APPLETON, WIS. — For the second straight year, Lawrence University has been named to the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll for exemplary service efforts and service to disadvantaged youth by the Corporation for National and Community Service.
“We are extremely pleased to be recognized for our community service efforts again this year and I continue to be amazed by the quality and depth of our work in the community not only by students, but by Lawrence faculty and staff,” said Jill Beck, Lawrence University president. “More and more often, community engagement is an extension of our classrooms and the result is a better learning experience and a better community.”
Launched in 2006, the Community Service Honor Roll is the highest federal recognition a school can achieve for its commitment to service-learning and civic engagement. Honorees for the award are chosen based on a series of selection factors including scope and innovativeness of service projects, percentage of student participation in service activities, incentives for service, and the extent to which the school offers academic service-learning courses.
In the past year, Lawrence, with an enrollment of 1,400, documented 6,000 service hours involving at least 650 students, including more than 50 students who performed at least 20 hours of service per week. Of that total, 1,430 service hours were devoted to the disadvantaged.
Among the initiatives for which Lawrence was recognized was ArtsBridge America, an arts-based outreach program that partners Lawrence students with area K-12 teachers to create unique interdisciplinary projects; the Lawrence Assistance Reaching Youth (LARY) Buddies, a mentoring program for at-risk elementary students; The Volunteers in Tutoring at Lawrence (VITAL) program, which matches students with Fox Valley K-12 students who need help in a wide variety of academic subjects, and the local chapter of A Better Chance program in which Lawrence students serve as tutors and mentors for high school boys who come out of difficult urban environments to live in Appleton and attend local schools.
“College students are tackling the toughest problems in America, demonstrating their compassion, commitment, and creativity by serving as mentors, tutors, health workers and even engineers,” said David Eisner, chief executive officer of CNCS. “They represent a renewed spirit of civic engagement fostered by outstanding leadership on caring campuses.”
“There is no question that the universities and colleges who have made an effort to participate and win the Honor Roll award are themselves being rewarded,” said David Ward, president of the American Council on Education. “Earning this distinction is not easy. But now each of these schools will be able to wear this award like a badge of honor.”
The Corporation for National and Community Service is a federal agency that improves lives, strengthens communities, and fosters civic engagement through service and volunteering. The Corporation administers Senior Corps, AmeriCorps and Learn and Serve America, a program that supports service-learning in schools, institutions of higher education and community-based organizations.
