The Spirit to Serve

Twenty-five years ago the School of Management took on the Marriott name. Students, alumni, faculty, and friends marked this anniversary by putting into action the school’s spirit to serve during the 2013–14 academic year. For every hour of service a blue tennis ball was placed inside the Tanner Building’s glass M installation. The giant M quickly began turning blue as groups assembled to build, clean, and teach. Yet some of the most poignant examples of service were often small-scale heroics brought about by one person’s desire to give.

A Different Kind of Flexibility

Lacey Ellsworth
MBA Spouse Association Member
23 hours

All the bending required in yoga might seem too much for someone with hip problems, but downward dogs are just what Megan Harris needs to soothe her aches. Lucky for her budget, Lacey Ellsworth—whose husband, Aaron, is a current MBA student—teaches a free yoga class. “You can tell she truly loves it,” Harris says of her instructor. Indeed, that’s easy to sense about Ellsworth, who enjoys helping heal more than just physical pains.

Ellsworth’s journey to teaching yoga began when she was diagnosed with postpartum depression after the birth of her fourth child. “I had extreme anxiety, and I didn’t know what was wrong,” she says. “It was frustrating for me and my family. I found that yoga was really beneficial. I could find release; I could find calm.”

After achieving greater peace within herself, Ellsworth wanted to give back. Through the MBA Spouse Association, she volunteered to organize a free yoga class for other association members and anyone in the community. During the campaign she gave twenty-three hours of service. Every Monday morning she arrived at class ready to offer students the chance to develop better health and happiness, despite the individual challenges they may face.

Although the handstands and balances seem most challenging, Ellsworth readily says her favorite yoga pose is shavasana. “It’s perhaps the easiest and yet the hardest pose at the same time,” she says. “All you have to do is lie there, yet it’s hard because all you have to do is lie there. It’s the pose where you learn to let go.”

Though letting go can be tough, that opportunity is just what she hopes to give her students. With each deep breath, she too is learning how to embrace letting go.

Getting Into the Game

Maria Weber
1996 Business Management Graduate
28 hours

In the little farming town of Parma, Idaho, locals know Maria Manzanares Weber is not a pushover. The 1996 business management alumna works for what she wants and isn’t afraid to call it as she sees it. And that makes her the perfect dodgeball referee. 

Since the Marriott 25 kickoff, Weber has put in twenty-eight hours coordinating activities for the elementary and middle schools in tiny Parma, hoping to ensure her children have the same opportunities that she had growing up in Salt Lake City. Though she has taken part in many events, her bravest stunt was refereeing the Parma Middle School dodgeball fundraiser. 

Thirty-four teams made up of middle schoolers, teenagers, parents, aunts, and uncles competed in the tournament, which rushed by in a flurry of foam balls as the spectators watched from the bleachers. Weber was asked to keep the games under control. It was no small task: “We’re a little competitive out here,” she admits. 

Not every player walked away a champion, but the school certainly won out. The event raised $4,000 from entry fees and concession sales, which was then doubled with a matching grant. The resulting $8,000 will help the school replenish their athletic uniforms—some of which are high school hand-me-downs more than twenty years old—as well as fund educational field trips and prizes for students who reach academic goals. 

No matter what comes flying at her, Weber sees her school involvement as a way of life. “I figured that because our kids are going to go to school, we might as well help make it the school we want it to be,” she says. “It’s all about making our community a great place for our kids to grow up.”

Trimming and Chatting

Stan Hollingshead
2001 MPA Graduate
4 hours

The Marriott School’s anniversary provided Stan Hollingshead and his wife, April, with a golden opportunity to teach their children the spirit of service. When Hollingshead helped his neighbor Sherlene Eyre trim her trees, he enlisted help from his thirteen-year-old daughter, Maisy. For four hours they worked in the yard alongside Eyre. Though Stan did most of the trimming, Maisy helped by getting to know Eyre, chatting with her about everything from Maisy’s gluten allergy to Eyre’s plans for a date night with her husband. 
Hollingshead describes their conversation as “just chitchat,” but the simplicity of it taught his daughter a valuable lesson.

“Maisy realized there are people she can help just by spending a little bit of time with them,” Hollingshead says. “When we left, Maisy was in a really good mood. She had a lot of fun just talking and working with Sherlene.”

In addition to his family’s service, Hollingshead—who received a bachelor’s in psychology from BYU in 1999 and an MPA in 2001—invited others to catch the spirit of serving by sharing information about the campaign through social media. He feels that the Marriott 25 was the sort of thing worth posting on Facebook. Offline, he and his family are on the lookout for more opportunities to serve.

“Knowing that the service drive is going on just makes you more aware,” he says.
Yard work, however, is one of those things that’s never really finished. Although the Marriott 25 campaign ended, Stan is keeping his pruners at the ready. “Sherlene is my neighbor,” he says. “Helping her is a natural thing.”

Sky-High Service

Maile Garrett
Accounting Junion
3 hours

Thousands of miles in the air, two friends from Arlington, Texas, were en route to a wedding. Stuck within the confines of a 757, one turned to the other with a simple question: “Will you help me with my budget?”

For the rest of the flight Maile Garrett patiently walked her friend, Janine Halversen, through Excel. Garrett is an accounting undergrad and a personal finance whiz—just the person Halversen needed as a public relations major who admits to getting a D+ in accounting. 

“I was extremely naive as to what my monthly spending habits were before getting Maile’s help,” Halversen says. “She helped me to rein it all in. I am now obsessed with keeping my budgeting spreadsheet updated.”

After the trip Garrett realized that her informal service counted in the drive to fill up the Tanner’s big M. She feels that one hour of service represents time spent using her skills for good. “It has really helped Janine. She now knows what she can cut back on, so she has been able to pay off her debt,” Garrett says. 

Budgeting comes naturally for Garrett, who has kept a current sheet of her income and expenses since her first job. Her balance-loving mindset found its match when she discovered the Marriott School’s accounting program. “I took Accounting 200 and it just clicked,” she says. “I wanted to study accounting because it matters.”

After her initial in-flight budget training, Halversen requested Garrett’s help again—this time for managing her wedding expenses. Garrett set the groundwork, gathering data and averaging the costs of four of their friends’ weddings. Having an accurate idea of potential costs has been a huge relief for Halversen, but it’s just icing on the cake since Garrett has already prepped her to navigate future financial decisions. 

“It’s nice having a friend who is willing to share her talents,” Halversen says. “I felt completely comfortable showing Maile my expenses because I knew she would only want to help.”

Whenever the Call May Come

Brian Hill
Recreation Management Professor
89 hours

Sometimes Brian Hill worries about whether he’ll be able to wake up when the call comes. But when his pager goes off in the middle of the night, the adrenaline pushes all grogginess aside—someone’s life is on the line. A volunteer on the Utah County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue team, he readies his gear and departs into the darkness.

Hill, a recreation management professor, clocked eighty-nine hours of service during the Marriott 25 campaign—climbing mountains, dodging avalanches, and leading the search and rescue team as its current president. For the past five years, Hill has been hiking and rappelling with an army of about fifty volunteers. In addition to training five to ten hours every month, team members respond to about 125 emergency calls each year and pay for their own gear and transportation. 

“These are the most amazing people I have ever been around,” Hill says. “They give a lot of themselves, and their families make a sacrifice for them to be involved. We usually have twenty-five people show up to each call. Nobody really has the manpower that the volunteer search and rescue team does.”

The number of volunteers makes all the difference when navigating cliffs, deserts, lakes, rivers, and caves. “If you can think of a type of terrain, we probably have it in Utah County,” Hill says. He and the team are prepared to handle a range of calls. Most often they help rescue injured people, providing medical care and evacuating them from backcountry areas. Other missions require them to search for lost people and perform recoveries when fatal accidents occur.

“We help people who are lost and hurt, but we also help their families a great deal too,” says Hill. Imagine one family’s worry when a man and his ten-year-old son didn’t return from their snowmobiling trip last January. Hill was among the team who started up American Fork Canyon in search of the overdue pair. Though it took all night to find the father and son, the two returned home safely that morning. “It was a long night,” remembers Hill, “but it came with a pretty good feeling.”

Though there are many safe rescues, Hill has also witnessed tragedies. Still, he remains committed to the team. 

“A lot of people make unwise decisions that get them into trouble,” he says. “You can become jaded, but I think that you just set that aside and say, ‘I’m not the person to make a decision about if they should be helped or not. This is what I signed up to do. I’m going to go help.’” 

Hill considers the search and rescue team his hobby: “This is what I’m choosing to do instead of watching TV—or sleeping,” he jokes. His service often leaves him pretty tired, but for those he’s rescued, it means another night’s rest safe at home. 

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Article written by Katie Pitts Olson
Photography by Bradley Slade