The rush of preparing for Project Serve— 15 distinct student-led groups of Pepperdine volunteers traveling to areas where they feel their services are needed— nearly drowned out Pepperdine’s presidential recognition as a center for community service.
Pepperdine announced Thursday that it was on the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll in recognition of its students’ volunteering service-learning and civic engagement.
“The award is a recognition of what our community stands for and does Brad Dudley, associate dean of career services and civic engagement, wrote in an e-mail. Service is at the heart of our Pepperdine mission and it’s one of the values ?that attracts students to Pepperdine.”
Senior Courtey Chatterson who leaves Saturday with a team of students helping set up permanent kindergarten facilities in Fiji agreed that an atmosphere of volunteerism pervades the university.
“I think Pepperdine in general has such a heart to serve she said. People are always willing to give money give baked goods give love.”
The Corporation for National and Community Service which administers the annual Honor Roll award recognized colleges and universities for their impact on issues from poverty and homelessness to environmental justice.
But the special focus area for this year’s award was serving students from disadvantaged backgrounds according to Dudley. Despite not knowing that there would be a special focus he said Pepperdine had 416 students serve more than 37000 areas with students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Overall4014 members of the Pepperdine community served 111376 hours according to Dudley.
Pepperdine which also made it on the honor roll in 2007 joins 620 other colleges recognized for their success in 2009.
“It’s true that we are not the only school on the list and frankly we don’t want to be Dudley wrote. The importance of service in our nation has gotten a lot of attention in the last few years and it’s exciting to see that so many students are investing themselves in being change makers.”
One of those students is first-time Project Serve member Cory Stephenson a senior who usually focuses his volunteer energies on Campus Ministries. He will lead a group to help in San Carlos Ariz.
“I’ve never done it before but my roommates have only told me great things Stephenson said. I’m not that familiar with other schools but Pepperdine would certainly be in the running … just because of the mission of the school.”
Students and other members live up to that reputation according to President Andrew K. Benton.
“The award comes at a time when hundreds of Pepperdine students are preparing for Project Serve our annual Spring Break initiative that sends more than a dozen teams of students into inner cities across America and as far away as the Dominican Republic to help those in need Benton wrote in a news release. It is gratifying that their efforts and the on-going efforts of our faculty staff and alumni volunteers around the world helped secure our placement in the honor roll.”
The corporation that assigns schools to the honor roll which invests more than $150 million to encourage service through small projects and programs such as AmeriCorps said 3.16 million students performed more than 300 million hours of service in 2009.