Miami Dade College’s (MDC) reputation for exemplary service-learning and civic engagement, both as an institution and for its individual faculty and student projects, has been recognized on the national level once again. This time, the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) recently named MDC to its 2010 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll, which recognizes colleges and universities whose work in the community has helped achieve meaningful results.

CNCS oversees the Honor Roll in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Education, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Campus Compact, and the American Council on Education. Honorees are chosen based on a series of criteria, including scope and innovation 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.

This is the fifth consecutive year that MDC has made the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll. “This is an amazing designation for MDC,” said Josh Young, director of MDC’s Center for Community Involvement. “It is very hard for community colleges to compete with four year schools for an award of this magnitude, due to funding and many of our students being here for a shorter period of time. Thankfully, we earned another Honor Roll distinction this year. Special commendation is in order for the 285 MDC faculty members who integrated academic service-learning into their classes and engaged more than 8,300 students in course-related service.”

The President’s Honor Roll, launched in 2006, increases the public’s awareness of the contributions that colleges and their students make to local communities and the nation as a whole. President Obama has pledged to make service a central cause of his administration and wishes to commemorate the significant role that higher institutions, their students, staff, and faculty play in helping to solve pressing social problems in the nation’s communities.

For more information about MDC’s Center for Community Involvement and its various projects, contact Josh Young at 305-237-7477 or [email protected].


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