May 4, 2006
Center for Service Learning awards CommUniverCity with the Provost's Award for Excellence in Service Learning
Provost Carmen Sigler and Debra David of the Center for Service Learning at San José State University have recognized CommUniverCity as Outstanding Collaborative Project.

Students, faculty, volunteers, and representatives from agencies across Santa Clara County gathered at the Martin Luther King Jr. Library on May 4^th for the fifth annual Provost’s Award for Excellence in Service Learning ceremony. Recognition of outstanding students, faculty, departments, and community partners along with collaborative projects was displayed with an announcement and a plaque presented by both Provost Sigler and Debra David.

CommUniverCity and its partners stole the show, taking away Outstanding Collaborative Project and three other awards. Among those were Outstanding Student Team, Student Class, and Faculty Professor.

Andrea Nance, German Blanco, Ken Lee, and Ryan Duhe accepted the award for Outstanding Student Team for their work with Professor Kathleen Roe’s Health Science 104 class. Working under the title “Community Health Promotion Team,” the four developed a modified version of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation‘s survey on walkability. The team led classmates through the Five Wounds/Brookwood Terrace neighborhood, instructing students to document conditions of the streets and walkways. The project drew attention to this innovative method of collecting information because of the positive impact it left on the service learners involved.

Students of Professor Dayana Salazar‘s Urban Planning 201 and 203 received an award for Outstanding Student Class for their work, spanning two semesters, in supporting the Five Wounds/Brookwood Terrace neighborhood to create a renewed Strong Neighborhoods action items agenda. The students presented the results of the agenda created in 2001 to the neighborhood residents and collected feedback to design the next list of goals. With the help of the students, residents will vote on the final top ten priorities for the next five years on May 20^th.

Finally, Professor Dayana Salazar accepted the award for Outstanding Faculty Professor for her work with the students of the Urban Planning Department. Her class curriculum covered two semesters of material and set the pace for renewing the agenda, a pace which made Five Wounds/Brookwood Terrace the first Strong Neighborhood to complete its renewal.

The four awards of CommUniverCity and its partners are a sign that the work produced by the collaborative project is turning heads. Not only are students taking away valuable experience by applying classroom knowledge to real-world practice, but residents of Five Wounds/Brookwood Terrace are gaining attention to the challenges of the neighborhood and organizing themselves to identify their greatest needs.