Brooklyn College Receives National Honor For Community Volunteer Service
3/27/2009
"Brooklyn College is proud to be named to the Honor Roll for Community Service by the Corporation for National and Community Service," said President Christoph M. Kimmich. "For the past decade, one of the College’s chief commitments has been to be "a model citizen" –– an institution engaged in the borough of Brooklyn that provides an array of services to its residents and stresses the value of giving back to the wider community."
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 are 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.
"In this time of economic distress, we need volunteers more than ever. College students represent an enormous pool of idealism and energy to help tackle some of our toughest challenges," said Stephen Goldsmith, vice-chair of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees the Honor Roll. "We salute Brooklyn College for making community service a campus priority, and thank the millions of college students who are helping to renew America through service to others."
A commuter campus, Brooklyn College reflects the borough’s hardworking and caring character. In fact, explicit among the College's goals are the commitment to being a good neighbor in the borough and the desire to give back to the Brooklyn community that 85 percent of its students call home. A recent survey of more than one thousand Brooklyn College students, found more than 60 percent who reported that they performed volunteer community service in the past year, while 20 percent of respondents reported taking advantage of the service learning and internship programs offered by the College.
For nearly a decade, Brooklyn College has been documenting and acknowledging significant service provided by student volunteers through its unique volunteer service registry, SERVA (Students Engaged in Responsible Volunteer Action). In 2007–2008, SERVA students in this year-round program documented 8,318 hours assisting in local communities while fulfilling their required participation at SERVA-eligible educational workshops and maintaining good academic standing.
Among the other programs highlighted in the College’s application for inclusion in the Honor Roll were:
- EPASO (Empowered Athletes Serving Others )/Student-Athlete Advisory Committee––Working with local agencies, the program has placed its community service emphasis on helping the most vulnerable members of the community, developmentally disabled and ill children.
- Brooklyn College Shadow Day Program––The members of student clubs work with local high schools to bring groups of students to the campus to experience college life, with the aim of encouraging them to finish high school and attend college.
- The Magner Center for Career Development and Internships––The center’s various small business internships allow Brooklyn College students to gain practical work experience while providing assistance to local businesses in Brooklyn.
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.
