News from your Key Center
We're advancing civic engagement and service learning. How?
Fall 2008 ACT in Asheville Day. On September 9 our new freshmen will fan out for service in the city. This year's partnerships are with the Asheville Housing Authority, Asheville Middle School, Quality Forward, and Vance School. Students will be improving the physical environment at the school, helping senior citizens prepare for emergency medical situations, and making improvements for those who live in public housing. For a selection of photographs and links to press coverage for ACT in Asheville Day 2006, follow this link.
During summer, 2007, fifteen faculty members teaching LSIC 179 and 379 classes participated in a project to increase and enhance the use of service-learning as a powerful pedagogy in those classes. The results will be assessed during fall semester. The archive of their syllabi can be found here.
UNCA has now joined North Carolina Campus Compact (link to website here; national Campus Compact here). This is a crucial step toward our goal of becoming a fully engaged campus. Our membership also makes available somestudent placements in NC-ACTS!, a program under which students commit to 300 hours of public and community service during an academic year and receive a $1000 educational award. Are you interested? More information on that program here. NC-ACTS! interns in 2007-08 were Chelsea Mahan, Paige Paris, and Lynn Dodge. For 2008-09, our NC-ACTS! interns are Ashleigh Redmond, Julie Clifford, and Anna Spears.
The Key Center is once again organizing the Rollie Williams Mentoring Program. We'll recruit mentoring fellows to work with the I Have A Dream foundation and its children at Pisgah View Homes. Interested students should contact Merritt Moseley.
Successful programs from the past that we hope to repeat in 2008-98: In December, 2006 and January 2008, the Key Center sponsored a winter break trip by UNCA students to work on housing needs in the southeast. Some pictures from 2006 are here. In January 2007 the Key Center arranged a trip for nine students and two faculty members to Atlanta for the M.L. King Service Summit. Some photos are here. In March 2007 and 2008, the Key Center, in collaboration with the UNC Asheville Habitat group, sponsored an alternate spring break trip for 50 to work with New Orleans Habitat for Humanity on recovery after Hurrican Katrina. Thanks to our supporters--UNCA Student Affairs and Academic Affairs and the UNCA Parents Assocation--for making the trip possible. Details, photos, and some publicity, at this link.