Release Date Feb. 18, 2008
Five Brookhaven College students are recipients of Tommy Standridge Scholarships for the spring of 2008. Karla Ceballos, Susana Chavaria, Flor Gonzales, Chris Vivero and Amanda Washington will each receive the $500 scholarship from the Carrollton-Farmers Branch Rotary Club. Charles McAdams, humanities and cultural studies professor, has chaired the club’s scholarship committee and has long encouraged the organization in its support of community college students.
Eight students recently attended the Student Leadership Institute for Social Justice in Austin, February 8-9, sponsored by Texas Campus Compact. English Professor Patricia Dodd, club sponsor, and Linus Spiller, coordinator of service-learning and civic engagement, arranged the trip. Matthew Stepanek, Michelle Smith, Cornelius Caldwell, Nadia Galindo, William Martz, Hanna Hailu, Cornelius Richard and Anna Hernandez attended the two-day institute. The primary goals of the event were to define citizenship, address social issues, and create networking opportunities for students. Brookhaven College ’s Amnesty International group’s poster display in the main meeting area, depicting the conflict involving Burmese monks in Myanmar , was a main attraction of the conference. In an optional community service project, Brookhaven College students were deputized to register people to vote in the East Austin area, which has a high Latino population.
Brookhaven College was recognized as a recipient of the 2007 President’s Community Service Honor Roll for our commitment to “innovative and effective community service and service-learning programs.” The Honor Roll’s Presidential Award, given each year to only a handful of institutions, is the highest federal recognition a college or university can receive for its commitment to volunteering, service-learning, and civic engagement. Linus Spiller submitted the college’s application, highlighting the college’s Democracy in Action, International Conversation Partners, Brookhaven Counts, Brookhaven Reads and Service Matters programs. The programs involve hundreds of students and employees from the college’s social science, communications, mathematics and world languages departments, and special services staff. The Honor Roll is a program of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and is sponsored by the President’s Council on Service and Civic Participation, the USA Freedom Corps, and the U.S. Departments of Education and Housing and Urban Development.
A team from Brookhaven College attended the third Achieving the Dream (ATD) Institute in Atlanta , Ga. , last week. There were teams from 85 colleges across the country sharing and learning about the practices colleges are implementing to address student success. Dr. Sharon L. Blackman, president; professors Kathleen Long and Czarina Reyes; Kendra Vaglienti, executive dean of communications; Mathewos Kassa and Teri Walker from institutional research; and Sylvia Coffey, Multicultural Center director, attended sessions to learn best practices from colleagues at other ATD colleges. Teri and Kendra presented information about Brookhaven College ’s pilot program “Future Achievers Succeeding Today” and how information gained from the pilot is being used now to develop other college initiatives. The collaborative nature of ATD means the colleges can share data and validate methods to support student success.
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Educational opportunities are offered by Brookhaven College without regard to race, color, age, national origin, religion, sex, disability or sexual orientation. Brookhaven College is accredited by the Commission on Colleges, Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, 1866 Southern Lane, Decatur, Georgia 30033-4097, telephone 404-679-4500, Web site: www.sacscoc.org, to award the associate degree.
