Episode 24: An Engineering Student Makes Happiness His Crusade

November 14, 2011, 10:55 pm

“What we do is targeted toward making people smile.”

Alex Wilson

Northwestern University

In this episode, we hear from Alex Wilson, a senior at Northwestern University, who tells us why he co-founded a Happiness Club on his campus—and explains how the club goes about trying to spread joy.

About this series: Say Something collects stories from college students about what they’re up to and why. Check for new episodes every three weeks. View more episodes.

Photo: Courtesy of Alex Wilson Music: Theme courtesy of John Gravois

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raza_khan

Hi Alex

I am intrigued. What kind of support and funding did the club receive from Student Life office? What are some of your events? Is it only for Engineering students?

Okay… here is my smile of the day Can I join too?

Raza
__________________________
Raza Khan, Ph.D.
Dr.Raza.Khan@gmail.com
dabuchanan

Interesting idea! A friend and I were just discussing a similar club for folks over 50 who can’t quite achieve happiness in our personal life.
aderyn

Sounds fascinating! I would love to hear more about your club if you get it going. Lately I’ve noticed a disturbing absence of happiness among young people and I suspect part of the reason is they don’t see too many genuinely happy adults. Happiness is something we all should aspire to. It isn’t a selfish aspiration as many in our generation seem to think ~ happy people make other people happy and the converse is also true.
http://twitter.com/mfriedlieb Mary Friedlieb

Dr. Khan and anyone else interested:

I’m an alum of NU and was active in a lot of various student groups over the years. Although it’s been MANY years since I was a student, I just did a quick surf thorugh the NU website (www.northwestern.edu) and Google for terms like “ASG” and “funding,” etc. I’m sure if you searched long enough, you’d find the governing bylaws/documents of the Associated Student Government (ASG) that lays out how things are funded at a policy level. But, I also came across this fairly recent article from “The Daily Northwestern” (student-run paper) that does a good job of explaining where/how the money comes from: http://www.dailynorthwestern.com/campus/demystifying-asg-s-student-group-funding-process-1.2269613

Basically, ASG receives a funding pool each year from sourced from the “Student Activity Fee” assessed to all students. Based on bylaws/rules, the ASG maintains and manages all ASG approved and recognized student groups. This includes providing funding out of that pool for these groups. (As an example, one of the officially recognized groups I was a part of in my undergrad days in the ’80′s was the Rula Lenska Fan Club – I’m still a card carrying member – that we submitted for recognition to ASG, got that recognition, and got a small pool of money from ASG to support our “events.”) All pretty standard representative democracy kinda’ stuff and by-in-large, the central administration stays out of it all unless there are some sort of potential liability issues.

As for Alex’s Happy Club, sounds like they’ve also been creative to obtain additional funding from grant opportunities and/or collections/donations. Real-life lessons and learning in action for starting and maintaining groups, something I’m proud of as an alum to have been a party to and to see it’s still alive and well all these years later.
blesstayo

Everybody at any college campus can make use of the “smile” from a “Happiness Club” as the final exams approach and the economy continues to be unpredictable.
alexwilson

Thanks everyone for the positive feedback! If you would like to learn more about Happiness Club at Northwestern or get in touch with me, please email me at alex@happinessclub.org.

Alex
http://twitter.com/Steve_Sass Steve Sassaman

Love this! It made me smile.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=526823002 Robin Perry Jeffers

Very interesting. Nice to see that someone is trying to make the campus a happier place. Engineering students are natural problem solvers. He saw a need and went about trying to solve it. Good job!
hananeh7777
youlinglvzhu

like