Virginia Tech awards Circle K with Student Leadership Award

Circle K has won Virginia Tech's Student Organization of the Year Award for involving Virginia Tech students in campus and community service while developing quality leaders and citizens.

The Student Organization of the Year Award is one of 10 University Student Leadership Awards given annually to recognize outstanding members, organization extraordinary achievements, advisers, volunteerism, and service-learning experiences.

Jessica Whitley, of Chesapeake, Va., a biology major in the College of Science at Virginia Tech, is the president of Circle K. She appreciates the combination of service and fellowship that the club provides. She said winning the Outstanding Student Organization Award was incredible. "It was really an honor to receive the award. It shows that hard work and small things you do during the year builds up and pays off in the end."

Circle K is the college branch of the Kiwanis Family. The Virginia Tech chapter has 89 members. The three pillars of Circle K are service, leadership and fellowship. Each pillar allows students to develop in a different area of their lives.

Circle K at Virginia Tech has a wide range of service opportunities for students to participate in: youth projects, community projects, elderly projects and projects around campus. A project category chair is assigned to each category and oversees all of the projects and their leaders.

Students have many opportunities to lead within Circle K. They are encouraged to lead by example and to take initiative in being active in the club by attending events, chairing projects and joining committees such as the club board or the club chairs.

Henry Ingram is the adviser for Circle K and a member of Blacksburg's Kiwanis Club. He is impressed with all of club's programs. "We in Kiwanis are always so amazed at the things they do," Ingram said. "They always have a full itinerary of activities and there never seems to be a lack of people willing to help."

Founded in 1872 as a land-grant college, Virginia Tech has grown to become the largest university in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Today, Virginia Tech's eight colleges are dedicated to putting knowledge to work through teaching, research, and outreach activities and to fulfilling its vision to be among the top 30 research universities in the nation. At its 2,600-acre main campus located in Blacksburg and other campus centers in Northern Virginia, Southwest Virginia, Hampton Roads, Richmond, and Roanoke, Virginia Tech enrolls more than 28,000 full- and part-time undergraduate and graduate students from all 50 states and more than 100 countries in 180 academic degree programs.