All of SF State’s hard work promoting community involvement paid off with an award in October.

To recognize the university’s commitment to service learning and civic engagement, the Corporation for National and Community Service honored SF State with the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll.

The award was announced Oct. 17 at the Campus Compact 20/20 Visioning Summit, in Chicago.

More than 500 colleges and universities applied for the Honor Roll, which is sponsored by the CNCS and several other organizations including the Department of Education.

In total, 345 schools were honored, and an additional 141 schools received a presidential honor for their distinguished community service working with the hurricane relief efforts.

Perla Barrientos, who has been the director for the SF State Office for Community Service Learning for six years, said it is great that the university was recognized for such an achievement, even if the credit needs to go elsewhere.

"It's the students who are the ones doing the volunteer work in the community, as part of either a course or in other ways," Barrientos said.

Colleen Bentley, the special projects coordinator for the office of the chancellor, has recently created a group of six individual campus videos which spotlight what the students do in the community. SF State is included as one of the six campuses, and the video can be viewed at www.calstate.edu/csl/news_pubs/videos.shtml.

"San Francisco State is very far out in front, in terms of service learning and civic engagement," said Bentley. "It’s another part of the university education, which is making a well-rounded student."