Zachary Ploppert has worked his way up the city government hierarchy and is ready to take the next step in the process and run for alderman on the Geneva City Council.

Ploppert is a junior elementary education major at NIU and commutes from his hometown of Geneva.

“[Commuting] allows me to still come to school and do everything at school and still stay very involved and up to date in Geneva,” Ploppert said.

At 20 years old Ploppert plans to run for a possible soon-to-be-vacant alderman seat representing Geneva’s 1st Ward.

“In high school we did a student government program where you shadow a city official and see what they do,” Ploppert said. “That taught me how local government worked and what the process was and since then I‘ve just been really involved in the community and love city government and just want to be a part of it now.”

He shadowed a city engineer the first two years of the program, and two city planners the third and fourth years. After high school, Ploppert began to look at serious involvement in city government.

“I went to our city administrator and asked her what I can do,” Ploppert said. “She is very busy but she took the time to sit down with me and say ‘we have committees here and you can do this, this and this.'”

Ploppert came to NIU to pursue a passion for teaching, which he says comes from his experience as a teaching assistant his senior year of high school and having an autistic sister.

He said seeing real progression in a student is the most rewarding thing about teaching.

“Going to school full time and being an alderman sounds like a lot, I kind of equate [school] to a full time job,” Ploppert said. “Most of the aldermen who sit on the council now have full time jobs.” “A lot of it is time management. You have a lot of work, not just meetings on Monday night but you have to go through your packet, listen to citizens, go out into the community, but I think that balance can be achieved pretty easily.”

Ploppert also works at a hardware store and sits on a few committees in Geneva, “making decisions and planning events.”

Ploppert said he sits on the board of directors of the Geneva Community Chest, which is an organization that raises money and distributes it to charities annually.

He is the liaison for Geneva’s Fit for Kane Program, “a program that’s dedicated to making Kane County a more healthy place,” Ploppert said.

He is also a part of Geneva’s Strategic Plan Advisory Commission (SPAC) which created a list of goals the city wants to have accomplished by 2017, when the committee will look at the city’s progress and goals and make sure the city is staying on track.