Press release from Warren Wilson College:
Asheville, N.C. – Warren Wilson College welcomed new and transfer students through a day of service Monday. More than 66 students braved temperatures as low as 20 degrees to help with the creation of Hall Fletcher Elementary School’s (HFE) Outdoor Learning Center, “a half-acre outdoor learning environment that will translate classroom curriculum into outdoor educational experiences, encouraging enthusiasm through creative learning,” according to Asheville Design Center, HFE’s partner on the project. Warren Wilson students also worked in the garden, helped with tasks such as preparing classroom materials and bulletin boards, deep cleaning and organizing activity areas.
“[Warren Wilson College] volunteers are giving us the most precious thing they have, which is time,” said Gordon Grant, Ed.D., principal, Hall Fletcher Elementary School. “There is nothing more important, and the fact that they are giving us their time just speaks really highly of them and the work they do.”
Dean of Service Cathy Kramer says the day is part of new student orientation and helps students get to know Asheville while understanding the role of the College’s Service Program. “The other piece is that it’s our way to honor Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) Day,” said Kramer. “MLK was very active about his ideas around service. He said, ‘Everybody can be great because everybody can serve.’ So, this is a way that we honor that day, as well.”
As is the case with its sister Service Day each August, the College’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service is the platform for engaging new students in service and concentrating their efforts to offer significant assistance in achieving a community partner’s goals. “[Service is] really important and part of what attracted me to Warren Wilson,” said Michael Cupo, a first-year transfer student from Florida. “I love community. I love building community. I love being a part of community,”
During the 2014-15 academic year, 783 Warren Wilson College students worked with 257 community partner agencies to provide 58,015 hours of service. “I’ve been doing orientation, and we heard about service immediately,” said Lindsay Filipe, a transfer student from New Jersey. “I am someone that loves to do service on my own time. Having that encouraged [by] the school and being able to work with my peers is great.”
Warren Wilson College’s Community Engagement office is one of only 26 college service-learning programs recognized as “outstanding examples of academic programs that are believed to lead to student success” by U.S. News & World Report. In addition, the program is part of a selective 8 percent of U.S. colleges and universities in receiving the Classification for Community Engagement from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The College was also named to the 2014 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll with Distinction, which annually highlights colleges and universities that achieve meaningful, measurable outcomes in the communities they serve.
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