Chanelle Brown first showed up for the National Youth Sports Program (NYSP) camp at Case Western Reserve in 2004—and she keeps coming back, year after year.
Brown has been involved with the program for 11 years—first as a camper, then as a volunteer and now as a staff member.
“She’s just an all-around ambassador,” Dennis Harris, director of NYSP, said of Brown.
Brown will meet new campers and welcome familiar faces when the program launches for another summer of education and recreation on Monday, June 8. This year, more than 500 campers will participate in the program, with some coming from as far away as the Dominican Republic and Australia.
NYSP, which has operated at Case Western Reserve University for 45 years, allows kids ages 10-16 the opportunity to get active in the summer months by participating in a variety of sports, while also learning crucial educational lessons, including health, law and math and science—a distinct feature of the program, and one that Brown has valued most over the years.
“It makes it more than just a sports camp—it makes it so much more than that,” Brown said. “It’s engaging and getting that knowledge out.”
As a camper, Brown often was reminded of the value of education, especially because one staff member often told the kids, “Knowledge is power, and the mind is a terrible thing to waste.”
Brown made sure she followed that advice. The biggest impact NYSP had on her life was with the education it provided her about health-related topics.
While she has been interested in studying health since she was young, NYSP exposed her to new issues and trends related to the topic. For the first time, she heard terms such as “food desert,” where people have less access to affordable and nutritious food, and learned about community and public health.
“It has helped me find a sense of purpose and has given me some idea of possible career fields,” she said.
To continue the education NYSP started, Brown went on to attend the University of Dayton with a dual degree in psychology and nutrition and fitness, always returning during summers to continue working with NYSP. She graduated this spring and plans to spend a year of service with AmeriCorps and go on to graduate school to pursue a master’s degree—though she’s still deciding what field.
NYSP was integral to Brown’s career not only because of what she learned, but also where she learned it.
With the program hosted on the campus of Case Western Reserve, campers are exposed to the world of academia, which, Brown said, can be inspirational.
“I absolutely loved the whole atmosphere here at CWRU,” she said. “I loved being on a college campus. I loved how a college campus could feel like its own separate bubble, but you still have this entire world around you.”
Learn more about Brown in this week’s five questions.
1. What technology do you think we should have, but don’t…yet?
I think it would be really cool if phones could project a hologram of the person you’re talking to. I don’t know how purposeful it would be because we have FaceTime and Skype, but I think it would be super interesting to have.
2. What was the most challenging part of your education?
Not comparing myself to others because everyone studies a different way, everyone learns in a different style; not putting yourself down because you didn’t get that A+ while that person next to you did; not letting those things get to you and focusing on your learning style.
3. What popular icon do you most identify with? Why?
Marianne Williamson, a poet. A lot of her work speaks to me, and I feel like we think similarly based on the poetry she’s written. Her famous poem starts: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”
4. If you could live in any other time period, which would it be?
I would have loved to live in ancient Greece—Aristotle, Plato—that era of enlightened poetry and literature and medicine and all those great thinkers. I think that would be a really awesome era to live in, if I were to be associated with those people.
5. What’s your favorite thing about Case Western Reserve?
I’d say its potential. I think CWRU has the potential to be the epicenter for a lot of great things for the city of Cleveland. I love that CWRU produces such bright thinkers.