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Students work with Mahoning County Prosecutor to help share work to community

By Staff report

December 28, 2023 12:08 PM

The Mahoning County Prosecutor’s Office The Mahoning County Prosecutor’s Office Mahoning Matters

For the 2023 Fall Semester, Mahoning County Prosecutor Gina DeGenova along with other members of her staff, collaborated with the Sokolov Honors College at Youngstown State University to give students some insight into the work of the Mahoning County Prosecutor’s Office and its role in the community.

Prosecutor DeGenova worked with Mollie Hartup, director of Sokolov Honors College at YSU, to develop the course material as an experiential learning opportunity for students in Hartup’s Magazine Editing and Production honors seminar.

What happened during the program?

Throughout the semester, students in the course met with key individuals in the Prosecutor’s Office, attended site visits and worked with office staff to develop stories outlining functions of the office.

Selected stories included:

• Understanding the training process for the Prosecutor’s Office comfort therapy dog Hope.

• The role of the Prosecutor’s office in the response to the February 2023 East Palestine Train Derailment.

• The positive collaborative work with the Mahoning County Drug Court.

The students’ stories will be published on the Prosecutor’s Office website and in the quarterly Justice Journal.

The students also worked to organize a Dec. 5 press conference announcing the partnership to the media.

“Research has shown that engaging youth in community initiatives can help build skills and networks that can assist them in the future. I enjoyed working with Professor Hartup and her students this semester and I hope they found the experience as rewarding. I look forward to continued partnerships in the future,” DeGenova said.

The Office of Community Engagement at YSU has increased student engagement in the Mahoning Valley through community partnerships. The goal of these partnerships is to establish mutually beneficial relationships with local organizations and businesses to create more experiential learning opportunities for YSU students.

This will culminate in YSU’s application to the Carnegie Foundation Elective Classification for Community Engagement.

“We appreciate being able to partner to provide these opportunities to extend the learning of these students

in support of community organizations’ missions,” said Amy Cossentino, dean of the Sokolov Honors College and associate provost for Strategy and Engagement. “We welcome future opportunities for collaboration.”

Local non-profits, businesses, and government entities interested in developing partnerships to support YSU’s community engagement efforts are encouraged to contact communityengagement@ysu.edu.