The Corporation for National and Community Service has named Virginia Tech to the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll with Distinction for exemplary service efforts and service to disadvantaged youth.

“Our undergraduate and graduate students devoted more than 142,000 hours--an impressive effort--to serving the community and helping others during the 2006-2007 academic year,” Virginia Tech President Charles W. Steger says. “This award gives them national recognition for their hard work, their compassion, and their selflessness.”

Launched in 2006, the community service honor roll is the highest federal recognition a college or university can achieve for its commitment to service-learning and civic engagement. Honorees for the award were chosen based on a series of selection factors including scope and innovativeness of service projects, percentage of student participation in service activities, incentives for service, and the extent to which the school offers academic service-learning courses.

More than 11,000 Virginia Tech students — approximately 40 percent of the student body — engaged in some form of community service during the 2006-2007 academic year. This calculation is derived from data received from the student government association, 28 student organizations with a service mission, the corps of cadets, athletics, citizen scholars engagement, the women’s center, the service-learning center, and the community literacy corps federal work study program. “We are confident that our new service initiative, VT-ENGAGE, will involve even more students in the current academic year,” says Steger. “Our students are demonstrating the depth of their commitment to our university motto, Ut Prosim (That I May Serve).”

The honor roll is jointly sponsored by the corporation, through its Learn and Serve America program, and the Department of Education, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, USA Freedom Corps, and the President’s Council on Service and Civic Participation.

In congratulating the winners, U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings said, “Americans rely on our higher education system to prepare students for citizenship and the workforce. We look to institutions like these to provide leadership in partnering with local schools to shape the civic, democratic, and economic future of our country.”

Overall, the community service honor roll recognized 127 schools as honor roll with distinction members and 391 schools as honor roll members. In total, 528 schools were recognized. A full list is available at www.nationalservice.gov/honorroll.

The Corporation for National and Community Service is a federal agency that improves lives, strengthens communities, and fosters civic engagement through service and volunteering. The Corporation administers Senior Corps, AmeriCorps, and Learn and Serve America, a program that supports service-learning in schools, institutions of higher education, and community-based organizations.

Virginia Tech’s application was submitted by Michele James-Deramo, director of the university’s service-learning center, which helps faculty incorporate community service in for-credit courses and sponsors the volunteer student community-service task force, Hometown Industries.

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