Scholars News Desk
College Park Scholars Announces its 14th Annual Service Day
July 22, 2009
College Park, Md. - College Park Scholars will hold its 14th annual Service Day on Friday, August 28, 2009. President C. D. (Dan) Mote, Jr. and Dr. Jody Olsen, recently concluding her responsibilities as Acting Director of the Peace Corps, will welcome University of Maryland freshmen Scholars and members of the greater Scholars community to Service Day at the Opening Ceremony in the Comcast Center.
Scholars donning gray tee shirts bearing the Scholars’ sunspot will travel by bus to various sites throughout the greater Washington D.C. metropolitan area to volunteer their time and energy, contributing more than 3,000 hours of community service to the community. Nearly nine hundred incoming freshmen will team up with local schools, parks, and community-based organizations, to work on projects designed by neighboring communities.
College Park Scholars has been a part of the University of Maryland since 1994 as a two-year living-learning community devoted to the development of academic excellence, civic engagement, and community service-learning in exemplary students.
Service Day is a realization of College Park Scholars' commitment to active learning and civic engagement. The program works to incorporate the co-curricular into the curricular, and to develop an ongoing relationship between the campus and the community. “Service Day lays the foundation for active learning. For the Scholars of today to become the leaders of tomorrow in whatever fields they pursue, both a world-class academic experience and a solid foundation in working with, and for, others are key,” Greig Stewart, executive director of the program, said.
Students participating in Service Day will work with sites such as Watkins Regional Park, Paint Branch Elementary School, Food for Others at Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, the College Park Aviation Museum, and the Howard B. Owens Science Center. For the third year, students from our Life Sciences program will be cleaning up the nearby Paint Branch, a subwatershed of the Anacostia River. Scholars continues its partnership with the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC) and Prince George’s County Public Schools, among other non-profit organizations and independent initiatives, to organize the volunteer sites.
One of the sites Science, Technology, and Society will be visiting this Service Day is an initiative of the Engaged University, which is an extension of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. The Engaged University is self-described as a “cross-pollination of campus and community” that makes opportunities for the university and its surrounding communities to engage in mutually beneficial research, learning and social action. Over the past few years, the Engaged University has worked with College Park Scholars program in Public Leadership, and William Wirt, Nicholas Orem, and Charles Carroll Middle Schools. Freshman Scholars volunteered for credit two hours every week with middle schoolers on an experiential learning project.
The experience of Service Day challenges new students to continue to pursue service opportunities at the university. Lakeland STARS, an after-school tutoring initiative founded and organized by College Park Scholars in collaboration with the City of College Park and Paint Branch Elementary School is in its 13th year of service. Other activities within the program are directly involved with community action, such as the Community-Based Discovery research class. Students tackle a community’s issue of concern over the course of an entire semester.
Service Day provides opportunities for hundreds in the Scholars community to embrace and practice service-learning. For freshman coming into both the university and the living-learning program, this day provides exposure to a meaningful experience they will remember as they continue through their academic careers.
“My hope is that these students come together with new friends and classmates around some meaningful work,” Martha Baer Wilmes, College Park Scholars' Associate Director for Student Affairs, said. Wilmes emphasized that new students become a part of the state of Maryland community, in addition to joining the University of Maryland campus. “I am hoping that the College Park Scholars will have an opportunity to provide some important assistance to the community that they’re going to become a part of,” she said.
Over the past 13 Service Days, College Park Scholars has engaged more than 10,000 students, faculty, and staff in delivering close to 33,000 hours of service to area schools, parks, and public service agencies. Scholars has also developed long-standing relationships with several of the groups it serves annually. These efforts were recognized both by Maryland’s Office of the Governor and House of Delegates at Service Day’s 10th anniversary, in 2005. Please consult the Service Day Web site for additional details.
For more information on College Park Scholars or this release, contact: Kevin Baxter at bax@umd.edu or 301-314-2777.
