UW-Parkside News: UW-P gets presidential community service honor

UW-P gets presidential community service honor

The University of Wisconsin-Parkside has been named to the 2008 President's Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll. UW-Parkside's inclusion, which was announced Monday, Feb. 9, 2009, by the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), recognizes the university's commitment to service and civic engagement on campus and throughout southeastern Wisconsin and northern Illinois.

UW-Parkside Interim Chancellor Lane Earns noted "through the multi-faceted efforts of the Center for Community Partnerships, the Career Center's student Volunteer and Experiential Program, and other programs, UW-Parkside has come to exemplify the CNCS's goals of supporting innovative and effective community service and service-learning programs."

Earns added this is the second consecutive year that UW-Parkside has received this prestigious national honor.

"UW-Parkside students certainly are engaged in their community," said Business Professor Cathleen Folker who serves as faculty co-director of Community-Based Learning and Research. "Putting together the Honor Roll application was challenging because there are so many different areas within the university that support community engagement. For the 2007-2008 academic year, 1,900 UW-Parkside students engaged in community service with approximately 1,000 involved in community-based-learning (CBL). Fifty courses, involving more than 30 faculty members, and over 140 CBL projects were completed during that academic year."

UW-Parkside is joined on the 2008 President's Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, UW-Eau Claire and UW-River Falls. Other Wisconsin educational institutions receiving honors included Marquette University, Edgewood College of Madison, Lawrence University in Appleton, and Ripon College as well as technical colleges serving Milwaukee, Green Bay, and La Crosse. The complete honor roll is available at www.nationalservice.gov/honorroll on the Web.

Expanding campus incentives for service is part of a larger initiative by the Corporation for National and Community Service to spur higher levels of volunteering by American college students. In 2006, 2.8 million college students gave nearly 300 million hours of volunteer service. The Corporation's goal is to engage 5 million college students in service by 2010.

For more information on UW-Parkside's wide range of community education and service programs, call 262-595-3340.

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Story Status: Archived
Publish date: 2/16/2009