Campus Compact » News of Interest

R.I. Campus Compact Welcomed to Providence College

Communications — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 18:47:02 +0000

Providence College is the new home of the Rhode Island Campus Compact (RICC), housing the organization and staff in the Feinstein Academic Center.

Previously hosted at the Rhode Island School of Design, RICC is an affiliate of a national organization of more than 1,200 colleges and universities.

As members of the compact, all 12 institutions of higher learning in Rhode Island work together to promote community service, civic engagement, and service learning for students and faculty.

Service-learning courses serve students, communities

Communications — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 19:24:35 +0000

It’s been years since Carole Lapidos was a middle school student, but she hasn’t forgotten just how hard it can be.

“Listening to cattiness and the name-calling, we realized it’s really difficult to be a girl in middle school,” she said. “So we decided to do something about it.”

Lapidos saw that these students needed guidance — from someone they could really look up to. That’s when she got the idea to bring female students from the University of Michigan into these middle schools, giving the preteens real-life role models.

Click here to read full article.

Connecticut Campus Compact, a statewide President’s membership organization located at Fairfield University, issues three-part series on array of higher ed concerns

Communications — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 19:19:22 +0000

Connecticut Campus Compact (CTCC), a statewide program based on the Fairfield University campus promoting institution-wide engagement with communities, is releasing a three-part series of publications, “Better Engagement. Broader Effectiveness,” with a goal of connecting economic prosperity and engaged citizenship.

Established in 1998, Connecticut Campus Compact has the membership of Connecticut presidents of colleges and universities, with Fairfield University President Rev. Jeffery P. von Arx, S.J., serving as chair. Its mission of improving community life and social responsibility mirrors Fairfield’s Jesuit mission of serving others.

“With the vast majority of colleges and universities in Connecticut being members – from public and private, research and an Ivy League university – our position in Connecticut is unique,” said Dr. Saul Petersen, CTCC executive director and a co-author. “We alone have the capacity to bring all colleges and universities together in order to find solutions to today’s issues related to Connecticut’s civic and economic prosperity.”

Continue reading this press release from the Fairfield University Press Room

Former US Senator & Campus Compact Board Member Awarded 2012 Presidential Citizens Medal

Communications — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 19:19:28 +0000

A Message from the CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), Wendy Spencer:

Dear Colleagues,

The White House has just announced that former U.S. Senator Harris Wofford – our tireless champion and guiding light for service and volunteering – will receive a 2012 Presidential Citizens Medal from President Obama.

The Presidential Citizens Medal, the nation’s second-highest civilian honor, recognizes American citizens who have performed exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens. Senator Wofford will be honored along with other recipients at a White House ceremony on Friday, February 15.

We are thrilled that Senator Wofford will receive this special honor, which is so fitting given his exemplary life of public service. For seven decades, he has served his country. He enlisted in the Army Air Corps in World War II. He marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, advised President Kennedy on civil rights, and helped Sargent Shriver launch the Peace Corps. He represented Pennsylvania in the U.S. Senate from 1991 to 1994 and served as the CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) from 1995 to 2001.

… Continue reading this bulletin from Wendy Spencer

Boosting Youth Engagement

Communications — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 19:07:25 +0000

This week, the Massachusetts Special Commission on Civic Engagement and Learning released “Renewing the Social Compact,” a report that examines the state of civic engagement in the commonwealth. The report lays out recommendations for revitalizing curricula, programs, and practices to develop citizenship, civic education, and engagement in K-12, higher education, and adult education in Massachusetts.

For years, public leaders and scholars alike have lamented challenges of an apathetic citizenry, in Massachusetts and across the United States. Participation in electoral processes, representation on municipal and nonprofit boards, and other facets of civil society has languished. Beyond looking at democratic participation among adults, the commission examined ways educational institutions prepare young people for civic roles in later life. In particular, the commission looked at ways institutions work with community partners to organize experiential learning opportunities for students — such as internships and community service — that advance citizenship…

Read the entire article by Alan H. Bloomgarden, Ed.D, from the Worcester Telegram & Gazette

Widener, Chester forging close community ties

Mark Este — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 19:17:40 +0000

Janet Maddox Jones needed physical therapy for sciatica and scoliosis, and her insurance was tapped out.

Her doctor referred her to Widener University’s free clinic, set up and run by graduate students.

“They took care of you like you were an individual person, not a number,” said Jones, 77, a lifelong Chester resident and one of the first black cheerleaders at its high school in the 1950s.

That experience and others have made Jones, a retired customer relations manager, a Widener fan.

While a simple tale, it symbolizes the kind of relationship that the 6,240-student private university has been striving to build with its struggling host city, especially over the last decade under president James T. Harris III.

Widener started a charter school, opened a free nursing clinic, linked students’ community service to scholarship money, fostered community-based work by its professors, and established a civic engagement committee of the board of trustees.

It created a police substation in partnership with Crozer-Chester Medical Center, started a college access center with other local colleges, and brought in a hotel and retail complex.

Chester last year was named one of six cities under President Obama’s “Strong Cities, Strong Communities” plan aimed at spurring economic development. The program doesn’t include funding, but does offer federal expertise coordinated through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and help in fostering relations and researching solutions.

“Widener University was key in how we looked at the opportunities and what we can really do to help reinvent and build the economy,” said Mark Linton, executive director of the White House Council on Strong Cities, Strong Communities. Linton participated in a daylong forum last week at Widener on the role of “anchor institutions” in sustaining community economic development…

Click here to read the full article of Philly.com

From Commencement to Campaign: Where Is the Call to Service?

admin — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 20:47:22 +0000

As Election Day draws near, I find myself thinking back to Barack Obama’s 2008 Commencement Address at Wesleyan University. He was just candidate Obama then, coming to the end of a tough primary fight, substituting for Ted Kennedy at our graduation ceremony. I was just finishing my first year as president of my alma mater. It was a day of excitement, of hope and of inspiration.

Obama told our graduates that they should be skeptical of the notion that there were two different stories ahead of them: one the private tale of jobs and families, and the second the account of what happens in the wider world. He related how many had told him when he was graduating that he should focus on the first story: that economic security and building a family were all that really mattered. They had told him, as many were telling our undergraduates, that it was foolhardy to think you could really change the world for the better.

At Least 80 Electoral Votes Depended on Youth

Communications — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 17:36:15 +0000

Assuming that Florida is called for President Obama in 2012, then Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Florida will be states in which young voters were essential to the President’s reelection coalition. In those states, if Governor Romney had won half of the youth vote, or if young voters had stayed home entirely, then Romney would have won instead of Obama…

Richard Guarasci: How Colleges Can Spark Economic and Community Development

compact339-admin — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 14:51:29 +0000

In my last post, I discussed what I, and many of my colleagues, consider the growing crisis in higher education and the stiff challenges that those of us in America’s colleges and universities now face. It is, to me, a crisis that threatens the legitimacy and the political economy of higher education as we have known it for more than a century in this nation. But, amidst of all the gloomy stories that continue to be reported about higher education, I think there is room for hope and even optimism.

Universities can help to demonstrate their relevance to an ever more skeptical public by ramping up civic engagement programs within their local communities and by creating specific partnerships. And, these partnerships are exactly what many communities need to help them grow and thrive amid tough economic times.

This is a new moment in America: we have the opportunity to replace the usual town-gown tensions with a relationship that can benefit all.

Richard Guarasci: The Crisis in Higher Education: How Civic Engagement Can Save Higher Education (Part I)

Communications — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 18:58:30 +0000

In the midst of the most significant global economic crisis in more than 80 years, higher education faces an acute crisis of resources, organization and legitimization. Colleges and universities find themselves in a double bind, one external and economic and the other internal and existential. Public tolerance is withering for increasing tuition as legislative appropriations shrink and student debt continues to grow.

We have entered an age of economic limits, fractured politics, stalemated government and personal fear. How we organize academic and campus life begs an alternative to the very foundation of the prevailing model of higher learning in the United States. The traditional higher education business model is essentially a deflating balloon if not a bursting bubble, as the global economic crisis has created a highly risk-averse climate for students, parents and donors.

New book from University of Vermont faculty examines state of public universities on 150th anniversary of Morrill Act

admin — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 15:05:04 +0000

The land-grant universities of the United States are this year celebrating the sesquicentennial of the Morrill Act, which not only led to the creation of many of the universities, but arguably was instrumental in the development of public higher education broadly. A new book, Precipice or Crossroads? Where America’s Great Public Universities Stand and Where They Are Going Midway Through Their Second Century (State University of New York Press), features essays related to public universities’ history and current challenges. Essays mix the history of the universities with questions about their financing, their education and research missions, and their role in the world. The editors of the collection are Daniel Mark Fogel, a professor of English and former president of the University of Vermont (a Campus Compact member institution), and Elizabeth Malson-Huddle, a lecturer in English at the university.

Statement by AnnMaura Connolly, President of Voices for National Service

admin — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 02:23:09 +0000

Voices for National Service applauds the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) for naming William C. Basl as Director of AmeriCorps. After forty years in the service movement, including eighteen years as the Executive Director of the Washington Commission for National and Community Service, his dedication and commitment to the field of service are unwavering.

From his work as a VISTA member serving migrant farm workers, to founding the nation’s first veterans corps, to establishing a collaborative regional network to provide AmeriCorps training across the Pacific Northwest, Basl’s experience with service at the local and national levels are unparalleled. We look forward to working with him to get our nation back on track to fulfilling the promises laid out in the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act and harnessing the true power of AmeriCorps to put children on a path to a quality education, strengthen families through economic opportunity programs, increase access to quality healthcare services and rebuild communities suffering from natural disasters.

Civic Engagement and the Copernican Moment

admin — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 02:13:31 +0000

In this Foreseeable Future, David Scobey provides a seeable present: the state of higher education a decade into the 21st century and sorely in need of change. Evoking a paradigm shift on the scale of Copernicus’s discovery that the sun, not the earth, is the center of the universe, Scobey adjures, “there is widespread agreement that higher education faces a sea change in its intellectual, institutional, technological, and economic organization.”

President Obama Announces More Key Administration Posts

admin — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 02:11:55 +0000

Today, President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate the following individuals to key Administration posts:

• Mark D. Gearan – Member, Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service
• Michael Kirby – Ambassador to the Republic of Serbia, Department of State

Lord Family Endows Community Engagement Directorship

admin — Sat, 26 May 2012 02:26:37 +0000

It’s been over a decade since the Office of Community Engagement (OCE) was established at Rollins, making it possible for thousands of students and hundreds of faculty and staff to engage in meaningful service-based experiences. Through the years, the office has had its supporters, but few at the level of David Lord ’69 ’71MBA and his family. Beginning with an initial gift, which helped to establish OCE at Rollins in 2001, Lord and his family have continued to champion its vision and fund its effort, including the 2005 creation of the Rhoda Newberry Reed Endowment for Community Engagement and Leadership Education and Development.

This week, the College announced another generous endowment: The Lord Family Director of Community Engagement. This highly distinctive gift will make the funding for this endowed chair permanent and perpetual.

Students learn giving through grant

admin — Wed, 16 May 2012 01:31:31 +0000

Ohio State faculty are teaching students philanthropy, the value of volunteering, and the impact charitable organizations have on our community, and thanks in part to a recent grant award, they are reinforcing a valuable life lesson, “it is better to give than receive.”

English faculty from The Ohio State University at Marion and their students were recently awarded a 2012 Ohio State Outreach and Engagement Impact Grant in the amount of $10,250 for their Pay It Forward Marion project.

Changes at Drinko Center include name, logo & location

admin — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 04:17:10 +0000

Westminster College’s Drinko Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning is now the Drinko Center for Experiential Learning. When Patterson Hall reopens this spring the Drinko Center will also have a new home as it relocates from the McKelvey Campus center to the third floor of Patterson.
The Drinko Center was established in 2004 by a gift from John and Elizabeth “Libby” Gibson Drinko ’44 to enrich undergraduate education at Westminster through advancing world-class teaching as well as by participating in collaborations that address community and regional needs including strengthening K-12 education.

Colleges Awarded Presidential Honor for Community Service

admin — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 15:27:28 +0000

The Corporation for National and Community Service and the U.S. Department of Education today honored the nation’s leading colleges and universities, students, and faculty members, and staff for their commitment to bettering their communities through community service and service learning.

Five higher education institutions received the Presidential Award of the 2012 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll, the highest federal recognition a college or university can receive for its commitment to community service. The five awardees are Carson-Newman College, Miami University, North Carolina State University, Seattle University, and the University of Pennsylvania. The universities will be honored later today at the annual American Council on Education meeting in Los Angeles.

Massachusetts will soon track civic engagement at its public colleges

admin — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 15:33:56 +0000

Massachusetts will soon track civic engagement at its public colleges, addressing increased concern that Americans aren’t equipped to impact their communities or interact meaningfully with government.While it hasn’t been decided exactly how citizenship learning will be evaluated, the Board of Higher Education’s Tuesday vote mandates that civic engagement be measured along with more traditional standards such as graduation rates.

Dr. James B. Dworkin presented with the prestigious Castaldi Award

admin — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 03:23:57 +0000

Purdue University North Central Chancellor, Dr. James B. Dworkin, has been presented with the prestigious Castaldi Award, given by the Indiana Association of United Ways in recognition of his commitment to the United Way.

The award was presented as part of the recent Volunteers of the Year Recognition Banquet in Indianapolis.