Silver Wings is a national community service and personal development organization that is reopening a chapter at CWU.  The CWU James Kelly Chapter is looking to get officially recognized and gain new members.
Megan Griffin, a Spanish education major, is one of the Silver Wing members looking for recruits.
Even though Silver Wings is heavily involved in ROTC, it is still a civilian group.
In order to be an official chapter, a majority of the members should be civilians, which makes ROTC members the minority within the organization.
“ROTC is kind of in the corner of campus … we’re a mystery, so having civilians be part of that group can help build a bridge between the student body and ROTC,” Griffin explained.
Silver Wings is the sister organization of the Arnold Air Society, which is an ROTC Honors group.
Griffin wants to make it clear that even though Silver Wings teams up with the Arnold Air Society for numerous events and conferences, civilians are still welcome.
According to the Arnold Air Society and Silver Wings website, “Silver Wings is a national, co-ed, professional organization dedicated to creating proactive, knowledgeable and effective civic leaders through community service and education about national defense.”
Being a service organization, Silver Wings is dedicated to volunteering its time, and community service is a big part of that.
Some of their past activities have included singing Christmas carols and decorating the living quarters at Hearthstone Cottage, a retirement home in Ellensburg.
The club has also teamed up with Habitat for Humanity and have volunteered at cycling competitions that come through Ellensburg, where they helped sign people in and pass out water.
In addition to  volunteering, Silver Wings also offers members opportunities for personal growth.
“Personal development is really important to all college students,” Griffin said. “We go to national conferences every year.”
At these conferences, organization members get the chance to talk to CEOs.
Not only do they get to ask questions, but they get the opportunity to create contacts that could help them in the future.
These are opportunities that Griffin said can help make or break someone’s future.
“The President of SpaceX came to our national convention last year and talked about how they had just made a self-launching rocket that can launch itself and land back down, which is really cool,” Griffin added.
Lydia Bettridge, a junior and clinical physiology major, said she was interested in the club even though she is not an ROTC student.
“I think joining Silver Wings would be fun. I have a lot of ROTC friends and this is a way I can support them while also getting community service hours,” Bettridge said. “I enjoy volunteering and this seems like a great way to get involved with more things on campus.”  Silver Wings