Mullan received the award from North Carolina Campus Compact, a statewide network of colleges and universities with a shared commitment to civic engagement.
Elon University senior Amy Mullan has been recognized for outstanding leadership and service by North Carolina Campus Compact, a statewide network of colleges and universities with a shared commitment to civic engagement. Mullan is a recipient of the network’s Community Impact Award, which honors one student leader at each school.
Mullan is one of 23 students selected by their campus for the 2017 honor, joining more than 250 college students recognized by the network since the award was first presented in 2006.
At Elon, Mullan has made addressing hunger a key goal of her service and scholarship. As the student director of Elon’s Campus Kitchen Project, Mullan guides 15 student leaders working to fight hunger through direct service and advocacy.
Last year, her team collected nearly 7,000 pounds of food and prepared over 9,000 meals for Alamance County residents. She previously served as one of the first farm and garden coordinators for the project, helping to quadruple the farm’s yield. With a faculty mentor, Mullan has worked for two years on a hunger-related research project, “Newcomers and Nursing: Infant-feeding beliefs and practices of resettled refugee and asylum seekers in North Carolina.”
Bob Frigo, associate director of the Kernodle Center for Service Learning and Community Engagement said Mullan is engaged citizen, scholar and leader. "As Campus Kitchen director, Amy provides leadership for a team of 15 students who work together to address hunger in our community in the form of direct service, awareness, and advocacy," Frigo said. "On a broader scale, Amy’s team has not only provided thousands of meals and pounds of healthy food for hungry members of our community, but they have raised the level of consciousness among students, faculty, staff, and community residents regarding nutrition, food sources, and sustainability. Through her work, Amy is having a significant impact on our community and inspiring others in the process."
Mullan is from White Hall, Maryland, and is majoring in public health and policy studies. Earlier in 2017 she was named a finalist for a 2017 Truman Scholarship, a prestigious national fellowship awarded each year to college juniors with goals of working in education, government, the nonprofit or advocacy sectors or elsewhere in public service.
Mullan and other award recipients were honored at the Compact’s annual CSNAP student conference, held this year on November 18 at Winston-Salem State University. The event convened more than 230 students and staff from 28 campuses in the network. The conference included student-led workshops on diverse community engagement topics and a featured remarks by local “change agents” representing different public service pathways.
North Carolina Campus Compact is a statewide coalition of 37 public, private, and community colleges and universities that share a commitment to civic and community engagement. The network was founded in 2002 and is hosted by Elon University. North Carolina Campus Compact is an affiliate of the national Campus Compact organization, which claims 1,000 member schools representing nearly 2 million college students.