Silberman College of Business Students Give Back on Winter Service Trip

By Rebecca Maxon

March 10, 2025 — A group of students from FDU’s Silberman College of Business recently participated in a service trip to the Tampa Bay area in Florida.

The collaborative effort was spearheaded by Fiorella Merriman, a Florham Campus senior digital marketing major pursuing a masters in data analytics; Mary Sakin, Silberman assistant dean for corporate partnerships and student success; and Paige Soltano, Silberman director of placement and outreach.

Service learning “is an opportunity to give back to a community, to help those that are less fortunate in ways you might not think of when you are in class or at home,” says Soltano.

In 2024, on winter break, a group of students headed to Puerto Rico to volunteer with the Boys and Girls Club of Puerto Rico, the Scuba Dog Society, the Sociedad Pro Hospital del Niño, and more.

“I think on trips like these, the students learn that this isn’t just one and done,” says Sakin. “This is the type of person you should be, and you should continue giving back to the community.”

This year, students volunteered at Metropolitan Ministries and Feeding Tampa Bay and completed a shoreline clean up.

At Metropolitan Ministries, a nonprofit that offers food, shelter and support to homeless families and individuals in need, Amaya Garcia, a senior marketing major at the Florham Campus, and Merriman worked in the kitchen preparing lunches and snacks. “A woman who works at the Ministries said, ‘I know this is hard work, but just think, you are feeding 3,000 people today,’” says Garcia. Other students took out the trash or worked in the organization’s thrift store sorting donations and pricing items.

“I’m a commuter student and not as active as I’d like to be. I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to meet new people and to network with other students in business,” says Victoria Neri-Corrales, a junior marketing major the Metropolitan Campus.

At Feeding Tampa Bay, a food bank, the students sorted food, discarded expired products and displayed the food on racks to be distributed.

“At the end of the day, they told us we helped sort 6,000 pounds of bread,” says Merriman, which went toward 5,000 meals for the community.

At their beach clean-up in Pinellas County, students removed and discarded 188 pounds of garbage from the Gandy Beach Mangroves shoreline.

And their volunteer efforts haven’t stopped since the group returned to New Jersey.

Floham Campus sophomore and accounting major Stifen Cedeno is working with his fraternity, Kappa Sigma, to develop volunteer opportunities at local food banks.

“It was fulfilling to see the trips come together,” says Merriman. “It really shows the impact you can have, both with your schools and in these other communities.”