Ohio State has been recognized as an Honor Roll member with Distinction in the second annual President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll by the Corporation for National and Community Service.
Of the 127 institutions achieving this designation, Ohio State is the nation’s largest in single-campus enrollment. Only four other Ohio schools and 12 other land-grant universities were honored.
The President’s Honor Roll recognizes institutions of higher education that support innovative, effective and exemplary community service programs.
Criteria for selection include scope and innovation of service projects, percentage of student participation in service activities, incentives for service and the extent to which the school offers service-learning courses.
Among the highlights of the community-based service provided by Ohio State students:
- More than 9,700 Ohio State students engaged in 153,158 hours of service during the 2006-07 academic year.
- One-third of these students committed at least 20 hours per semester to community service.
- Of these students, 1,805 were enrolled in service-learning courses.
- More than 75 percent of these students and half of the total hours were devoted to serving youth from disadvantaged circumstances, a special focus area of the Honor Roll.
The Honor Roll is jointly sponsored by the Corporation for National and Community Service, through its Learn and Serve America program, and the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S.Department of Housing and Urban Development, USA Freedom Corps, Campus Compact and the President’s Council on Service and Civic Participation.
For more details, see Ohio State’s Service-Learning Initiative Web site: service-learning.osu.edu/spotlight.php. |
Summary of exemplary projects
Ohio State’s Honor Roll application, prepared on behalf of the university by the Service-Learning Initiative, demonstrates meaningful contributions to community service made by undergraduate and graduate students with the support of faculty and staff during the 2006-07 academic year. Here are brief summaries of the projects that were judged to be exemplary:
General Community Service:
- Through the OHIO Project, the College of Dentistry’s fourth-year dental class provided more than 27,000 procedures for more than 12,000 low-income Ohioans, an estimated $1.2 million in oral health care services.
- Student leaders on the SERV Team (Students Engaged in Responsible Volunteering) engaged nearly 5,000 of their peers in 12 large-scale service projects, including Community Commitment, one of the largest single-day student-led service projects on any college campus.
- In Operation Diabetes, Ohio State’s award-winning chapter of the American Pharmacists Association Academy of Student Pharmacists raised awareness of the disease by conducting screenings and developing an interactive middle-school educational program.
- In partnership with OSU Extension, business and law students yielded $600,000 in tax refunds for low- to moderate-income individuals by helping them claim the Earned Income Tax Credit.
- To improve access to healthy food in areas of Columbus with high numbers of uninsured and impoverished residents, teams of allied medicine and public health students researched and prepared a report that enabled Columbus Public Health to develop a food access action plan.
Special Focus Area:
Youth from Disadvantaged Circumstances
- In year three of a university-wide partnership with Columbus Public Schools’ Johnson Park Middle School, students, faculty and staff from multiple disciplines joined forces to provide a digital media-focused after-school program, a college student/middle school student writing collaboration and a daylong campus visit designed to build college and career aspirations.
- An orphanage for children with HIV/AIDS in Honduras is benefiting from water quality and technology improvements and nutrition and education programs provided by students, faculty and staff from the colleges of Engineering and Education and Human Ecology.
- Mathematics and education students from Ohio State Mansfield helped young clients at a local reading center learn to enjoy math and improve this crucial skill through tutoring and developing lesson plans aligned with state standards.
- Annually, about 300 Ohio State student volunteers bring hands-on science experiments to 3,000 students in Columbus public schools in disadvantaged areas. The Wonders of Our World program, led by the College of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, draws students from more than 50 majors campuswide, who help elementary-aged children increase their knowledge and interest in science.
- In one of Ohio State’s many partnerships with COSI, students tutored and mentored Miracle-Gro Capital Scholars (50 high school students from disadvantaged circumstances). Student members of the university’s chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers were shadowed by the Scholars Junior NSBE Chapter in a day encouraging their interest in college and careers.
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