Shepherd named to Presidential Honor Roll for Community Service

ISSUED: 10 February 2009
MEDIA CONTACT: Valerie Owens
(Shepherd named to Presidential Honor Roll for Community Service)

Shepherdstown, WV--Shepherd University is among 635 colleges and universities honored by the Corporation for National and Community Service with a place on the President's Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll for exemplary service efforts and service to America's communities.

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 were chosen based on a series of selection factors including scope and innovation 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.

"We are proud of our students and their commitment to community service," said Dr. Suzanne Shipley, president of Shepherd University. "Their spirit of volunteerism is infectious, and they make Shepherd and our local communities better places in which to live and work."

Shepherd's Office of Student Community Services and Service Learning has as its mission to promote, organize, and assist in the coordination of campus outreach initiatives. This is achieved through effective placement of individual students and academic and social organizations in situations that embrace learning through service.

Student Community Services works directly with nonprofit agencies and initiatives, both locally and nationally, to create opportunities that are mutually beneficial to both the agency and Shepherd's students. By understanding the goals of the volunteers and the recipients, successful matches are made that create lifelong learning, leadership development, and a deeper understanding of diverse populations.

Shepherd was recognized for the number of service hours coordinated by the office as well as the institution's commitment to civic engagement. During the last academic year, students completed more than 21,000 volunteer service hours. Volunteer events included Relay For Life to benefit the American Cancer Society (Shepherd has raised more than $215,000 since 2003), the Annual First-Year Orientation Day of Service (140 students volunteered in 2007), and the Alternative Spring Break trip where 20 students forfeited their spring break to work at a community center in Bluefield, West Virginia, working on the structure during the day and tutoring children in the afternoon and early evening. Additionally, 185 Shepherd education students tutored at-risk students at Harpers Ferry Job Corps to assist in the completion of their G.E.D. and/or high school diploma. In January, 25 students volunteered to celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the national A Day On, Not a Day Off. Smaller projects included bake sales to raise money for a child with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, trash collection along West Virginia highways, kitchen cleaning for Meals on Wheels, and the bagging of 45,000 pounds of potatoes to help feed the hungry.

The Honor Roll is a program of the Corporation for National and Community Service, in collaboration with the Department of Education, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the President's Council on Service and Civic Participation. The President's Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll is presented during the annual conference of the American Council on Education.

Recent studies have underlined the importance of service-learning and volunteering to college students. In 2006, 2.8 million college students gave more than 297 million hours of volunteer service, according to the Corporation's Volunteering in America 2007 study. Expanding campus incentives for service is part of a larger initiative to spur higher levels of volunteering by America's college students. The Corporation is working with a coalition of federal agencies, higher education and student associations, and nonprofit organizations to achieve this goal.

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. For more information, go to www.nationalservice.gov.

Shepherd's Office of Student Community Services and Student Learning was honored last year for its contributions when it was named to The State Journal's "55 Good Things about West Virginia."

-30-OWENS

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