After returning from study abroad trips in Thailand and Kenya and Botswana, a group of Kalamazoo students wanted to open a store that would showcase goods that artisans in those countries made for a living wage.

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The goal of the donation is to “ensure that future generations will continue to gain awareness, appreciation and practical experience for volunteerism, civic involvement and the value of giving back to the community,” according to a release issued by the college.

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Lee S. Shulman, president emeritus of The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and Stanford University’s Charles E. Ducommun professor of education emeritus, will deliver the keynote luncheon speech.

The gathering of renowned educators is one of the first steps by Lieberman to put ULV on national and international recognition maps for higher educational institutions of great esteem and principles.

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McPherson College’s retention of its freshmen currently tracks with the national average among similar institutions. But a new program is aiming to help the college go beyond average and help the first-year freshmen students who are most likely to leave college.

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“Corporations are hoarding an enormous amount of money that is just sitting there,” Weeden told more than 100 students in the Raytheon Amphitheater last Friday for the inaugural address in the Northeastern Students4Giving (NS4G) Lecture Series. “They have become incredibly cheap in relationship to corporate philanthropy.”

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More than 200 community colleges around the country applied and 32 were selected by the U.S. Department of Labor in coordination with the U.S. Department of Education.

“This is the largest grant in college history, and it is very important to the economy,” said Brenda Goodell, who chairs the Collin College board of trustees. “We live in a time when people are likely to experience a layoff at some point in their life. However, it is possible to land on your feet in a new, better career. This grant will help displaced workers retrain on the technology of the future.”

Collin College leads a consortium of six community colleges in the National Information, Security and Geospacial Technology Consortium (NISGTC). Partner colleges include Bellevue College (Seattle), Bunker Hill Community College (Boston), Del Mar College (Corpus Christi), Moraine Valley Community College (Chicago), Rio Salado College (Arizona) and Salt Lake City Community College as well as Collin College.

Cary A. Israel, Collin College president, said a key to receiving the grant was partnering with innovative community colleges from around the nation for the consortium. “Our consortium stretches from coast to coast,” Israel said. “Collin College is the only lead college in the state of Texas announced yesterday for this landmark federal grant program. We are very grateful to everyone who took part in the proposal for this grant, particularly our partner colleges in the consortium. In this economy, it is vital to develop training programs that respond to the ever-changing world of technology.”

The NISGTC will focus training toward occupations that map to four IT disciplines: networking and data communication; applications development and analytics; geospatial technologies; and cybersecurity. Each consortium member was chosen for expertise in these areas.

Careers targeted in this grant include computer software engineers, application developers, computer security specialists, database administrators, network systems and data communications analysts, geodetic surveyors and surveying and mapping technicians.

Collin College serves about 53,000 credit and continuing education students annually and offers more than 100 degree and certificate programs. The only public college in the county, Collin College is a partner to business, government and industry, providing customized training and work force development.

“Since The Washington Center opened its doors in 1975, over 50,000 students from universities across the country and abroad have had career changing experiences interning in the nation’s capital,” said Mike Smith, president of The Washington Center. “It is individuals like Senator Cantwell, Representative Rogers and Governor Juan José Sabines Guerrero that make the experience truly valuable and memorable. I join our university partners, alumni, current and future students in thanking them for their participation in the program.”

Governor Juan José Sabines Guerrero is being recognized with the Pillar Award for Civic Engagement in appreciation of his continued dedication to fostering the relationship between Chiapas and The Washington Center. Congressman Harold “Hal” Rogers will receive the Pillar Award for Leadership in recognition of the 500 students from Kentucky that have interned in Washington, DC. In honor of Senator Maria Cantwell’s continued support and commitment to hosting and mentoring The Washington Center students over the years, the Senator will be the recipient of the Pillar Award for Professional Achievement.

During an awards luncheon the same day of the gala, The Washington Center will also celebrate the 2011 recipients of the Higher Education Civic Engagement Award and the Academic Affairs Award.

The Higher Education Civic Engagement Award recognizes educational institutions that made civic engagement initiatives a part of their curriculum and built successful partnerships between their students and community organizations. Augsburg College, Benedict College, DePaul University, Duke University, Florida Gulf Coast University and San Francisco State University are this year’s honored recipients.

The Higher Education Civic Engagement Awards were created in 2009 to find colleges and universities that are true role models for civic engagement in the academic community,” said Geri Mannion, a Washington Center board member, chair of the award committee and director of Carnegie Corporation’s U.S. Democracy Program. “Each of this year’s honorees have created an environment that brings students and community organizations together, showing that the best and most well-rounded academic experience is not just defined by classroom learning.”

East Tennessee State University, Grand Valley State University, Kentucky University System, Suffolk University and Steve Scully of C-SPAN received this year’s Academic Affairs Award for their continued partnership with The Washington Center and strong commitment to advancing experiential education.

More than 450 guests are expected to attend Gala 2011: A Bold Look Ahead and proceeds from the event will help fund $5 million in scholarships distributed to Washington Center students each year. Ford Motor Company is the event’s presenting sponsor, continuing a more than 20-year tradition of support from the company. Sixteen corporations and twenty-five colleges and universities are joining Ford Motor Company in supporting the event. For more information on the event, please contact Korenna Cline via email at korenna {at} epicprgroup(.)com or by phone at 703-299-3404.

About The Washington Center

The Washington Center for Internships and Academic seminars is an independent, nonprofit organization that serves hundreds of colleges and universities in the United States and other countries by providing selected students challenging opportunities to work and learn in Washington, D.C. for academic credit. The largest program of its kind, The Washington Center has close to 50,000 alumni who have become leaders in numerous professions and nations around the world. It was established in 1975.new

But through a program that Middlebury started last spring, she has also seen how generous the college’s network can be…

To read more about his report, click here: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/06/27/report_makes_case_that_u_s_needs_more_college_going_citizens

May 12, 2011

6 Institutions Receive Presidential Award, 641 Recognized Overall

Washington, D.C. – As colleges across the country honor their graduates this commencement season, the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) today honored the nation’s leading institutions of higher education for their support of volunteering, service-learning, and civic engagement.

Six colleges and universities received Presidential Awards in the 2010 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 Corporation for National and Community Service, which has administered the Honor Roll since 2006, admitted a total of 641 colleges and universities for their impact on issues from literacy and neighborhood revitalization to supporting at-risk youth. Of that total, 511 were named to the Honor Roll, 114 received the recognition of Honor Roll with distinction, 11 were identified as finalists, and six received the Presidential Award.

“As members of the class of 2011 cross the stage to pick up their diplomas, more and more will be going into the world with a commitment to public service and the knowledge that they can make a difference in their communities and their own lives through service to others, thanks to the leadership of these institutions,” said Patrick A. Corvington, Chief Executive Officer of CNCS.  “Congratulations to these schools and their students for their dedication to service and commitment to improving their local communities.  We salute all the Honor Roll awardees for embracing their civic mission and providing opportunities for their students to tackle tough national challenges through service.”

A total of 851 institutions applied for the 2010 Honor Roll, a nine percent increase over last year, a sign of the growing interest by colleges and universities in highlighting their efforts to engage students in making a difference in the community.

On campuses across the country, millions of college students are engaged in innovative projects to meet local needs, often using the skills learned in classrooms.  In 2009, 3.2 million college students dedicated more than 307 million hours of service to communities across the country, service valued at more than $6.4 billion.  Business and law students offer tax preparation and legal services, and college student volunteers provide meals, create parks, rebuild homes after disasters, conduct job training, run senior service programs, and much more.

The Corporation for National and Community Service is a strong partner with the nation’s colleges and universities in supporting community service and service-learning.  Last year, CNCS provided more than $215 million in support to institutions of higher education, including grants to operate service programs and the Segal AmeriCorps Education Awards for college tuition and student loan repayment.  CNCS is a catalyst for service-learning programs nationwide that connect community service with academic curricula. Through these programs, in classes, and in extracurricular activities, college students serve their communities while strengthening their academic and civic skills.

CNCS oversees the Honor Roll in collaboration with the U.S. Departments of Education and Housing and Urban Development, Campus Compact, and the American Council on Education. Honorees are chosen based on a series of selection factors, including the scope and innovation of service projects, the extent to which service-learning is embedded in the curriculum, the school’s commitment to long-term campus-community partnerships, and measurable community outcomes as a result of the service. For a full list of recipients and descriptions of their service, visit www.NationalService.gov/HonorRoll.

Recipients of the Presidential Awards were honored in three categories:

·         General Community Service, which considers the scope and quality of an institution’s community service, service-learning, and civic engagement programs;

·         Promise Neighborhoods Model, characterized by coordinated, wrap-around, youth-focused services that work together to support the educational and social needs of children; and

·         Summer Learning, which provides a safe, healthy environment for academic enrichment during summer breaks to help students retain what they learned during the academic year.

General Community Service Award Recipients

·         Augsburg College, Minneapolis, Minnesota — Students completed more than 191,700 hours of volunteer service last year in projects focused on economic opportunity and promoting healthy futures. Some of the projects addressed low-income housing, community health outreach, and financial literacy; the students also helped establish a free clothing exchange and ran an employment education computer lab.

·         Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida — Students contributed more than 55,700 volunteer hours last year in education, health, and disaster response projects. These included mentoring elementary-school students, teaching at an elementary school, rebuilding homes, creating hand-washing stations for farm workers, and providing health screenings in Nepal.

·         San Francisco State University, San Francisco, California — San Francisco State serves one of the most ethnically and racially diverse student populations in the country. The university has increased the number of local minority students admitted by offering after-school, college-level classes to disadvantaged students of color in more than 15 high schools.  Through community partnerships, SFSU students volunteer in community projects that provide health education, English language classes for immigrants, violence prevention programs, and educational programs for at-risk youth.

Promise Neighborhood Award Recipients

·         Loyola University, Chicago, Illinois — Loyola’s Madonna Scholars High School Intervention program produced a 100 percent college acceptance rate for 80 female at-risk participants; 68 percent of them received scholarships upon graduating from high school. The Target New Transitions program provided 4,608 hours of mentoring to middle school students transitioning to high school. Loyola’s Math Tutoring program engaged 253 fourth- to eighth-grade students and improved their confidence and academic performance.

·         St. Mary’s University, San Antonio, Texas — Students participating in the Neighborhood Revitalization project work through strategic partnerships to improve infrastructure and streetscapes, create urban pocket-parks, build affordable housing, and support a more sustainable business community. The students helped provide resources for the community that address home ownership, credit counseling, and neighborhood landscaping projects.

Summer Learning Award Recipients

·         California State University, Monterey Bay, Seaside, California — Students contribute more than 84,000 hours of service annually to programs aimed at reducing the academic achievement gap.  The Increase the Peace Summer Youth Leadership program provides literacy, math, and art classes in the summer for local at-risk middle school students, resulting in increased academic achievement and positive behavioral change.

The Corporation for National and Community Service is a federal agency that engages more than five million Americans in service through its Senior Corps, AmeriCorps, and Learn and Serve America programs, and leads President Barack Obama’s national call to service initiative, United We Serve. For more information, visit NationalService.gov.

Written by Victoria Turley, Melissa Childs and Kelly Patton

The clock ticked loudly. We were discussing our final paper topics as a class, it was almost time to leave, and I had to get to work. Then, out of the blue, there it was:

“Did your perception change? How do you feel about them now?”

“I think I feel like everybody else, I want them out of my country”.

I perked up, the blood rushed to my face, and my head snapped toward him. I don’t share your sentiment, buddy. I don’t want “them” out of “my” country, I thought. My fellow student was talking about fundamentalist Muslims, which due to his sheer lack of understanding on the subject, to him, included virtually all Muslims.  — Victoria Turley, Central College Senior

Each semester approximately 300 students from Central College in Pella, Iowa, participate in semester-long service-learning with a goal of engaging “students, faculty and community members in sustained partnerships that foster collaborative learning and civic participation in a diverse society.”

Students learn to investigate and apply classroom knowledge to community settings, while developing values consistent with responsible citizenship. Among the individuals coordinating these partnerships is an AmeriCorps VISTA member, whose role is to foster and sustain relationships with more than 90 community partners at which students serve. Currently, 85 AmeriCorps VISTA members are serving across the state of Iowa, addressing poverty by becoming full time volunteers for one year at various nonprofit organizations and local government agencies that fight illiteracy, improve health services, create businesses, strengthen community groups, and more. AmeriCorps VISTA members often serve in teams, collaborating and leveraging resources to ensure that local non-profits have what they need to support Iowans.

Such was the case in 2009, when a team of Iowa Campus Compact AmeriCorps VISTA members collaborated to support the formation of Iowa Refugee Support Project (IRSP). Kelly Patton, originally from the state of Deleware, served as a VISTA member at IRSP from August 2009-August 2010, working to form the basic structure for this newly created organization.

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Kelly Patton (left) and Hanan (right) present together at an event by Iraqi Refugee Support Project.

When I moved to Des Moines in August 2009, I didn’t know much about refugees, and I didn’t know anything about the AmeriCorps VISTA program. All I knew was that I wanted to find a job where I could help others in a non-discriminatory way.  So when I heard about the opportunity to help Iraqi refugees learn English and find jobs as an AmeriCorps VISTA, I accepted.  That year-long position completely changed my life.

IRSP was in its fledgling stages when I started working with it. My task was to work with refugees and other local organizations to get our project off the ground. Our first and longest-running program was our Conversation Partner Program.  In September 2009, six Central College service-learning students showed up at First Unitarian Church to receive training from me. None of us knew it at the time, but those six were the first of 40 Central College students to date to volunteer to work one-on-one with refugees in our community.

Part way through my VISTA year, I was sitting in a small apartment with a group of Iraqi refugees. I was asking them about what barriers they faced when it came to finding and keeping jobs. One woman had just finished telling us about how, through a mix-up, she had worked 10 months at Goodwill and then had to give nearly all of her earnings to the Department of Human Services because they didn’t know she had a job and had continued paying her support.  She then began to cry. Her husband asked her a question in Arabic, and she replied, “I’m not crying because of the money.  I’m crying because I miss my children.” We learned that her two adult children were still in Iraq, and she hadn’t seen them for five years.  She asked her son to go back to Syria where it would be safer, but he couldn’t make the trip because it was too expensive.  He wanted to visit the foreign ministry to find out if he and his sister could join their parents, but it was too dangerous to get to the ministry because there were so many explosions.

“The money is not such a problem compared to this,” the mother said.

Discussion moved on in Arabic, and soon everyone in the room was in tears because every single person shared a similar story. One woman’s husband had gone to answer the door and was shot right there on their doorstep.  She and her infant son had to flee the country. To this day, she can’t even tell this story. She tries to speak and ends up crying instead.

A volunteer who was with me at the time reflected on the experience of being in that room: “I had a light bulb moment last weekend as I sat in a room full of people I barely knew. As they told their stories, cried, got upset, and vented about their hardships, I realized that they were people. Although this is an obvious observation it is something I think a lot of people forget about when volunteering. They are not just Iraqis. They are not just refugees. They are parents, siblings, friends, and neighbors.” — Kelly Patton, AmeriCorps VISTA Alumna

In partnering with agencies like IRSP, Central College students have the opportunity to learn in a new way, while growing in their appreciation for diversity. This is evident in the experience of Victoria Turley, a Central College senior who first participated in service-learning at IRSP through her English course entitled “Teaching English as a Second Language”:

One week while volunteering at IRSP, I found myself in a small, but well-kept apartment on University Avenue in Des Moines, watching an Arabic language soap opera with a Kurdish Iraqi ESL learner. This was becoming more than a class requirement, more than a habit. It was becoming fun, and mutually beneficial. Every time I enter my conversation partner’s house, I leave well fed and laughing. I have learned a lot about her culture, including a smattering of the Arabic alphabet, and she has learned to hone her English skills, advanced as they were when I came to her. If only the boy from my class could or would participate in such an experience with someone from another culture; if he could just experience what I have, he’d see that we’re all just people, and that the distinctions we create between “us” and “them” are so pathetically flimsy. —Victoria Turley, Central College Senior

This year, Victoria, originally from Eldridge, has chosen to continue her service at IRSP through another AmeriCorps program, called the Iowa Campus Compact AmeriCorps Program (ICAP). Through this program, Victoria and other college students commit to spending a minimum of 300 hours in service to community. Victoria joins 127 ICAP members across the state in this, addressing issues such as educational access, health awareness, food security, and homelessness.

During the week of May 14-21, our nation will celebrate AmeriCorps week in honor of these and other AmeriCorps members serving across the United States. For the more than 83,000 active members and 706,000 AmeriCorps alumni, it’s another week to continue living up to the pledge they have taken to serve their communities, getting things done.

I will get things done for America -
to make our people safer,
smarter, and healthier.

I will bring Americans together
to strengthen our communities.

Faced with apathy,
I will take action.

Faced with conflict,
I will seek common ground.

Faced with adversity,
I will persevere.

I will carry this commitment
with me this year and beyond.

I am an AmeriCorps member,
and I will get things done.

To learn more about AmeriCorps visit http://www.americorps.gov/ orhttp://www.americorpsweek.gov/

Developing the PACT Program

Mercy College President Kimberly Cline and administrators, including Martinov, began discussing the idea for the PACT program in the fall of 2008. As a Hispanic-Serving Institution with more than 25 percent of its students identifying as Hispanic or Latino, Mercy puts special emphasis on educating students who are the first in their families to attend college and who may also come from low-income backgrounds.  Nationwide, these students tend to persist to the second year of college and to graduation at lower rates than their non-first-generation, higher-income peers.  The idea behind PACT was to provide each student with one person who could be their go-to source for help with any sort of problem, be it academic, financial, or personal. This mentor would also work proactively with the student to set and follow up on goals, explore career options and internship possibilities, and find leadership opportunities.

The first pilot group of fifty freshman students began working with PACT mentors in spring 2009. Mercy hired mentors specifically to work on the PACT program, rather than retraining existing faculty or staff members. “We sought out people who were passionate about education, but came from various fields,” Martinov says.  Some mentors had academic advising or counseling backgrounds, and other came from business careers or other fields. All mentors are trained at Mercy to be able to help students solve their problems, whether related to academic, administrative, or personal issues.  If the mentor cannot help a student, he or she can refer the student to the correct person. Mentors also maintain contact with faculty members, especially in cases where a student is struggling academically. If a student is failing a course, his or her mentor is alerted and meets with the student to develop an academic intervention plan, which might include tutoring, meeting with the professor for extra help, or developing a study schedule.

	Students in the PACT program connect with their mentors before they even arrive on campus, and continue to interact regularly with the same person throughout their four years.

The program expanded in fall 2009 to serve 525 students, and will eventually serve a majority of each full-time first-year class, with enough additional mentors being hired so that no mentor has a case load of more than one hundred students.  While PACT is not mandatory for incoming students, so far, most have chosen to participate when given the opportunity.  New students receive a letter inviting them to participate in PACT shortly after acceptance to Mercy, and those who decide to participate are put in touch with their mentor soon thereafter, so the mentor can help students and families prepare for college even before arrival on campus.

Planning for College Success

The overarching goal of the PACT program, says Andy Person, Mercy director of institutional effectiveness and director of PACT, is to tackle what is one of the most pressing problems in American higher education: college completion. “We’re tackling this issue in a very personal way, and providing students with someone who is in their corner in every way,” Person says. He explains that PACT operates using a four-year model in which mentors and students work backward from the end goal: for students to have a job in their field or an acceptance from graduate school within six months of graduation.  So during the senior year, students work with their mentors on college-to-career transition topics, like interviewing. During the junior year, they focus on gaining leadership experience in clubs, activities, or student government. During sophomore year, mentors work to prepare students for applying and completing internships, and during the freshman year, the focus is on personal development, including career interest evaluations and personality and learning style assessments.

But beyond these formal tasks, mentors also fulfill the significant roles of confidante, cheerleader, and, sometimes, provider of tough love. Person described one situation where a first-year student had failed tests in two courses by early October, triggering an academic early alert.  The student’s mentor stepped in, had a frank conversation with the student, and connected her with her professors, who she hadn’t felt comfortable approaching. She ended up earning Bs in both courses and is still enrolled at Mercy. “In a typical situation with an advisor playing a passive rather than an active role, this student might have gotten Ds or Fs in both classes, ended up in academic trouble, and might be thinking about dropping out since she’s doing so poorly so early on,” Person says. “For kids from a lot of high schools, college is the promised land. But what’s happening is that kids are getting to college and washing out. We’re creating a solution.”

Ali DiBona is a mentor and the assistant director of PACT. She works with about 80 students. They come in for regular, scheduled meetings to discuss topics like registering for classes and reviewing financial aid plans, but some also stop by DiBona’s office unscheduled simply to get her advice or share success stories. “Some students I see almost every day, and some come in only when I reach out to them,” she says. “But as I learn each student’s story, it’s easier to see what they might need from me.”  DiBona reaches out to the students she doesn’t often see via e-mail and Facebook, encouraging them to visit more often than just the required sessions.  Occasional Meet Your Mentor days provide another opportunity for her to connect with students.

PACT Outcomes to Date

The PACT program is built on four pillars, Martinov says: it’s individualized, customized, integrated, and focused.  This format has appealed to students and parents; so far, a larger percentage of accepted students have chosen to attend Mercy—instead of another school—than before PACT was created.  And though PACT is still a new program with only five semesters of data, that data has been impressive. Ninety-four percent of students from the fall 2010 freshman class were retained for the spring semester, and overall, students in PACT have shown a 20 percent higher retention rate from the freshman to sophomore year than students who did not participate in the program. And PACT students in a freshman seminar focused on critical inquiry did significantly better than their peers in the course who were not involved in PACT.

Because the first PACT cohort hasn’t reached graduation age yet, it’s still to be seen how these students fare in employment and graduate school acceptance. But because PACT students will all complete at least one internship—often as early as the sophomore year—and participate in guided career preparation with their mentors throughout their time at Mercy, Person expects that the students will demonstrate higher-than-average rates of placement in jobs related to their academic majors.

Person and his colleagues have been making presentations about PACT to other two- and four-year institutions, as well as local K-12 schools, to get feedback on the program and gauge interest for creating similar programs at other schools.  The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) highlighted the PACT program as a best practice for student retention and career services, Martinov says, and the US Department of Education recently awarded Mercy a grant to explore a graduate-level PACT program.  Once the current cohort graduates and Mercy has some solid college completion data, Person wants to begin exploring scalability—whether the program is replicable at a national level. “If solving the problem of college completion were easy, it wouldn’t be a national priority right now,” Person says. “But so far, what we’re doing is working.”

By 2000-01, there were 38 courses taught by 34 faculty to 925 students.

Data from the 2009-10 school year shows 1,575 students enrolled in 61 ABCS courses taught by 48 Penn faculty members.

The numbers tell a potent story: Service learning at Penn has grown in leaps and bounds.

Two Penn faculty members say in a recent paper, “Pursuing Franklin’s Dream: Philosophical and Historical Roots of Service-Learning,” that the rise of service learning into the curricula of colleges and universities has been incredibly rapid. But service learning is not foreign territory for these institutions—many of them have this dedication to service learning built into their core missions.

The civic ideal that universities should prepare students to make a difference in the world is actually an old concept, and is integrated with the founding of Penn. “[The University] was the first higher education institution dedicated to service in a secular-focused way,” says co-author Ira Harkavy, founding director and associate vice president of Penn’s Netter Center for Community Partnerships. “This work is at the very center of not just Penn’s historical founding, but the founding of colonial colleges, land-grant institutions and urban research universities.”

“Colleges and universities have very deep civic roots and none more so than Penn,” adds Matthew Hartley, an associate professor in Penn’s Graduate School of Education and study co-author. “[Benjamin] Franklin’s original conception of Penn not just as a place that would serve children of the wealthy, but all students of ability, and to prepare them to make a difference in society, exemplifies that ideal that has [been carried] out.”

Generally, the shift towards service learning in the academy occurred at the end of the Cold War, when governmental and academic leaders shifted their attention away from the Soviet Union and towards societal problems. There were, Hartley and Harkavy say, concerns that the civic purpose of higher education institutions was in danger of being lost, particularly in light of trends showing widespread voter disaffection, especially among young people.

Colleges and universities have very deep civic roots and none more so than Penn.”

During the early years of service learning in academia, proponents believed that this work could connect the core missions of these colleges and universities with a higher purpose—what the authors call “transformative learning, education for democracy and research to better understand and improve the world.”

Harkavy says this is what universities were designed to do: “The democratic learning was central to the idea of service learning, that you learn democratically and you learn for the purpose of improving the world. It’s an active pedagogy that has connected to it the idea of educating students as democratic citizens and contributing that way.”

As evidenced by the rise of these ABCS courses at Penn, service learning has taken hold in academia quickly. This is no small feat for institutions that usually “move with all the speed of a runaway glacier,” as Harkavy says. This is evidenced by membership in Campus Compact, a national coalition of college and university presidents, that has grown from three institutions in 1985, to more than 1,100 in 2009.

“You would be hard-pressed to point to any other educational reform effort in higher education that has made that kind of movement in that amount of time,” says Hartley. “It has been this tremendous explosion of activity.”

Support from university administrators, as well as timely government funding from the Corporation for National and Community Service and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has contributed to the rise of service learning in higher education. These agencies provided what amounted to seed money so institutions could establish programs.

In their paper, published in the American Journal of Community Psychology, the authors cite theMoelis Access Science project as an example of a democratic partnership between Penn and the community. Both Penn students and Philadelphia teachers participating in this math and science education project were surveyed, and both groups cited multiple benefits from the partnership. Penn students indicated that their communication and understanding of learning science and math had increased, and had even influenced their career-planning. Teachers said the project had a notable impact on the classroom, providing students with additional science and math role models and exposing students to topics in which teachers may not have expertise.

This example not only underscores the promise of ACBS courses, Hartley and Harkavy write, but it also serves as an example of how service learning can help further an institution’s core mission.

“It’s not just engagement,” says Harkavy. “It’s the idea of improving society, helping America realize its democratic promise.”

SUNY Chancellor Nancy L. Zimpher presented Chancellor Awards to three Purchase College students at a ceremony that honored more than 300 college students from SUNY campuses throughout the state.

Candice DioGuardi, Biology; Francisco Donoso, Painting and Drawing; and Jennifer Urbanowski, New Media were the winners.  They were accompanied  by John Delate, Purchase College Associate Dean for Student Affairs.

“The students we honor today have excelled academically and taken advantage of what SUNY has to offer in and outside the classroom,” said Chancellor Zimpher.  These students are proven leaders, athletes, artists, community servants, and much more.  They represent the future of our state and are perfect examples of The Power of SUNY.  I congratulate all of the students receiving recognition today and thank them for the positive impact each of them has had on SUNY and the communities we serve.”

Candice DioGuardi, Honeoye Falls, NY, was recognized for her leadership roles with pre-med and tutoring organizations. She has volunteered at Strong Memorial Hospital and organized blood drives on campus.  As a member of the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers, Candice received a Gold Key Award in photography.  She was also a recipient of grants to assist the development of a computer mentoring program.  Candice is a Memorial and a Presidential Scholar for women in the sciences.

Francisco Donoso, Jacksonville Beach, FL, is a Presidential and Merit Scholarship recipient who embodies the Renaissance spirit of the scholar/artist.  His published artistic creations and written vignettes highlight his multiple talents. His community service efforts include founding of the Project Haiti organization, which raised awareness and over $4,000 for the victims of the Haitian earthquake. As a student leader  he was a Resident Assistant, Orientation Leader, and Peer Advisor.

Jennifer Urbanowski, New Milford, CT was a recipient of a Longman Publisher’s Writing Award as well as a Laster Scholarship. After two years as a Resident assistant (RA), she had the distinction of serving the third year as a senior RA for Wellness Living.  Over this year’s winter break Jennifer travelled to Austin, Texas and volunteered to serve as counselor in the OutYouth program. She has also donated her time and energy to the non-profit organization, Rehabilitation Through the Arts, a program that provides incarcerated men and women an opportunity for personal development through theatre and the arts.

The Chancellor’s award for Student Excellence was created 14 years ago to recognize students who have best demonstrated, and been recognized for, the integration of academic excellence with accomplishments in the areas of leadership, athletics, community service, creative and performing arts, or career achievement.  The average grade point average (GPA) for all recipients this year is 3.8.

Each year campus presidents establish a selection committee which reviews exemplary students.  Nominees are then forwarded to the Chancellor’s Office and are subject to a second round of review.  Finalists are then recommended to the Chancellor to become recipients of the award.  Each recipient receives a framed certificate and a medallion, which is traditionally worn at Commencement.

Paul Rogat Loeb

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By Lauren Sieben

Paul Rogat Loeb has seen a big shift in students’ attitudes toward political activism since he protested the Vietnam War at Stanford University in the early 1970s. His most recent book, Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in Challenging Times, is well read among student activists and is now in its second edition, with more than 100,000 copies in print, many in college classrooms. He has spoken to students about civic and political activism at more than 400 campuses since the early 1980s. Although many students are engaged with their communities, he says, the majority are not politically active.

Q. Just how do students participate in politics today?

A. Back in 2008, there was a lot of activity during the Obama campaign. Now students are involved in the community in more bounded ways. They will volunteer at a soup kitchen, but they won’t advocate around hunger issues.

Q. How do you get these students more interested in activism?

A. I tell them stories about the people who have acted, past and present, because I find that those stories really empower and inspire them. Students feel like they need to know every single fact and statistic and have the answer to every possible question before they start, and of course that’s not the way things occur.

Q. Are students more active in Wisconsin right now, where proposed legislation threatens bargaining rights for university workers and graduate students?

A. I’m heartened by student involvement in the Wisconsin protests and by students’ challenging crippling tuition hikes in other states, like California. But the challenge is to get students involved so they’re engaged before a crisis hits, and so their actions can help our country pursue wiser and more humane paths than those that have landed us in the situations we now face.

Q. What are the biggest differences between this generation of college students and your generation of college students?

A. I grew up right around the peak of the engagement, in the 60s. The biggest difference is that many of us at that point really believed that change could occur, and we were taught this sort of American dream: to act as a citizen and then the government will listen. Now the burden of cynicism is infinitely greater. The question of whether your actions will matter is a harder one to get past.

Q. Where does the cynicism come from?

A. You get a series of disappointments, and I think that it feeds the cynicism. Certainly from the students I’ve talked with, that’s been the process. So many students who were knocking on doors in 2008 certainly weren’t doing it in November of 2010.

Q. Has the revolution in Egypt had any effects on student activism here?

A. If they understand it correctly, then what they’ll recognize is that this is yet another example of how human courage can prevail against absolutely impossible odds. Activism has to be conscious, and that’s what they did in Egypt. They had trial marches and they brainstormed, in the same way the students in the civil-rights movement brainstormed before they went to sit down at the lunch counter.

NORTH CAROLINA CAMPUS COMPACT

NC Campus Compact is pleased to announce the 2011 contest winners.

Technology Contest Winner – University of Washington (WA)

Congratulations to the University of Washington for capturing 7552 or 45% of the nationwide vote of 16,878 from 45 states..

Photo Contest Winner – Mars Hill College (NC)

Congratulations to Mars Hill College for capturing 5305 or 47% of the nationwide vote of 11,296 from 43 states.

We commend all the finalists for their inspiring entries which represent the spirit of the MLK Day of service including meeting community needs, encouraging diversity and honoring the legacy of a man who committed his life to service. Both winning institutions will receive a cash award to support future MLK Day of Service efforts.

Visit this link to view the entries.  Thank you to everyone who voted and helped spread the word.