USU Engineering Student Receives National Award

The national Corps Network awarded Utah State University environmental engineering student Oscar Marquina the 2011 Corpsmember of the Year Award. Marquina is a member of the Utah Conservation Corps based out of USU’s Division of Student Services.

The Corps Network honored Marquina during an awards ceremony recently in Washington, D.C., on Capitol Hill. Marquina was chosen to represent more than 30,000 corps members across the nation. He was among only six members from the United States honored.

Marquina immigrated to the United States from Venezuela with his family in 2001. Seven years later, he was serving as one of two original crew leaders for the Utah Conservation Corps Bilingual Youth Corps.

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After serving in this position for two summers, he was promoted to senior crew leader in 2010. Marquina was instrumental in the development of this new program, which was started to meet the needs of the growing Latino community in northern Utah. His background and personal experience enabled him to understand and connect with Latino youths and their families.

He also held parent orientation meetings in Spanish and enabled potential members to complete their applications and conduct their interviews in Spanish or English. He also translated UCC materials and training resources into both languages.

In addition to encouraging corps members to pursue higher education, Marquina will graduate this year from USU with a degree in environmental engineering, with hopes of pursuing a master’s degree in the future.

He also works with Engineers Without Borders, an international program that helps create a more stable and prosperous world by addressing needs such as clean water, power, sanitation and education. He even led a trail maintenance workshop at the organization’s annual conference last fall [2010], illustrating that Marquina has become a distinguished ambassador for the work of organizations such as the Utah Conservation Corps.

For information on the Utah Conservation Corps or the UCC Bilingual Youth Corps, contact Kate Stephens, 435-797-0964 or kate.stephens@usu.edu.

Members of the Corps Networkwork on a broad range of projects, viewing themselves as the modern legacy-bearers of the legendary Civilian Conservation Corps. The CCC was started by President Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression as a means to improve the nation’s infrastructure and provide jobs and training for young men. Today the corps provides valuable experiences for young people to serve their communities. The work is broad. For instance, while Corpsmembers often do trail work on public lands, others help mentor students in schools. Some help provide disaster relief when their communities are in need of assistance. Many do a combination of these activities, as well as others including projects such as cultivating public gardens, planting trees, recycling, retrofitting homes to make them more energy efficient, offering alternative educational opportunities, helping community residents to understand their health care options, restoring wetlands, putting solar panels on houses and buildings, removing invasive plants, building playgrounds, constructing green buildings, sustainable farming, road work and firefighting.

Writer and contact: Andy Yerka, (320) 224-1296, a.yerka@aggiemail.usu.edu