A Cary, N.C., native, Ellmers is the first recipient of the Love Award for Excellence in Business Leadership. Allison designed, recruited and helped to lead a team of six North Americans on a service trip to Calhuitz, Guatemala, a highland community almost thirteen hours by car northwest of Guatemala City.
The group helped with the construction of a new maternity center to house volunteer doctors and midwives who serve people in the surrounding communities in a part of the nation dubbed the “triangle of death” because of its high rates of malnutrition and infant and child morbidity and mortality.
Charles E. Love, the eldest son of Martha and J. Spencer Love and the chairman of the Foundation, accepted the paper from Ellmers during a meeting with Mary Gowan, dean of the Love School of Business, and professor Susan Manring, the chair of the Love Award Selection Committee. Love was accompanied on his visit by his spouse, Mary Herbert Love.
While on campus, the Loves also met with President Leo M. Lambert and attended the university’s 2008 Scholarship Dinner.
Recipients of The Love Award for Excellence in Business Leadership design and complete a leadership project grounded in one or more of the Elon Experiences – service learning, internships, study abroad, leadership development and student undergraduate research.
Projects have clearly defined objectives and tangible results and culminate with a written report and public presentation to business faculty members and students. Manring’s committee is in the process of reviewing applications for this year’s award, which will be presented at ODK-Awards Day in May.
In addition to Manring, Ellmers also worked closely with professor Kim Jones in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology in designing and completing her project. Ellmers will present her research and reflections on April 30 during Celebrate Week.
Ellmers’s work was also featured on the front page of the most recent issue of “Grassroots,” a publication of Curamerica Global, Inc., the international non-governmental agency with which Ellmers forged a strategic partnership in carrying out her project.
“We believe these awards will inspire some of Elon’s best business students to further develop their leadership skills,” said Charles Love. “Students who receive these awards excel not only as students, but outside the classroom as citizens who are committed to improving their communities. As the first Love Scholar, Allison has set the bar very high for those who will follow her.”
J. Spencer Love (1896-1962) founded Burlington Mills, Inc., in 1924, and the company later became Burlington Industries which for more than a generation was the largest, most profitable textile corporation in the world. A fierce competitor, Spencer Love invested heavily in new technology and production methods to make his mills more efficient and productive.
A 1917 Harvard graduate who served in the Army during World War I, Love began his career in textile manufacturing in 1919 as the paymaster at his uncle’s Gastonia Cotton Manufacturing Co. Today, Burlington Industries is a profitable and growing division within the privately held, Greensboro-based International Textile Group, Inc.
Martha Love (1911-1980) graduated from Agnes Scott College and Simmons College. She worked in personnel management with J.B. Ivey Co., in Charlotte and also served in the Women’s Army Corps during World War II. The couple established the Love Foundation in 1947 and made their first gift to Elon in 1952. In 1985, the foundation made the largest gift ever to that point in Elon’s history to name the business school the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business.
“The Martha and Spencer Love Foundation’s initial visionary gift in the 1980s transformed Elon’s business program and allowed it to become a nationally recognized business school worthy of AACSB international accreditation,” said Jo Watts Williams, special assistant to the president and a longtime friend of the Love family. “The continuing partnership with the Love Foundation honors the core values that the university and the Foundation share – preeminent among them, the importance of a life committed to service and public citizenship.”
– Information submitted by Larry Vellani, director of corporate and foundation relations for Elon University