news-record.com

GREENSBORO — Elon University’s service learning programs are being recognized with a national award.

The school is one of five receiving the Washington Center’s inaugural Higher Education Civic Engagement Award.

The national nonprofit organization recognizes schools that emphasize service learning and civic engagement.

Elon staff will travel to the National Press Club in Washington in October, where they’ll join the other four schools being honored: Wartburg College, Villanova University, Cabrini College and Tennessee State University.

Presidents of the five schools will be recognized at the Washington Center’s Gala 2009: In Service to the Nation.

At Elon, there are a half-dozen service learning projects or centers teaching students the benefits of volunteer service, bringing them face-to-face with global and local problems. Among those highlighted by the Washington Center was the Elon Academy, which helps prepare low-income Alamance County high school students for college.

“Most of our students have little or no family history of college,” said Deborah Long, who oversees the academy. “We’re trying to give them everything their more affluent peers might get.”

Academy students are recruited as freshmen and, as sophomores, learn study skills and good academic behavior. As juniors, they work with Princeton Review for SAT prep. As seniors, they and their families work on college applications, getting scholarships and finding ways to finance college.

The program now has 79 students, some of whom are applying to Ivy League colleges where Long said they have an excellent chance at getting full scholarships.

Elon has also incorporated service learning through many classes that require volunteer service. According to the school’s Kernodle Center for Service Learning, the classes contribute about 24,000 service hours per year. Students who volunteer through the center without academic credit kicked in another 68,000 hours of service last year, doing things such as tutoring local children, helping coach sport teams and volunteering at Special Olympic events.

The school’s Project Pericles program gives student a global view on service learning. The project has taken students to Mexico, Zambia, Ghana and Sri Lanka.

Professor Tom Arcaro taught Elon’s first group of Periclean scholars. They traveled to Namibia to make a documentary on the HIV/AIDS crisis there that’s now used to educate Peace Corps volunteers. They then used their knowledge and interest in the issue to help Alamance Cares, an organization doing HIV/AIDS testing and counseling.

“The program does what we hope to do with all service learning,” Arcaro said. “It gives undergraduates this incredible feeling of really being involved in something that makes a difference and is long-term. In a sense, they continue to infect others around them with the possibility of making a difference.”

Contact Joe Killian at 373-7023 or joe.killian@news-record.com