Jocelyn Chavous ’17
Until Messiah College reached out to Jocelyn Chavous to ask her to join the basketball team, she’d never heard of the school that was less than two hours west of where she grew up.
“Listen to your gut,” she said. “After visiting other schools, I thought, ‘I want to be at Messiah.’”
A Martin Scholar, she jumped right in to the college experience. She served on the Student Government Association as the vice president of diversity affairs and as a work-study for the assessment of student learning. With the women’s basketball team, she traveled to the Dominican Republic with AROMA to show the love of Christ through sports by visiting orphanages and nursing homes.
“The Dominican Republic opened my eyes to feeling and sensing God,” she said. “A language I didn’t know, my first time out of the country. I could feel Him there and this overwhelming peace.”
The AROMA trip gave her the confidence to travel even farther from home. With the sociology and anthropology department, she flew to Fiji to work with Give Clean Water to maintain water filter systems. She then returned to the U.S. to join the Civil Rights Bus Tour, talking to leaders along the way.
“Messiah College has provided many opportunities for me in life, helping me discover who I am and what I want to do,” she said.
This fall, she is attending graduate school at Shippensburg University to major in counseling and student personnel. She says she hopes to one day work in student affairs at a school or university.