Due to the cancellation of the 2020 Gulf-South Summit due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 Gulf-South Summit Awards winners will be recognized at the 2021 Gulf-South Summit
Outstanding Practitioner Contributions to Service-Learning in Higher Education
Ralph Foster, Assistant Vice President, University Outreach, Auburn University (Link to Award Video)
Ralph Foster is Assistant Vice President for University Outreach and Public Service at Auburn University, with more than 30 years of service at the institution. Foster earned his bachelor’s degree from Auburn and a master’s from Troy State University-Montgomery, and completed the University of Georgia’s National Leadership Institute in Adult and Continuing Education. He is responsible for policy and strategic planning for the division, providing leadership for three administrative units, and overseeing service-learning projects and interdisciplinary outreach initiatives engaging more than 100 community and institutional partnerships. He oversees University Outreach’s institutional compliance and accreditations, twice leading Auburn’s successful application for the Carnegie Foundation’s prestigious community engagement classification, the most significant such designation in higher education. In the academy, Foster has served on the Gulf-South Summit Executive Committee since 2009 and chaired the Summit conference in 2014. He has also served two terms on the Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement national editorial board and coedited a special edition on community engagement best practices. Foster’s publications include journal articles and book chapters on ethics, education, management, marketing, and civic engagement. His professional activities include board and committee positions in several state, regional, and national academic and community organizations. His awards and recognitions for civic and professional engagement include the title of Fellow in the Society for Advancement of Management, the highest professional designation of that international organization. Ralph and his wife Lesley reside in Montgomery, Alabama.
Outstanding Practitioner Contributions to Service-Learning in Higher Education
Mary Alice Morgan, Senior Vice Provost for Service Learning, Mercer University (Link to Award Video)
A graduate of Duke University (B.A.) and the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign (Ph.D.) in English, Mary Alice has served as Senior Vice Provost for Service Learning at Mercer University since 2008. In addition to heading up Mercer’s successful applications for the Carnegie Classification in Community Engagement and President’s Honor Roll in Community Engagement, Mary Alice has also administered two collaborative community grants, a “Promise Neighborhood” development grant and “GEAR UP” college prep grant with the Macon school district. Mary Alice has organized several campus- and community-wide conferences addressing poverty-alleviation, and her office has partnered with the local United Way in providing Mercer tutors for their “Read2Succeed” literacy program. Mary Alice has also been able to stay active in the classroom, co-leading eight international service learning programs to Cape Town, South Africa. She has also led anti-sex trafficking research and outreach featured in a Gulf South Summit keynote in 2015. In 2012, she was named a finalist for the Thomas Ehrlich Civically Engaged Faculty Award.
Outstanding Community Partner Contributions to Service-Learning in Higher Education
Eve Anthony, Chief Executive Officer, Athens Community Council on Aging (Link to Award Video)
Eve Anthony has been working with the Athens Community Council on Aging for 19 years and was named CEO in 2017. Eve’s passion is serving older adults and ensuring that every individual is able to age well. As the CEO of one of the oldest and largest aging service providers in the southeast, Eve utilizes her leadership strengths to oversee programs and services, engage community partnerships, and advocate for older adults at the local, state and national level.
Eve is a graduate of the University of Georgia and holds a Professional Certification in Gerontology from Kennesaw State. Eve serves as a member and officer in several state association boards including Leading Age Georgia and the Meals on Wheels Association of Georgia. Eve also contributes her expertise as a committee member of the Georgia Alzheimer and Related Dementia State Plan, the Georgia Senior Hunger State Plan Committee and the State of Georgia Older Adults Cabinet. She is an alumni of LEAD Athens, class of 2017-2018. Eve’s favorite and most important role is as wife to husband Neal and mother to her 16–year–old daughter, Lily.
Outstanding Faculty Contributions to Service-Learning Instruction in Higher Education
Tammy Crutchfield, Professor, Mercer University (Link to Award Video)
Dr. Tammy Crutchfield, Professor of Marketing and Associate Dean of the School of Business and Mercer University, is honored for her highly innovative service-learning program, “Traffick Jam”. Over the past six years, Dr. Crutchfield and her teams of marketing students have conducted community based research on the incidence of adolescent sex trafficking in central Georgia, developed and funded an anti-trafficking mentoring curriculum that is being implemented in high schools in partnership with the local school system and are currently in the process of expanding the service learning program to other universities. The mission of Traffick Jam is to teach teens how to “drive out” sex trafficking and to mentor them to be all that they are created to be. Traffick Jam works because teens listen to and engage with college students more easily and seriously than they do the adult authority figures. The team’s research reveals that 11% of high school students in the community know someone who had sold themselves for sex, and 8% know someone who had been forced into selling themselves for sex. To date, close to 500 Mercer students from across the university have taken Traffick Jam service-learning courses and mentored teens or managed the social brand. Mercer students testify to the learning they have gained professionally, morally, and civically. To date, the Traffick Jam service-learning team has mentored 4,000 high school students.
Outstanding Faculty Contributions to Service-Learning Research in Higher Education
Neena Xavier, Director of Academic Education / Assistant Professor, Brenau University (Link to Award Video)
Neena Agarwal Xavier, MD is a graduate of Vanderbilt Medical School. She is double board certified in Internal Medicine and Endocrinology, Lipids, and Metabolism. After three years in private practice, she joined the PA program at University of Alabama at Birmingham where she served as the clinical medicine and clinical simulation course director. Her teaching philosophy centers on experiential learning and she has developed active learning opportunities in the classroom including service learning, case-based learning, and interprofessional simulation. Her service-learning opportunity provides free wellness screening for the male homeless population in Birmingham. For this service, she was awarded the national 2018 American Association of Clinical Endocrinology Outstanding Service Award for the Promotion of Endocrine Health in an Underserved Population. She was also chosen as a 2019 Harvard Macy Medical Educator Fellow to study outcomes in service learning as a pedagogy in PA education for which she received a nationally competitive research grant from the Engaged Scholarship Consortium.
Outstanding Student Contributions to Service-Learning in Higher Education
Aubrie Strange, President, Partners Acting in the Community Today (PACT), Samford University (Link to Award Video)
Aubrie Strange is a third-year student at Samford University studying Journalism and Mass Communication with a minor in History. She has a passion for service, which has driven her ambitions and allowed her to serve in her role as president of Partners Acting in the Community. Today (PACT), Samford’s community engagement and social justice student organization that works with the university’s Frances Marlin Mann Center for Ethics and Leadership. She finds joy in connecting others to service and building an ever-growing network of community organizations, with a fit for every person and every passion. During the COVID-19 Pandemic, Aubrie helped provide lunches for local children who, like her, had been displaced from school. She simply loves to serve wherever she is needed. “Every time I’m in a community, I’m reminded how important community work is,” she said, “how much it means to so many people, and how much bigger it is, sometimes, than you would ever imagine.” In the future, she hopes to work in the nonprofit sector in communications, especially in a museum setting, and find a place where she can have a perpetual role in helping others find their joy in service.
Outstanding Service-Learning Collaboration in Higher Education
Troy Braswell, Judge, Faulkner County Juvenile Court, University of Central Arkansas (Link to Award Video)
Judge Troy Braswell was sworn in as Circuit Judge on January 1, 2015. Judge Braswell presides over a wide range of cases, but is most known for his work in juvenile court and juvenile justice reform. In 2016, Judge Braswell’s court implemented a new risk assessment tool and began focusing more on community partnerships and providing services and programs to help rehabilitate at risk youth. The court’s partnership with University of Central Arkansas’s Service-Learning Program was strengthened and expanded to include Girl Scouts, improvisational theatre and Shakespeare, a philanthropy club for youth involved in drug court, as well as after-school tutoring, a boxing program and implementing the court’s intake assessment for youth. During this partnership, the community has seen a 78% reduction in the detention of youth, a 56% reduction in youth committed to the state’s most secure lock up and an almost 30% reduction in delinquency cases filed by the Prosecuting Attorney’s office. Judge Troy Braswell is a 2002 graduate of the University of Central Arkansas. He resides in Conway, Arkansas with his wife Karla, also a graduate of UCA, and their two children.