Award Winners

Lynn Pelco, Ph.D.

Outstanding Practitioner Contributions to Service-Learning in Higher Education

Dr. Lynn Pelco currently serves as the Associate Vice Provost for Community Engagement at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia, where she directs the Service-Learning Office and oversees ASPiRE, the university's community-engagement focused living-learning program. Lynn earned her Ph.D. in School Psychology from Pennsylvania State University and completed her postdoctoral fellowship in developmental disabilities at Johns Hopkins University. She has held a number of clinical and faculty positions, including lecturer at the University of South Australia, assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the Pennsylvania State University School of Medicine and school psychologist in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia. Lynn served as professor and co-director of the school psychology program at the College of William and Mary from 1992-2008.

Lynn's research and teaching interests include service-learning; family, school and community partnerships; and university student development. She has authored or co-authored 30 papers in professional journals and made over 60 presentations at professional conferences.

Freret Neighborhood Center, New Orleans, Louisiana

Accepting for the Center – Tonya Smith, Youth Program Coordinator

Outstanding Community Partner Contributions to Service-Learning in Higher Education:

Originally established in 2007 as a respite space for rebuilders without access to electricity following the destruction of Hurricane Katrina, the Freret Neighborhood Center quickly became a beacon of light in the community, demonstrating the power of residents to determine their own fate.

In 2008, a partnership between Loyola’s Office of Service Learning (OSL) and FNC was established. Over the course of the last four academic years, over 150 unique Loyola students enrolled in dozens of different service learning courses from nearly every discipline have been directly involved with Freret Neighborhood Center, documenting over 3,000 hours of service. FNC has provided work-study employment to nearly a dozen different Loyola students through Loyola’s Community Based Federal Work Study program.

FNC was a founding member of the university’s first Community Partner Council, which determines policies, procedures, and goals for service learning at Loyola. In 2012, FNC represented community partners on the selection committee that reviewed faculty applications for the inaugural round of Community Engaged Research Fellowships. FNC has also recently been the catalyzing voice behind a new initiative to revise Loyola’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) process.

Margaret-Mary Sulentic Dowell

Outstanding Faculty Contributions to Service-Learning Instruction in Higher Education

Dr. Margaret-Mary Sulentic Dowell is associate professor of literacy and urban education, School of Education, College of Human Sciences and Education, Louisiana State University. Sulentic Dowell’s research agenda is focused on literacy in urban settings, specifically service-learning as pedagogy – a pathway to prepare pre-service teachers to teach reading and writing authentically in urban environs, the complexities of district literacy leadership, and providing access to literature, writing, and the arts. She has been recognized for her scholarship and teaching, receiving the LSU Outstanding Faculty Service Learning Award in 2013, the Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award in 2012, and in 2007, she received the Kenneth Goodman In Defense of Good Teaching Award. She is National Board Certified in the area of early adolescence-English language arts. Sulentic Dowell was assistant superintendent of elementary schools in East Baton Rouge Parish from 2002-2006 and assistant professor at the University of Southern Mississippi from 1999-2002 where she was named an Academic Service-Learning Faculty Fellow in 2001.

John Brown

Outstanding Student Contributions to Service-Learning in Higher Education

John was born in Baltimore, MD and raised in Jacksonville, FL. After high school, John pursued a career in the United States Air Force where he worked as a technician for electronic and computer systems for Minuteman and Peacekeeper missiles in Cheyenne, WY. In 2005, John was attending 4 month training session in Biloxi, MS. During this time, Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast and John saw how devastating this was to the surrounding community. This impacted him greatly and resulted in John continuing his education.

Currently, John is a student at the University of North Florida (UNF) and will be graduating this spring with a Bachelors in Exceptional Student Education. He continues his service learning and community engagement interests through working with the Center for Community-Based Learning at UNF. After graduation, John will be pursuing a Master’s in Higher Ed. Administration at UNF.

VCU School of Dentistry - Community Partners Collaboration

Outstanding Service-Learning Collaboration in Higher Education

Since 2011 The Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) School of Dentistry has required its dental and dental hygiene students to complete high quality, formally designated service-learning classes. Through the development of these classes, the VCU School of Dentistry has created a network of service-learning community partnership sites across the state of Virginia where dental and dental hygiene students provide year round dental services to low-income Virginia residents. These partnerships make up the VCU School of Dentistry - Service-Learning Community Partners Collaboration. To date, the VCU School of Dentistry has cultivated partnerships with 16 diverse community clinics from around the state that provide dental services to a wide variety of underserved populations. The partners have sustained collaborations over time that have not only improved dental education at VCU but have provided millions of dollars of free dental care to underserved Virginia residents.

Kim T. Isringhausen has been on the faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Dentistry for 16 years. Over the past seven years, Ms. Isringhausen has served as the Director of the Division of Dental Hygiene and as the Director of Service-Learning Programs for both senior dental and dental hygiene students. Most recently, she led the creation of a new department in the School of Dentistry, the Department of Oral Health Promotion and Community Outreach, and was appointed department chair in January 2012.

Last Updated: February 10, 2014