This year, the CUPS Office celebrated 10 years of community-engaged learning with an Expo of Service-Learning work and recognition of founding director Lynne Bond, Professor of Psychology. On October 22nd, President Sullivan, Provost Rosowsky and other guests gathered in Billings, where over 75 posters from service-learning classes and research projects were displayed. President Sullivan acknowledged the impact that service-learning has in drawing students in to ̽̽, enriching their experience while here, and preparing them for engaged work after graduation. CUPS Advisory Committee Chair Mandar Dewoolkar (Engineering) announced the renaming of CUPS’ Faculty Award as the “Lynne Bond Outstanding Service-Learning Faculty Award.”
Excerpts from his speech follow:
Reading over Lynne’s CV in preparation for this award, one doesn’t know where to start. She has a distinguished career in research, teaching, community engagement, and administrative work at ̽̽. She has received almost every award ̽̽ can offer. Yet it is clear that a commitment to community engagement as a high-impact educational practice is one of the central threads woven through her career.
From early on, community-based action research was a foundation of Lynne’s scholarship, including research on civic engagement among disenfranchised adults, community networking among poor, rural mothers, and development of voice among a number of populations, including mothers and children. As Dean of the Graduate College, she established international linkages with governments, institutions and community organizations, which would offer opportunities for engagement and community-based research.
Lynne says that increasingly, her courses involved extensive and required service-learning components because her students made clear these were “at the center” of their learning. Lynne writes that “service-learning increasingly moved from the margins to the center of my courses in terms of both the content and the structure of my courses.” As part of the rising interest in service-learning at ̽̽ at that time, Lynne was in the first Faculty Fellows for Service-Learning program in the spring of 2000.
Lynne’s commitment to community empowerment and student engagement found opportunity in the establishment of the ̽̽/Burlington Community Outreach Center (COPC), funded by a Housing and Urban Development Grant, in 1999. As co-director, with Richard Schramm of CDAE, the COPC worked to build reciprocal partnerships between ̽̽ and Burlington organizations around issues of fair housing, community leadership and ̽̽’s economic impact. Many of the partners -- CEDO, the United Way, CVOEO, COTS – are still some of ̽̽’s most committed community partners for service-learning.
Lynne’s deepening engagement with service-learning as a pedagogy combined with her leadership in the COPC made her an obvious candidate to help establish a stronger infrastructure for academic service-learning at ̽̽. She was appointed by then-President Judith Ramaley as co-chair of the Committee on Community Engagement (CCE), which for three years brought proposals, sought funding and worked to advance community engagement at ̽̽. Other members of that committee present today include Chris Koliba as the co-chair, and Tom Hudspeth, Chris Kasprisin, & Gail Shampnois. Gale Burford and Shirley Gedeon are still at ̽̽, but not here today. Chris Koliba comments that "Lynne has a keen ability to think and work across community - university lines by focusing in on the essential role that relationship-building plays with all community engagement endeavors. As a community psychologist she not only studies these relationships, but knows how to build and sustain them! I know I speak for the countless people who have been honored to call Lynne a friend, mentor and collaborator when I say, thank you Lynne for your willingness to lead by example and go the extra mile for what you know is right for our university and community."
As the Committee on Community Engagement continued its work, Lynne was nominated for a national service-learning award (The Thomas Erlich Faculty Award for Service). In his letter of support, then-President Dan Fogel wrote “Though Lynne would be the first to say there were many people who contributed to our recent advancements in service-learning, there is no faculty member at our university who is more instrumental in developing and practicing the unique blend of teaching, scholarship, and service that is service-learning, and in encouraging other faculty to participate.”
The work of the Committee on Community Engagement led directly to the founding of the CUPS Office in the fall of 2003. Lynne became the founding director, setting it on its course. In reflecting on that time, Gail Shampnois comments that “Lynne was fundamental to ̽̽ taking service learning and community engagement to a new level. It was her leadership, wisdom, experience, passion, inter-personal skills, and awe-inspiring focus that created the foundation for CUPS. And Lynne had the tenacity to make sure that community-university partnerships were incorporated into the office and its name, as they, like service learning, bring much to the student experience - academic and civic development, critical thinking and communication skills, and local and global understanding among others.”
In recognition of these many and varied contributions to academic service-learning at ̽̽ and beyond, we are delighted to announce the re-naming of our Engaged Outstanding Service Learning Faculty Award as the “Lynne Bond Outstanding Service Learning Faculty Award.”