Everyday Ut Prosim: How Ph.D. student and economic development specialist Elli Travis serves

The Everyday Ut Prosim series celebrates how Hokies live out the spirit of service on campus and off. This week, meet Elli Travis, a senior economic development specialist for the Center for Economic and Community Engagement and a doctoral student in agricultural, leadership, and community education.

In the three hours before the official start of the Better Together: Rockin’ Food Truck Rodeo in downtown Christiansburg, Elli Travis never stopped moving.

Striding the half-mile stretch of West Main Street along which 21 food trucks were parked, she asked one food truck owner to relocate a noisy generator. She wheeled the trash and recycling bins out of the flow of traffic. She trained beer tent volunteers. And right as the clock struck 3 p.m. and the rodeo opened, Travis got the recalcitrant payment machines at the drinks ticket booth to work.

As the volunteer board president of Downtown Christiansburg Inc. (DCI), Travis and her team had been planning this signature event for a year. Now, on a sunny Saturday in September, it was finally go time.

Elli stands between two other volunteers, they are chatting and Elli listens as one of her volunteers and board members talks.

_{(From left) DCI board members Emily Priddy, Elli Travis, and Alan Waters. Photo by Christina Franusich for Virginia Tech.}

_{Elli Travis has a dozen small problems to solve before the start of the rodeo. Photo by Christina Franusich for Virginia Tech.}

A close up of a walkie-talkie on the outside of a pants pocket, a hand rests on it.

_{Radios keep DCI board members in touch during the event. Photo by Christina Franusich for Virginia Tech.}

Since 2013, the food truck rodeo has brought in up to 10,000 attendees a year to nosh on food truck deliciousness — think wood-fired pizza, fresh-squeezed lemonade, mini donuts — and listen to live music and hang out on Christiansburg's Main Street. The event is part of DCI’s effort to revitalize the vibrancy and economic health of Christiansburg’s downtown core.

“The food truck rodeo brings visibility to downtown, so people know there is potential to invest or locate businesses here,” said Travis. “It can be really powerful when there's a positive story about a place, when people say, ‘Oh my gosh, this was such a fun event. Let’s check out what else is happening downtown.’”

Elli marks out a folding table with duct tape. Two volunteers in yellow food truck rodeo shirts work in the background.

_{Elli Travis helps prep the beer tent. Photo by Christina Franusich for Virginia Tech.}

Elli stands under a large white tent with other volunteers as they work to hang string lights under the tent.

_{The team adds lights to a tent. Photo by Christina Franusich for Virginia Tech.}

Elli walks with a food truck vendor up the middle of the street, food trucks line the street on either side. The two are talking and looking at each other as they walk.

_{Nelson Pantoja (at left), owner of Roanoke's Empanada Nirvana food truck, walks with Elli Travis. Photo by Christina Franusich for Virginia Tech.}

_{Elli Travis (at left) and Nelson Pantoja share a high-five. Photo by Christina Franusich for Virginia Tech.}

The motto Ut Prosim (That I May Serve) was new to Travis when she came to Virginia Tech as a master’s degree student, in 2013. But the principle of service was instilled in her as a child in Washington, D.C., where she volunteered with the Girl Scouts and other community organizations.

Volunteering as a grad student became a way for Travis to meet like-minded friends. She also wanted to apply what she was learning in her day job as a senior economic development specialist for Virginia Tech’s Center for Economic and Community Engagement, part of Outreach and International Affairs, in her own town. “I had this dissonance that I was working in other communities to help improve their social and economic situation, and I wasn't working in my own to help improve mine,” she said.

Leading DCI as board president has, in turn, made Travis better at her work. With more hands-on experience with the challenges of revitalizing a place, she’s better at suggesting implementable recommendations for other communities.

Elli speaks to a Town of Christiansburg employee who is also event staff for the food truck rodeo while standing in the middle of downtown.

_{Elli Travis (at left) talks with Brad Epperley, director of Christiansburg Parks and Recreation. For the first time, DCI and the Town of Christiansburg jointly sponsored the food truck rodeo. Photo by Christina Franusich for Virginia Tech.}

A woman pulls a large green recycling bin and a blue trash bin on wheels behind her as she walks across a street.

_{The trash cans and recycling bins in the middle of the road were an eyesore, according to Elli Travis. She moved them. Photo by Christina Franusich for Virginia Tech.}

A man in a blue t-shirt that says "Here to Serve" speaks with a woman in a gray t-shirt outside a brick building.

_{Elli Travis (at right) checks in with Kevin Meadows, a pastor at Hope Valley Church, which provided a changing station at the rodeo. Photo by Christina Franusich for Virginia Tech.}

This year's food truck rodeo was the culmination of six months of collaboration with the Town of Christiansburg, which partnered with DCI on the food truck rodeo, merging it with a popular town concert series called Rockin’ Main. “This is something I learned through my VT work evaluating partnerships: The best way for two organizations to build trust is to do something successful together, and preferably fun.”

_{Tickets for alcohol sales. Photo by Christina Franusich for Virginia Tech.}

People sit at long tables in front of a banner that says "Making Downtown Christiansburg a great place to live, work, and play."

_{A sign with Downtown Christiansburg Inc.'s motto. Photo by Christina Franusich for Virginia Tech.}

A close-up of two women talking to an unseen third person.

_{Elli Travis (at right) sells tickets with DCI board member Cameron Houser as the rodeo begins. Photo by Christina Franusich for Virginia Tech.}

By the time the actual event rolled around — DCI's biggest and busiest day of the year — Travis seemed shockingly calm. That's because she'd implemented the kind of capacity-building, distributed leadership model that she’d learned about while studying for her Ph.D. in agricultural, leadership, and community education in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

“Last year I was a lot more frantic and stressed at the food truck rodeo because I felt like I had to be the taskmaster and tell everyone what to do,” she said. This year, Travis trusted nine DCI board members and 80 volunteers to take ownership of the six-hour event, allowing her to enjoy the bands blasting country songs and rock covers near Franklin Street.

She even got to eat some food truck favorites: vegetarian tacos from Rock n Roll Diner, empanadas from Empanada Nirvana, and a buffalo chicken pizza cone from The Konez Factory.

A woman in a gray t-shirt poses in front of a beautiful garden filled with hostas, coleus, and other native plants.

_{In the calm after the event, Elli Travis poses in the downtown Christiansburg pocket park that DCI helped create with grant funds. Photo by Christina Franusich for Virginia Tech.}

Managing a grassroots organization like DCI isn’t easy. Residents complain. Change happens slowly. It's comforting for Travis to admire the grant-funded pocket park the organization built outside Great Road Hall on West Main Street, a rare sign of visible progress. On the Saturday of the rodeo, it was blooming with native plants, including hostas from Travis’s own garden.

Also comforting: the food truck rodeo itself. “You see all these smiling people,” she said. “People are like, ‘This is my favorite event of the year.’ We have a food truck rodeo couple that met here and got married, and they come every year. So when you hear those stories, that really makes it worth it.”

To volunteer with Downtown Christiansburg Inc. or learn more about its events, visit www.downtownchristiansburg.org.