VCU named to the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll

By Mike Porter

Virginia Commonwealth University has been named to the 2008 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll by the Corporation for National and Community Service.

The honor roll was launched in 2006 and is the highest federal recognition colleges and universities can achieve for service-learning and civic engagement. It is sponsored by the President’s Council on Service and Civic Participation and the U.S. Departments of Education and Housing and Urban Development.

The selection, which recognizes VCU’s commitment to service and civic engagement, was announced Monday at the 91st Annual Meeting of the American Council on Education in Washington, D.C. This is the third consecutive year that VCU has been listed on the Honor Roll. 

“This award verifies that VCU is committed to promoting and maintaining innovative partnerships with the community,” said Lynn Pelco, service-learning program director, Division of Community Engagement.  “We’re a large and diverse university with many opportunities for a wide variety of disciplines to work together on projects to address community needs,” Pelco said.

Pelco included detailed information about the following community service projects in VCU’s Honor Roll application:

Mission of Mercy: a joint effort between the VCU School of Dentistry and the Virginia Dental Foundation to provide free dental care to people in underserved areas of Virginia.

Prison Writing Workshop: a partnership between VCU faculty, VCU English students and non-profit organization “Offender Aid and Restoration” to teach prisoners and ex-offenders how use writing to invent “new scripts” for living crime-free and drug-free lives.

Building Capacity for Change: an effort between VCU School of Mass Communications faculty and students and people who live in Richmond’s Oregon Hill neighborhood to create a community Web site and to promote “citizen journalism.”

Tap Project: students and faculty from the VCU Brandcenter and VCU Department of Design conducted the Richmond launching of UNICEF’s national fundraising campaign to address the lack of clean, accessible drinking water for children in developing countries.

CreateAthon: an effort by students in the School of Mass Communication to provide advertising services to local nonprofit agencies that have little or no marketing budget.

Carver-VCU Partnership: a comprehensive relationship between VCU and the nearby Carver neighborhood to provide education and community support since 1996.

TheCollegePlace: a partnership between VCU and TheCollegePlace-Richmond, a nationally affiliated nonprofit organization, to assist underserved students in planning for post-secondary education.

VCU AmeriCorps and America Reads: a program to promote literacy tutoring services to at-risk learners in the Richmond area since 1995.

Va-LEND: The Family Mentorship Project: designed to promote effective and caring family-professional collaborations to benefit at-risk youth by pairing VCU students with local families who have a child with a disability or special health care need.

For Africa: a partnership between the School of Social Work, School of the Arts and Sovereign Global Mission and included three days of performances that raised $48,000 to support a school and child development center in Ghana.

VCU students contributed an estimated 282,993 hours of community service in 2007-2008 through service-learning classes, service projects of student organizations, and individual volunteering. At the current Virginia minimum wage rate of $6.55, this number of hours translates into almost $2 million of donated service to the community.

“Our students are energetic, enthused and want to give back to the community,” said Beth Ward, volunteer services coordinator, University Student Commons & Activities.