BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – Illinois Wesleyan University senior Nick Kogelman had an integral part in helping the local chapter of Habitat for Humanity land a $30,000 grant from Google Foundation (Google.org). The Plainfield native was the main author of the grant, which will help the McLean County branch of Habitat for Humanity create and post ads on Google and all of its affiliate websites.
“I’m ecstatic,” said Kogelman, a business administration major. “It’s great to think you can work and reach out, and that work will mean something to so many other people.”
Kogelman spent the summer as an intern with the University’s State Farm Internship Program. The program pairs students in Illinois Wesleyan’s Action Research Center (ARC) with concurrent internships at State Farm Insurance Companies® and a local not-for-profit organization during the summer. “I came to college with an interest in studying business ethics, so the concept of putting together the corporate world and not-for-profits appealed to me,” Kogelman said of the ARC Program.
When paired with McLean County Habitat for Humanity, Kogelman worked on the organization’s website and helped promote events online. ARC Director Deborah Halperin suggested he assist Habitat with a grant proposal, and he immediately thought of Google.org, the the foundation side of the search-engine giant Google, Inc. “We learned about Google.org in a class I took with [Assistant Professor of Business Administration Sascha] Vitzthum,” said Kogelman. The course also introduced him to AdWords, the program Google uses to place advertisements. “It’s the program that allows sponsored ads to be matched with certain search words that are entered into the engine,” he said.