Allison Oster
Senior Public Relations Specialist
(626) 815-4518
APU Recognized for Exemplary Community Service Programs
November 22, 2006
AZUSA, Calif. –
Learn and Serve America’s President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll awarded Azusa Pacific University the Distinction for General Community Service. APU is 1 of 121 institutions recognized, and 1 of 11 schools in California honored from nearly 500 applicants.
APU submitted five programs to highlight: Cerritos Kidz, an after-school tutoring program in an Azusa residential apartment complex; Focus International, which sends students, faculty, and alumni to mission trips around the world; Mexico Outreach, a short-term missions trip for APU students, junior high, and high school students to serve in Mexico during Thanksgiving and Easter vacation; College Headed and Mighty Proud (C.H.A.M.P.), a program that introduces the idea of college to encourage fourth graders; and Azusa Reads, a reading assistance program for kindergarten to fifth graders.
“This award demonstrates that APU has been able to exemplify God First not just as a motto, but as a true commitment to our community and our world,” said Judy Hutchinson, Ph.D., director for APU’s Center for Academic Service Learning and Research.
The new award grew from a response to President George W. Bush’s call for service by the nation’s colleges and universities. It is designed to raise public awareness about the contributions that college students have made through volunteer work locally and nationally, and to reward exemplary programs and practices.
Learn and Serve America – a program under the Corporation for National and Community Service, an independent federal agency – supports and encourages America’s students of all ages to engage in service learning. Learn and Serve America strives to instill an ethic of lifelong community service in students through community contributions, while building their academic and civic skills. Additionally, the program recognizes outstanding services and provides grants for community-based programs, training, and research.
APU’s Center for Academic Service Learning and Research is committed to developing relationships between the university and its surrounding communities, in order to enhance scholarship through service activities with a God-centered view. For more information, visit www.apu.edu/caslr/.
Featured in TIME magazine and ranked as one of the nation’s best by U.S.News & World Report and The Princeton Review, Azusa Pacific is a comprehensive, Christian, evangelical university, committed to God First and known for excellence in higher education. Azusa Pacific’s main campus lies just 26 miles northeast of Los Angeles in the San Gabriel Valley, while its seven Southern California regional centers bring convenience and extend quality programming. The university offers more than 50 areas of undergraduate study, 22 master's degrees, and 6 doctorates to a total student population of more than 8,100.
