Sabrina Sideris, program director for INVST Community Studies, has been selected as the recipient of the 2016 Anne K. Heinz Staff Award for Excellence in Outreach & Engagement. The award honors a staff member who has demonstrated outstanding professional commitments to and success with community outreach and engagement initiatives.
The award was presented at the annual Outreach Awards Luncheon on Wednesday, March 30. In addition to recognition, Sideris will receive $5,000 to support INVST Community Studies' initiatives as identified by her.
Sideris has been program director of INVST Community Studies since 2007. INVST is part of CU Engage, which supports community-based learning and research and is housed in the School of Education. She sees her professional purpose as helping young adults become conscientious, concerned citizens. She helps build partnerships between CU Boulder students and local organizations, and supports learners as they work toward social and environmental change through justice and peace work.
According to Roudy Hildreth, associate director of CU Engage, Sideris embodies the ideals of democracy, reciprocity, and social justice and brings these ideals to her leadership of the INVST program.
“Sabrina is a different kind of program director — she works democratically with students, instructors, and community partners to develop INVST, foster partnerships, and work for social justice,” said Hildreth in his nomination letter.
The INVST program was created in 1990 to help develop life-long community leaders who work for the benefit of humanity and the environment. The curriculum includes a two-year leadership program where students study theory and learn skills around community development, and participate in service-learning experiences domestically and abroad, a community-based internship, and a year-long project focused on social change. INVST also offers electives that foster civic responsibility and leadership. Sideris is an alumna of the program.
Thanks to Sideris’ leadership, INVST has cultivated relationships with more than 300 Boulder and Denver agencies that offer community-based learning opportunities to INVST students, including the Community Foundation of Boulder County, the Boulder Housing Coalition, Safehouse Progressive Alliance for Nonviolence, Intercambio, New Era Colorado and the Philanthropiece Foundation.
Molly Fitzpatrick, the organizing director for New Era Colorado, a local organization that works to engage young people in democracy, said in her letter of support that Sideris shows her dedication to serving others through countless member trainings "that have made them better organizers and more prepared to engage with the diversity of the millennial generation.”
In addition to Sideris, James S. Hakala, senior educator for the CU Boulder Museum of Natural History, and Nicole Speer, director of operations for Intermountain Neuroimaging Consortium, were selected for special recognition awards. The awards are administered by the Office for Outreach and Engagement and the recipients were selected by a committee.
View this article as it originally appear on the Outreach and Engagement website.