The Corporation for National and Community Service named the University to the 2008 National Community Service Honor Roll with distinction last month, said Siobhan Dugen, the corporation’s spokesperson.
The Honor Roll included 653 schools, with six receiving presidential awards and 83 named to the “with distinction” list, Dugen said.
The mark of “with distinction” means a school’s community service and service learning efforts were impressive to reviewers, she explained.
“They pick the ones that are outstanding, and in this case, that was the University of Virginia,” Dugen said.
This is the University’s third year on the Honor Roll and its second year with distinction, said Megan Raymond, the University’s director of academic community engagement.
The application to the Honor Roll asks for the number of students participating in community service and in academic community service, and for an estimate of the total number of service hours contributed, said Raymond, who completed the University’s application. During the 2007-08 school year, which is the period of evaluation for the 2008 Honor Roll, about 8,500 students logged 450,000 hours of community service, she said. Raymond emphasized that these figures are estimates.
“I think it’s really the tip of the iceberg for what our students do,” she said.
The application allows schools to submit five narrative descriptions of projects, Raymond said. The most recent application highlighted Bridging the Gap, a program that gives refugee youth who have resettled in Charlottesville access to resources. It also included Nursing Students Without Borders, the University Internship Program, Project SERVE and the Law School’s pro bono project, Raymond said.
As part of its annual special focus, this year the Honor Roll emphasized service projects affecting youth in disadvantaged situations, Raymond said. Schools were allowed to submit two additional project descriptions for this special focus. For this section, Raymond described the Young Women Leader’s Program, which is run through the Women’s Leader Center, and the Day in the Life Program, which provides tutoring and mentoring to local middle school students.
“We’ve got a nice little snapshot of a whole range of activities,” Raymond said. The activities described on the application are only a sampling of the entire University, she said. “There’s a lot more work going on than what gets captured through this process.”
The Honor Roll is a way to recognize and validate the work of people supporting the University’s service mission, Raymond said. “It rewards them for their good work,” Dugen agreed. “It draws attention to the need for volunteering and service learning on college campuses.”
College students can have a strong impact on the community they live in, Dugen said, noting that students who volunteer early in their lives tend to continue volunteering later on.
“The University has a responsibility to educate people to live their lives as active, involved citizens,” she said. “And this is part of what [the University] is doing.”
Being on the Honor Roll can also help other schools across the state and country realize their ability to perform similar service work, Dugen said.
“U.Va. can serve as a role model for other colleges and universities,” she said.
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