Page 71 - WilmU - Spring 2017

Career Services’ DSHINING STAR
elaware ACE Women’s Network awarded Wilmington University Career Service Associate KIM PLUSCH the Rising Star Award.
Plusch joined WilmU in 2015. Within six months, she increased
student engagement by 100 percent among graduate students at the Wilson Graduate Center. She also helped revamp Career Services’s Mentoring program by increasing its database by 85 percent and assisted in creating a job-shadowing program with Employer Advisory Board members.
“I’m incredibly honored and humbled to be recognized during my first year with WilmU,” says Plusch. “To be working with such an amazing and supportive team in the Career Services Office is really the best reward.”
“Kim works tirelessly to help students match their degree programs with a suitable career choice,” says Dr. Regina Allen-Sharpe, assistant professor for the College of Business and senior director of Career Services & Student Life. “She was the best choice for the Rising Star award because she looks for ways to be more efficient.”
Plusch graduated from WilmU in 1995 with an M.S. in Human Resources Management. WU
SPRING 2017 69
Alumna Helps Create ‘’
SBundlesof Warmth
HAWNA WAINRIGHT, who earned a master’s in Marketing Management from Wilmington University in 2014, estimates that over the years she has donated nearly 4,000 hours to various charities. In one of
her latest efforts, she led a group of senior citizens in a project to make winter just a bit less harsh for the homeless.
Wainright works part-time at a ladies boutique in Greenville, Del., and she was struck by the hundreds of plastic bags that went into the store’s trash each week.
“I thought there must be a way to reuse and recycle the bags, as well as used plastic grocery bags,”she says.
So she Googled “uses for plastic bags” and was excited to discover that the bags could be crocheted into plastic mats for the homeless. Next, she contacted the Mid-County Senior Center near her home in Pike Creek, Del., and organized a group of seniors who worked through most of last summer to create 25 water-resistant sleeping mats that keep the homeless from lying directly on cold concrete sidewalks. Wainright says each 6-feet-by-4-feet mat required 500 bags.
She then worked with The Ministry of Caring in Wilmington, where the mats were combined with socks and handmade scarves to make “bundles of warmth” that were delivered to the inner-city homeless. WU
PHOTO BY RON DUBICK
Kim Plusch
ERROL E PHOTOGRAPHY