HCSGA Executive Member Profile: Molly Masterson

Recently, Molly Masterson was named the Vice President of The Student Government Association at Hood College.

Masterson has plenty of responsibilities that extend beyond what your average college senior is dealing with.

Masterson’s role in SGA is to serve as the “liaison” between the Executive and Legislative branches of the HCSGA.

“I make sure that people are not only doing their jobs but getting better as well,” Masterson says of her position.

Masterson is also
roommates with SGA President Logan Samuels and as a result, the two have daily meetings because as she puts it, “that’s just convenient.”

The college senior has been involved with SGA in one way or another since her freshman year at Hood College. She was recruited by her orientation assistant who also happened to be the current SGA president at the time. She started in the position as a senator of the Student Life Committee. The following year she was promoted to Development Chair by Tim Hulyk, SGA President of the 2014 class.

“He basically took a pretty big chance in putting me in the position that I was in my sophomore year,” Masterson says. “Which was terrifying but also very nice of him because he believed in me and saw a lot of potential.”

Masterson took a hiatus from SGA in her junior year due to studying abroad in the fall semester. But even so, she remained a part of the organization because of her connections with those in office.

“I was still highly involved because all of my friends were involved,” Masterson said. Student involvement is not only an important part of Masterson’s time at Hood College, it is also a goal of hers to get the greater population of students involved in some way as well.

“I think that what I care about most is that people get involved in their local community in whatever way fits them best,” Masterson said, “whether that’s volunteering, being involved in student organizations, or diversity organizations. All types of different stuff.”

Masterson said that one of her greatest frustrations are students who do not try to be actively involved in the Hood College community in whatever capacity they can be.

“No, you’re a part of Hood,” she said, “You’re investing a lot of money, time, and tears into this place. You should be doing as much as you can to give back.”
It’s natural that Masterson would want others to give back in some degree because community service is a significant part of her life. Together with Samuels, the two developed a language program that involved working with local high school girls.

“We developed a program project through two different scholarship funds: The Davis Foundation for Peace and the Volpe Scholars,” Masterson says. “So for two years we’ve done this where we have a five week intensive program and it’s a writing project where we work with students on their English and Spanish skills. The first year they created a literary journal and the second year they created a newspaper.”

As a senior, this is what Masterson said she would like her community service work to be her legacy at Hood College along with “doing everything I can to make Hood better for the following generations.”

Masterson will graduate in the spring as a double major in archaeology and Spanish with a minor in Middle Eastern Studies.

She plans to pursue her Ph.D. in archaeology focusing on the classical archaeology of the Mediterranean. In the future she also hopes to be a professor.

How do her future plans in archeology tie in with her years of work with SGA? Masterson herself notes that the two are exactly the most obvious pairing.

“They don’t seem super related,” Masterson says, “not a lot of archaeology majors are in that [SGA]. A lot of people think I’m a Poly-Sci major. But basically the biggest thing that I’ve always loved about SGA is that it teaches you a lot of leadership skills and just being able to work with a lot of different people.”

SGA has also given her a new found respect for everything that the faculty and staff here at Hood College do for the students noting all of the “little details” that go into making things run smoothly.

“This is going to be a part of me for the rest of my life,” Masterson said.