Michigan State University’s (MSU) student-volunteer program—which has done everything from help rebuild Katrina-ravaged New Orleans to tutor generations of school children—has won a prestigious federal award.
MSU now holds the 2008 Presidential Award for General Community Service, becoming one of only 18 colleges and universities—and the first in Michigan—to win a presidential award since the federal honor was launched in 2006.
The award is the highest federal recognition a college or university
can receive for its commitment to volunteering, service-learning and
civic engagement.
The university was chosen based on the stability, growth and impact of its student-volunteer program, according to the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), the federal government agency that presents the award. The CNCS oversees the AmeriCorps and AmeriCorps VISTA programs, among others.
MSU’s 40-year-old Center for Service-Learning and Civic Engagement, the oldest continuously operating student-volunteer program in the nation, has seen its student rolls double in the past five years, reaching a record 14,551 in 2007-08.
LaTasha Jeter is one of those students. A human biology major from Detroit, she has tutored first-graders at Bingham Elementary School in Lansing for two years as part of a federal work-study program. Ninety-nine other MSU students helped out at Bingham last year. Jeter also volunteers as a Girl Scout leader at the Boys & Girls Club of Lansing.
Karen McKnight Casey oversees the university’s volunteer center.
“For me, this really is about MSU’s commitment to community,” Casey says. “There are many institutions that have rhetoric around working with community, but MSU means it.”
Source: Andy Henion, MSU
Gretchen Cochran is Innovation & Jobs editor and may be contacted here.
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