Duke Recognized for Distinguished Community Service

Duke University recently was recognized among 141 colleges, universities and professional schools for distinguished community service as part of the first President's Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll.

 A full list is available at http://www.nationalservice.gov/honorroll.

 Six institutions received top honors for extraordinary community service. Among them, North Carolina's Elon University was given the President's Award for Outstanding Community Service.

 Along with Duke, Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte was honored for its distinguished community service.

 Duke was recognized for its comprehensive range of civic engagement programs, both curricular and co-curricular, and for the contributions of the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership. Begun in 1996, the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership connects the university with local organizations and residents in 12 neighborhoods close to Duke's campus to improve the quality of life and to boost student achievement in eight nearby public schools.

 Within the Division of Student Affairs, Duke's community service programs and activities are primarily guided by the Community Service Center (CSC). (For more information on the CSC, see http://csc.studentaffairs.duke.edu.)

"Being named to the President's Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll is recognition of Duke's tangible commitment to promoting civic engagement as a defining characteristic of our learning community," said CSC director Elaine Madison. "It's important to see this recognition in the context of three successive strategic plans at Duke that have featured civic engagement and that span more than a decade. As a result, the campus now enjoys the benefits of having many mutually reinforcing yet unique efforts across the institution, such as the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership, the Office of Service-Learning and the Community Service Center."

The Honor Roll is co-sponsored by the Corporation for National and Community Service, an independent federal agency charged with fostering an ethic of volunteerism and service in America, the Department of Education, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, USA Freedom Corps, and the President's Council on Service and Civic Participation. The recognition is presented in cooperation with Campus Compact, a national coalition of nearly 1,000 college and university presidents, and is supported by all the major national higher education associations.

The awards were presented on Oct. 17, one day after the Corporation for National and Community Service released a comprehensive report, "College Students Helping America," which shows college student civic engagement rising significantly in recent years. The study, which used data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, showed that student volunteering increased about 20 percent from 2002 to 2005, and that 3.3 million college students serve their communities and nation. The study showed that college students between ages 16 to 24 are more likely to volunteer than cohorts in that age group who are not enrolled.

Observers have attributed the growth in student service to several causes: the proliferation of high-school and college service-learning classes; an increase in the number of campus offices linking students to volunteer opportunities and the lingering impact of the Sept. 11 and Hurricane Katrina disasters. More than 1.1 million students from Honor Roll schools participated in local community service activities, and more than 219,000 students provided hurricane relief.

The Corporation for National and Community Service is working with other federal agencies, higher education and student associations, and nonprofit organizations to encourage even greater levels of service and civic engagement by college students. Their goal is to increase the number of college student participating in volunteer service to 5 million college students annually by 2010.

For more information about the Corporation for National and Community Service, go to http://www.nationalservice.gov.