Special to the Tribune-Star
TERRE HAUTE — Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology has been honored for its commitment to volunteering and civic engagement by being named to the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll. This marks the second straight year for this national recognition.
The Corporation for National and Community Service, which administers the annual Honor Roll award, honored Rose-Hulman for developing innovative programs that address local needs. Those programs included having students serve as mentors and tutors for area middle school and high school students, assembling bicycles for needy children, planting trees for community beautification efforts and conducting a letter-writing campaign to support St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
“Congratulations to Rose-Hulman and its students for their dedication to service and commitment to improving their local communities,” said Patrick Corvington, chief executive officer of the Corporation for National and Community Service. “Our nation’s students are a critical part of the equation and vital to our efforts to tackle the most persistent challenges we face. They have achieved impactful results and demonstrated the value of putting knowledge into practice to help renew America through service.”
Rose-Hulman was one of 23 Indiana colleges and universities and 742 institutions nationally recognized on the 2009 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll. Honorees were chosen based on a series of selection factors, including the 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.
A total of 1,087 Rose-Hulman students contributed 52,083 hours of community service during a 12-month period lasting from July of 2008 to June of 2009, according to Carey Treager Huber, assistant dean of student services.
Exemplary Rose-Hulman community service projects in 2008-09 featured Bikes For Tykes, which transformed the campus into Santa’s Workshop as members of more than 20 student organizations assembled, inspected and distributed 450 bicycles and tricycles to create special holiday memories for needy children and their families. Meanwhile, nine student organizations helped the non-profit TREES Inc. organization plant trees which help beautify Terre Haute, and students wrote more than 5,000 letters in an Up Til Dawn campus event that raised public awareness and $16,760 to support the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn.
Special emphasis was made to highlight universities in 2008-09 that had made a positive impact on special community issues from poverty and homelessness to environmental justice. Rose-Hulman’s programs in these areas included the Portal Resources for Indiana Science and Mathematics program’s EMERGE mentoring project, which had students setting up small learning communities for female freshman Vigo County School Corp. students to guide them toward successful careers, either in the work place or in post-secondary education. Also, the Homework Hotline toll-free telephone and online tutoring service had Rose-Hulman students spending three hours on five nights each week as tutors for Indiana middle school and high school students needing help understanding with their math and science homework. Finally, the Explore Engineering after school educational program brought middle school and high school students to campus two evening each month to complete hands-on activities in hopes of capturing their interest as budding engineers and scientists.
Nationally, 3.16 million college students performed more than 300 million hours of service, according to the Volunteering in America study released by the Corporation for National and Community Service.
The Corporation oversees the Honor Roll in collaboration with the Department of Education, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Campus Compact and the American Council on Education.
