CU Receives Presidential Award for Community Service
The University of Colorado at Boulder is one of only three U.S. colleges and universities to receive a 2007 Presidential Award for General Community Service. An estimated 13,397 CU-Boulder students participate in some form of community service and 3,512 are engaged in academic service-learning, a teaching strategy that integrates meaningful community service with instruction. More than 530 universities and colleges competed in the awards program sponsored by the Corporation for National and Community Service, a government agency in Washington, D.C.
One of the many reasons CU-Boulder received the award is students like Andra Wilkinson. Wilkinson volunteered at a health clinic primarily for Spanish-speaking patients, served as tri-chair of the Women’s Resource Center advisory board and founded a campus discussion group for men to actively oppose sexual assault and rape.
“My outside work relates to what I’m passionate about, so what I’m studying is going to relate to what I’m pursuing outside of the classroom,” she said. “It’s not just giving, it’s absolutely a mutual benefit. You can’t overstate the power on an experience,” said the junior integrative physiology major.
Some of her previous volunteer activities include working at a Minnesota camp for youth impacted by HIV/AIDS; shaving her head in support of and to raise money for pediatric oncology patients; working with others to build a house for an indigent family in Juarez, Mexico; participating in the Global Leadership Program with students from around the world in Prague, Czech Republic; and tutoring Spanish-speaking students at the Family Learning Center in Boulder.
What motivates Wilkinson? “A quote that really drives me is ‘If not you, who? If not now, when?’ ”
