There is spring break and then there is Alternative Spring Break. And by “alternative,” The University of Texas at Dallas Office of Student Volunteerism means, “Go work for free at a place—often far away—to help a nonprofit community fulfill its mission.”

Alternative Spring Break also means no beach parties or late nights strolling streets packed with other spring breakers. For the six students who went to Camp Summit in Paradise, Texas, it meant staying in cabins, building a miniature golf course for future campers and packing meals at local food banks. Their evenings were spent walking through the pitch-black woods, listening to coyotes in the distance and warming up near a firepit. Since 1947, Camp Summit has provided barrier-free outdoor experiences for children and adults with disabilities.

Max Gonzales, a business analytics senior in the Naveen Jindal School of Management who was student site leader for the Camp Summit trip, spent two months before the trip organizing details that covered everything from departure time from campus to accommodating dietary restrictions of participating college students to building consensus for the “fun event” for this ASB crew.

ASB serves three purposes for students, said Mark Este, UTD director of student volunteerism: leadership training, relationship building and supplemental education. Jindal School undergraduates get the added benefit of fulfilling 50 hours of their graduation-required 100 hours of community service with nonprofits.

Este said ASB follows the Asset-Based Community Development model. “We link micro-assets (volunteer students) to macro-environments. We don’t have students go on these trips to save a community or fix a community. We’re going to help build upon these organizations’ success in ways that help them achieve their mission.”

More than 70 UTD students from across the campus participated in 10 different Alternative Spring Break trips in March, which spanned everything from hiking trail maintenance in the San Juan Islands west of Seattle to planting trees in New Orleans.

For the Camp Summit crew, the work was camp maintenance, packing boxes at local food banks and some interaction with special needs campers. Each evening, ASB crew members shared personal “thorns and roses” of the day—what was their least favorite aspect of the day and what was their best moment. Thorns ran the gamut of “too cold outside” to “not enough opportunities to work with the special needs campers.” (Campers weren’t in residence during spring break week.) Even so, the UTD crew’s “rose” was that the week exceeded expectations, especially in terms of comradery and learning about Camp Summit’s mission. “I think it was a really good trip,” Gonzales said. “It definitely exceeded my expectations.”