WesternU named to President's Honor Roll for community service
Western University of Health Sciences has been named to the 2009 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll with Distinction for its commitment to volunteering, service learning and civic engagement.
The Corporation for National and Community Service, which administers the annual Honor Roll award, recognized more than 700 colleges and universities for their impact on issues from poverty and homelessness to environmental justice. On campuses across the country, thousands of students joined their faculty to develop innovative programs and projects to meet local needs using the skills gained in their classrooms.
At WesternU, 1,600 of the University’s 2,700 students engaged in some form of volunteer or service-learning activity in 2009, including 300 who engaged in more than 20 hours of community service per semester. Services to the community provided by WesternU students included Pomona Community Health Action Team health fairs; homeless shelter clinics; Santa’s Workshop, providing holiday gifts and a meal to at-risk youth; and the Pomona Health Career Ladder, which brings middle-school students to campus for monthly workshops that help pave the way toward careers in the health sciences.
“”Congratulations to WesternU and its students for their dedication to service and commitment to improving their local communities,”” said Patrick Corvington, CEO 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.””
The Honor Roll includes six colleges and universities that are recognized as Presidential Awardees, with an additional 115 – including WesternU — named to the Distinction List and 621 schools named as Honor Roll members. Honorees are 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.
