What started at Texas A&M University in the late 1980s found its way to Baker University in 2011 and ultimately led to one big day, one big thanks and one big event.

The Big Event, a day filled with students participating in community service, took place for the second year in a row Saturday at different venues in Baldwin City.

“Two students that attended an Emerging Leader’s Summit revitalized Baker Serves on campus,” Brett Bruner, director of student life, said. “That is what led Baker to have the Big Event on campus.”

Baker was the 75th school to join in the Big Event to show the university’s appreciation for the community.

“The goal is to go out into the community and do as much as community service as possible for the community around us to show that we care and we support them as much as the community supports us,” freshman Liz Louden said.

The Baker Serves committee has been working on this event since the beginning of the school year.

“We have worked on the event all year, starting with pre-ordering T-shirts, but the biggest part of the planning came with the start of the spring semester and even more after spring break,” sophomore Sierra Wallace said.

Students had the opportunity to pre-register for the day of service.

“On the registration form, students had an area where they can share their preference on what type of job they do,” Louden said. “Pre-registering gave the students better chances of going to the job site they preferred.”

The job sites were all in the Baldwin City, Ottawa and Lawrence areas.

Bruner said this year the number of job sites increased to 13. The opportunities to serve ranged in areas of work.

Louden said there were many opportunities to stay in town and serve at places such as the food pantry, public library and two nursing homes. There were also many manual labor jobs for students wanting to work with their hands.

“We had a few groups go to the community garden in Baldwin, as well as many farms in the area,” Bruner said.

While most of the jobs were day jobs, one group of students did their community service at night. A few students went to the Baldwin Elementary School Carnival to volunteer.

About 140 students participated in the Big Event, which is an increase in student participation.

“Our hope is that the number of participants keeps rising every year,” Bruner said.

Despite the large number of students who participated, some who registered had to back out due to scheduling conflicts.

“There were many student-athletes that couldn’t participate because of conflicts with sports,” Wallace said. “Regardless, it worked out in the end and we had a great day and we, as a whole, got a lot accomplished for the community.”