August 2007 Announcements
1. Midwest Consortium Awards Reminder
2. Grants Available (students)
3. Midwest Consortium on Service Learning Annual Conference
4. Graduate Student Scholarships

Please see below for details on each Announcement.

1. Midwest Consortium on Service Learning Awards Reminder                                                                Conference award nominations are due August 30^th.  Award Categories include: 

• Administration Commendation in Service-Learning
  This award honors an administrative professional who has advocated for and promoted service-learning and civic engagement within their campus communities during the ’06-’07 academic year.
   
• Service-Learning Teaching
  This award honors a faculty/staff member or graduate assistant, who has demonstrated a commitment to service-learning within a teaching environment during the ’06-’07 academic year.
   
• Service-Learning Research
  This award honors a faculty/staff member, administrative professional, or a graduate/undergraduate student who has shown outstanding commitment to the exploration of service-learning through research during the ’06-’07 academic year.
   
• Student Commendation in Service-Learning
  This award honors an undergraduate student who has demonstrated exceptional leadership, citizenship, and commitment through service-learning and/or developing and furthering the service-learning infrastructure of their learning institution during the ’06-’07 academic year.
   
• Student Group Project
  This award honors a group of undergraduate students involved in a service-learning project that demonstrates innovative and sustained approaches to address an issue in the community, and provides evidence of impact on academic learning, civic commitment, and community development.

• Community Partner Commendation in Service-Learning
  This award honors an outstanding community partner who, during the ’06-’07 academic year, has been committed to a service-learning partnership with a higher-education institution.  In so doing, this community partner has demonstrated availability, innovation, and creativity to students as well as community needs. 
   
• Program Innovation
  This award honors an exceptional service-learning program that has made great steps to further service-learning at a higher-education institution during the ’06-’07  academic year.  The program must demonstrate innovation, creativity, and success with a minimum of one outcome assessment recorded.
   
• Conference Proposal
  This award honors an outstanding proposal that when submitted, exceeded expectations by representing the MCSLHE mission statement, as well as the 4^th Annual MCSLHE Conference goals.
   
• Voyager Award
  This award honors a MCSLHE member who has demonstrated an outstanding and ongoing commitment to furthering service-learning throughout their professional career.  This individual will be selected based on their ingenuity of developing infrastructure with higher-education service-learning programs, and their enthusiasm and commitment for the programs they helped to create and sustain.
  
  To nominate an individual or program:
• Nominations must be received by AUGUST 30, 2007
• Complete a nomination letter which outlines why this individual or program should be recognized, and how they have met the award requirements. (Please specify which award the nomination is for and include your name and contact information.) Collect 2 further letters of recommendation for each nomination.
• Deliver the nomination packet (nomination letter and both recommendation letters) to your campus MCSLHE representative.
• Consortium representatives will select one institutional nomination per award and send the packet(s) by e-mail to dianne.nagy@sdstate.edu, or by US Mail to Dianne Nagy
  Office for Diversity Enhancement SDSU, FND Box 55 Brookings, SD 57007
  
  Award Selection and Notification Process:
  • Each nomination will be reviewed by the MCSLHE awards selection committee.
  • Award recipients will be notified on or before September 10, 2007.
  • Awards will be presented during the MCSLHE 4^th annual conference reception, at the Museum of Nebraska Art in Kearney, Nebraska, on September 27, 2007.

2. Grants Available (students)                                                                                   
There are two opportunities for grants to students who are engaged in service-learning. While the student has to involved in the application and the implementation the money is actually distributed to the college, university or community partner so there is accounting assistance in place to track income and expenditures. However, with these grants the student involvement is critical.
The grants are coming from two sources

1) The Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Partnership Foundation provides $1,000 grants for innovative and promising service-learning projects. While the grants are administered by the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Partnership Foundation, this grant is sponsored by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, and seeks to foster academic-service learning at American colleges and universities.  Applicants and their community partners must meet the minimum requirements listed below. Among those applicants meeting minimum requirements, a winner will be chosen based on the selection criteria listed below.:

The applicant must be a full or part-time student in good academic standing, provide a letter from a faculty member who is willing to oversee the proposed project and agree to provide a report of the project.  

2) State Farm has introduced a new program that will provide $25,000 to $100,000 to students who are engaged in community service-learning. The announcement of this program will be made this Friday, August 17th. However, applications are going to be due in September so you probably want to begin thinking about which student(s) working with which community organizations could effectively use this kind of grant. There is a 5 million dollar pool of money from which the grants will be issued. The money will go the student's college or university or to the community organization with which the service-learning project is conducted. I received a call from State Farm about these grants but do not have more details at this time.

Both of these grants are great opportunities for college students but both will require assistance from someone working with service-learning at their institutions. You should do everything possible to be inclusive and let as many students as possible consider these opportunities. The time line is relatively short and I know most of you do not start classes for at least another week or two. If you have some way of contacting the students most likely to do something with this kind of opportunity I urge you to proceed.

The selection criteria proposed by the Carter foundation should be a great starting point for either grant:
 
IMPACT
Impact on the community through increased economic opportunity, improved social or civic networks, more effective education programs, more responsive public systems, etc.
Documentation of measurable outcomes.
The promise of sustainability for the proposed idea after the grant funding is exhausted.

PARTNERSHIP
Identification of the community partner's strengths and efforts to build upon and enhance these strengths.
Collaborative and data-informed planning and decision making between the student and the community partner with regard to the project.
Efforts to enlist other collaborators (e.g. businesses, civic organizations, government agencies, faith-based institutions, etc.)
 
ACADEMIC-SERVICE LEARNING
Integration of the project with a student's coursework, practicum, thesis, dissertation, etc.
An optimal blend of learning, research and service for the applicant. Applicants are encouraged to work with their community partner to leverage this grant with additional contributions from other sources or additional participation by students, faculty, staff, community residents or others.   The grant will be presented by HOST OFFICER NAME at the EVENT on DATE at the PLACE.  Grant funds are intended to be used during the semester of the award date, or subsequent semester or summer in some cases.
 

3. Midwest Consortium on Service Learning Annual Conference: Service-Learning: Pioneering a Powerful Pedagogy  
Informational available at http://www.unk.edu/acad/mcslhe 

Plan now to participate and attend the Midwest Consortium for Service-Learning in Higher Education (MCSLHE) fourth annual conference on service-learning to be held September 27–29, 2007 on the campus of the University of Nebraska at Kearney.

MCSLHE, comprised of 25 member institutions in Nebraska, South Dakota and Iowa, including private, public, and faith-based, four and two year institutions, promotes, mobilizes and supports the efforts of these colleges and universities in strengthening their academic and co-curricular service-learning programs.

AUDIENCE
Faculty, staff, administrators, students, and community partners, from member and non-member institutions, are invited to present and attend. Interactive, Individual/Group, Round Table and Poster sessions, in the following areas are being planned:

THEMES
Service-Learning and Transformation of the College Learning Experience
Building PK-16 Partnerships
Best Practices in Campus-Community Partnerships
Engaged Scholarship

FEATURED KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Dr. Edward Zlotkowski, Senior Associate for Service-Learning Projects at the American Association for Higher Education and Senior Faculty Fellow at National Campus Compact, is the designer and teacher of a variety of service-learning courses. (Read more about Dr. Zlotkowski here.)

Dr. Rahima Wade, Coordinator for collaborative service-learning activities between University of Iowa students and public schools in the state of Iowa and assistant professor of elementary social studies education at the University of Iowa. (Read more about Dr. Wade here.)

4. Graduate Student Scholarships
The International Association for Research on Service-learning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE) is pleased to announce that it is providing funding for ten $500 scholarships for graduate students for support to attend the

Seventh International Research Conference on
Service-Learning and Community Engagement
"Sustainability and Scholarship: Research and the K-20 Continuum"

OCTOBER 6-9, 2007, Tampa, FL

Application deadline: September 3, 2007

Applications are available at http://www.floridacompact.org/irsl/