Service-Learning Expo Honors Outstanding People and Projects

The Virginia Tech Service-Learning Center celebrated its 11th Annual Expo on April 28 at the Graduate Life Center. The Expo showcases outstanding community service, service-learning, and action-based research projects from the academic year.

This year's event featured 28 poster exhibits representing activity in the Colleges of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Architecture and Urban Studies, Business, Engineering, Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, Natural Resources, and Science, as well as the Graduate School, the Honors Program, the Corps of Cadets, and Scholarships and Financial Aid.

Cosby Rogers of the Department of Human Development was the 2006 Outstanding Faculty Award recipient. Rogers teaches the service-learning course, Multicultural Education, for the Department of Teaching and Learning. Rogers said that service-learning provided her pre-teaching students with an opportunity to extend learning beyond the classroom to participate in experiences "that often take them outside their cultural comfort zones, whether flat-footing with West Virginia coal miners or working with a non-English speaking preschool child."

The Rachel Parker-Gwin and Louis Gwin Service-Learning Award, named for the Service-Learning Center's benefactors in recognition of innovative and sustained service to the community, was given to four students: Jennifer Jackson, Ennis McCreary, Katie Perkins, and Brandi McKee.

Jackson was the founder and president of Students in Free Enterprise, which provides financial literacy programming for youth at Clayton Estates Trailer Park and clients of the Women's Resource Center.

McCrery was the first Writer's in Residence through the Department of English's MFA outreach program to local schools. She has since been named the graduate coordinator for this program, and has continued to work on community projects that link children with creative writing.

Perkins participated in the Stroubles Creek Watershed Initiative in the Water Resources Research Center for four years, organizing pond clean-ups for student and community groups, and collecting data for the Center's ongoing research on the health of the watershed.

McKee interned in the Service-Learning Center as the founding on-site coordinator for the Pilot Street Project, an English Language Learning Center based at the Maple Grove Apartments.

Alice Duehl, education coordinator for Refugee and Immigration Services and Josh Schaefer, an engineering student at Virginia Tech, study one of the 28 exhibits displayed at the annual Service-Learning Expo in April. Schaefer was instrumental in recruiting up to 12 engineering students each week to travel to the Maple Grove Apartments, site of the Pilot Street Project.

The Service-Learning Center also recognized 62 students, nominated by their course instructors or service-learning site supervisors, for outstanding work in their service-learning or Literacy Corps tutoring projects, and four community partners. The partners recognized were Alice Duehl of Refugee and Immigration Services; Chris Shackelford of Jacksonville Center for the Arts; Charles Hammond of Second Harvest Food Bank; and Paul Little of Wilson Avenue School.

Michele James-Deramo (left), director of Virginia Tech's Service-Learning Center, presents the 2006 Outstanding Faculty Award to Cosby Rogers of the Department of Human Development for her outstanding course on multicultural education. The award was presented during the Service-Learning Expo in April.