Civic Engagement

It takes more than cardboard and trash bags to make a boat that can cross Lake Mary Nell. Mathematics, physics and engineering play a role in the process, too, as scholars in the Elon Academy discovered Thursday afternoon when they set sail across the pond as part of the “Challenges in Engineering” course offered this summer in the academic enrichment program for Alamance County teenagers.

Students in a spring semester English class have published two children’s books and a coffee table book to help support The Conservators' Center, a nonprofit exotic wildlife sanctuary in North Carolina's Caswell County.

Fourteen Elon University alumni in the Class of 2010 will re-enter the classroom this fall as educators with Teach for America, a national nonprofit that recruits recent college graduates to help erase what it describes as educational inequity found in many urban and rural low-income communities.

Associate professor Bud Warner will serve as Elon's first Faculty Fellow for Civic Engagement, beginning with the 2010-11 academic year.

Twenty-six rising sophomores from the Alamance-Burlington School System have been selected to join the fourth class of scholars in the Elon Academy, a college access and success program for academically talented students held each year on the Elon University campus.

Eight students from Cummings High School in Burlington will be earning college credits this spring at Elon University through a program funded by a $10,000 grant from the College Board.

A letter from two Elon students to U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, in which they urge the Massachusetts senator to support legislation that funds the development of nuclear energy technology, is a finalist in a contest that will be judged April 8 by prominent former lawmakers at a Project Pericles conference in New York City.

Elon University has been recognized for the fourth year in a row as a national leader in service-learning and civic engagement. The Corporation for National & Community Service named the university this week to the 2009 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll With Distinction for exemplary service efforts to America's communities.

Deborah Long has been recognized by the North Carolina College Personnel Association (NCCPA) with its Outstanding Service in Support of the Student Affairs Profession Award. Long is a professor of education, director of the Elon Academy and coordinator of civic engagement.

Eight Elon Academy students now have access to computers in their homes through the support of the Kramden Institute.