Sacramento State students in COMS 105, Small Group Communications, have teamed up with News 10 to help out the community by hosting a coat drive for their class project.

Small Group Communications is a class that helps strengthen communication and working with a team and requires them to create an event or fundraiser that would benefit the community.

Communication studies junior Kae Saeteurn said the basis for this project is to not only help the community, but to learn how to work together.

“We’re supposed to learn how to work in small groups and there’s six people in the group,” Saeteurn said. “The reason why we’re doing this is so we learn how to work in a small group and we know how to apply this to your future because you rarely ever work by yourself. It benefits you in the future.”

Public relations junior Jungmin Hong said the decision to work with News 10 was because they wanted a greater impact with their event.

“We were coming up with some ideas for our project and we found out that News 10 was conducting the coat drive after researching online,” Hong said. “We thought it would be more effective if we collaborated with them rather than conducting our own coat drive.”

News 10 collaborated with the six-member group to hold the 22nd Annual Coats for Kids drive from Nov. 5-9, Hong said.

Saeteurn said the class had many other ideas on how to benefit the community, such as a Disney Day for kids or a scholarship for those wanting to study abroad, but felt a coat drive would be more effective becausepeople need coats during this time of the year.

Hong said News 10 was looking forward to working with their group to spread the awareness of their event.

“One of the event directors at News 10 (Don Deason) was really eager to work with us,” Hong said. “It was a really good idea to ask him because he was looking for help from the community.”

Saeteurn said the goal for the coat drive is to collect as many coats as possible and, most of all, to help out the community.

“Basically with the coat drive, our goal is collect 300 coats and all of the coats will go to News 10,” Saeteurn said.

“They’ll clean and wash them and then distribute them,” Saeteurn said. “It’s for families who don’t have enough money to buy coats for their kids.”

Besides the coat drive, the group held a bake sale with proceeds going to News 10 to purchase more coats for their drive, Saeteurn said.

Communication studies senior Alyssa Ruelas said the bake sale went better than the group expected and is glad for the participation of many of the students who donated.

“Our monetary goal for our bake sale was really successful,” Ruelas said. “It was set up by the Library Quad and we just collected $1 donations for each baked good that we had and those were donated from Raley’s, The Nugget, Sherry’s Bakery. Our monetary goal for that was $250 and we made $300, so we exceeded that.”

Although the coat drive and the bake sale were successful, the decision to continue on with their project was not an easy one to make since the passing of the class’ professor, Nick Trujillo. Saeteurn said the status of many of the impending projects were in the air.

“We didn’t know what was going to happen to us,” Saeteurn said. “We didn’t know what was going to happen to our events. We didn’t know if we were going to move forward with our projects. After a while, the dept. chair said we were going to move forward.”

Ruelas said the group decided to go on with their projects because it was what Nick Trujillo loved to do and would have wanted.

“We all agreed that he would be there in spirit,” Ruelas said. “If you’ve ever taken any of his classes, you would know that these were the things that he loved. When his wife died of ovarian cancer, what he did was a fundraiser in his wife’s name and that’s how he got into this and decided to incorporate it into his Small Groups Communication class. We were kind of hesitant to start working on with our project because we weren’t sure what direction the class was going, but then we decided that he would want us to finish it.”

Saeteurn said even though Trujillo passed and did not get to see his class’ finished projects, the class is still learning from him.

“(There are) so many things I’ve learned from him, despite the fact that he passed,” Saeteurn said. “(There are) a lot of different things you have to (consider) when working with a small group and I think I’ve learned a lot. Overall, it’s a great class and I’m glad I took it.“

Camille Anglo can be reached at [email protected]