the club didn’t have a specific goal for the amount of books they hoped to receive, they believed students would support their cause. 

“Last year, we did get a lot of books from—like we weren’t expecting this—but we got books from students, but like also a lot of teachers brought in books, so I think we definitely got more [books] than we expected,” NHS president Elsie Umbel explained. “I think we’re hoping this year that kids at the entrances will be very loud and enthusiastic, so more students coming in will remember to bring in their books.” 

Meeting and encouraging the NHS pillars is a main goal for the club, so they hold many service projects throughout the year, supporting both the immediate State High community but also larger community efforts like AAUW. 

“Most of our club initiatives are looking for ways that we can benefit students in State High, so we don’t typically do a lot of outreach [beyond State High],” Umbel said. “But, one of the ways that we do [community outreach] in the club is that we encourage community service both in the club and out of the club. So, since service is one of the core pillars, we kind of encourage students to go out and look for their own ways to serve the community.” 

In addition to the drive, NHS’s service projects this year include creating hand-made ‘thank you’ turkeys for teachers, packing cookies for staff members, and organizing the ongoing Lion’s Closet and Peer Tutoring Center. These initiatives not only benefit the larger State High community but serve the club’s members in invaluable ways. 

“Enabling students and providing them with the opportunity to work toward [the NHS pillars] and really to, to not only achieve them, but continue to push themselves to go further in all of these areas, I think will allow us societally to have stronger, more engaged citizens,” Rand said. 

While the Lion’s Closet and Peer Tutoring Center are ongoing, NHS hopes to do more service projects throughout the spring. To stay updated on their events, follow @statecollegenhs.