Campus Compact honors professor, committee on rights and justice for community service 

By Denise Hart, Media Relations

A UNH faculty member and a student organization were recognized for their community service projects by the Campus Compact for New Hampshire, at its annual Presidents’ Award Luncheon held in Nashua May 5. More than 100 college students, higher education staff and administrators, representatives of local K-12 schools and nonprofit organizations attended the event to celebrate and recognize community service activities at New Hampshire college campuses.

Kate Hanson, professor and chair of the Community Service and Leadership Program at the Thompson School of Applied Sciences, received the Presidents’ Good Steward Award in recognition of her contributions in advancing public service on campus. Hanson co-founded the Community Service and Leadership program and under her tutelage, hundreds of students have dared to dream large and share their talents with a long list of community agencies including Special Olympics, New Hampshire Public Television, Danny’s Team, the Red Cross among many others, offering more than 2,000 hours of community service each year.

The Presidents’ Leadership Award was given to the Committee on Rights and Justice (CORAJ), a UNH student organization formed under the guidance of Nina Glick Schiller, professor of anthropology. The award recognizes “…an individual student or student organization that has made outstanding contributions to community service, service learning and /or civic engagement efforts on their campus. ”CORAJ organized in 2003 to help the Simwerayi family, political refugees from the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, bring their children to New Hampshire. The students circulated petitions, raised funds, worked with federal, state and local officials and engaged businesses and community partners to succeed in bring the Simwerayi’s seven children to this country in September 2004. The students have not stopped with one success, and are now helping to reunite another family from the Congo.

Campus Compact for New Hampshire is a consortium of 24 New Hampshire college and university presidents in cooperation with private sector partners who are united to the integration of service, civic responsibility and community collaboration into all academic, civic and student life facets of their institutions.

In the past year, New Hampshire college students have contributed more than 705,000 hours of community service with activities such as leading voter registration drives, tutoring children, coordinating after school activities for youth, cleaning up parks, mentoring at-risk youth, building homes for the homeless, visiting the elderly and many other projects.