Community Service Awards
Nominations
The Community Service Resource Center invites you to nominate individuals for the annual Community Service Awards!
Throughout the school year, there are many UC Davis students, staff, faculty and student organizations who devote their time to community service and make an effort to improve the communities around them. They perform community service in various fields and help people who are in need. The Community Service Resource Center wants to recognize their dedication to community service by offering them the opportunity to receive a Community Service Award, which publicly acknowledges the work they've accomplished in their communities.
Please nominate UC Davis affiliates who contributed their time to community service throughout the year 2017 - 2018.
About
Recipients for 2016-2017 Community Service Awards and Civic Engagement Awards have been chosen.
What is community service? Community service is unpaid or voluntary work intended to benefit people, strengthen communities, and positively impact society or its infrastructure. In order to recognize the varied and generous dedication to community service by UC Davis students, staff, faculty, and student organizations, the Community Service Resource Center holds its annual UC Davis Community Service and Civic Engagement Awards. During winter quarter, we open nominations to all UC Davis affiliates and announce the award recipients in the spring. Recipients will receive certificates under different categories based upon dedicated service to others as well as breadth, quality, and time committed to community service. The categories are Outstanding, Gold, Silver, and Bronze.
Outstanding and Gold Recipients will be invited to attend a reception with distinguished members from our administration. They may also be eligible for the UC Davis Civic Engagement Award (additional documents may be required). Some recipients may be qualified to receive the President's Volunteer Service Award.
Chancellor's Civic Engagement Award for Freshmen: Tyler Rho
As a member of Homeless Outreach through Prevention and Education and founder of the non-profit organization, Swaddles for Sweethearts, Tyler has and hopes to continue to always prioritize the needs of her community, wherever she may be at the time. In 2010, she founded Swaddles for Sweethearts, a non-profit organization that donates blankets and nursing pads for premature babies. Upon arriving at Davis, she joined HOPE, a homeless outreach club that strives to create sustainable change by providing the homeless and low-income community with educational and emotional support. She hopes to dedicate her life to taking care of others by practicing medicine and using her experiences to connect with and grow alongside her community.
Chancellor's Civic Engagement Award for Undergraduates: Jennifer La
As the head of the pharmacy of Willow Clinic, a student-run clinic that serves the homeless population of Sacramento, Jennifer educates clinic members on drug information, and patients on diabetes, nutrition, exercise, smoking cessation, social services, and more. In addition, her research has ranged from understanding the ways poverty affects children's physical and mental health to the ways social support affects children's stress. By incorporating social aspects of health into health care, she uses her curiosity and knowledge toward implementing programs to reduce health care disparities within her community, such as helping homeless patients enroll for Medi-Cal, counseling them through motivational interviewing, and connecting them to other resources that may not be readily accessible to them.
Chancellor's Civic Engagement Award for Undergraduates: Samantha Mong
Samantha has been involved in various organizations for community services, ranging from translating for the underserved Asian population in a student-run clinic and volunteering in hospitals, to caring for children, college students and elderly in the local church she attends. Samantha hopes to integrate her Christian belief with her career goal, and desires to spread the love in her community, specifically in the healthcare field where she sets her career choice in the future.
Chancellor's Civic Engagement Award for Undergraduates: Eori Tokunaga (E-Or-E Toe-Koo-Na-Ga)
Working as a research assistant for the Child and Adolescent Abuse Resource and Evaluation center (CAARE) has been an important part of Eori Tokunaga's educational experiences outside of the classroom at UC Davis. Taking the theories that she has learned throughout her courses and combining them with her experiences working with marginalized communities on campus, she is better able to use her critical analysis skills in a research setting and create plans with the team at CAARE to present her own research poster. Of the several research experiences that she has had, CAARE has been one of the most influential spaces she has been in that has further empowered her to pursue my goals in the field of Social Welfare.
Chancellor's Civic Engagement Award for Graduate Students: Nazeela Awan (Nuh-zee-lah Sa-ber Uh-wan)
As a future primary care physician, Nazeela realizes the impact of social determinants on health and the need to build community partnerships to best serve the community, especially underserved communities. She has learned so much by working at a free student-run clinic, Shifa Clinic, as well as by establishing the Street Medicine program at UC Davis School of Medicine, Transforming Education and Community Health Track. While building partnerships with the local community, she has also learned the need to become an advocate for marginalized groups, especially through social justice, as well as impact policies that create and perpetuate health inequities and health disparities.
Chancellor's Civic Engagement Award for Student Organizations: Project RISHI at UC Davis
Project RISHI (Rural India Social and Health Improvement) promotes the sustainable development and growth of rural Indian communities. They identify issues central to their target communities and provide the resources to implement solutions through extensive field research and on-campus initiatives. Along with their village population in India, they strive to make a difference on campus. Project RISHI at UC Davis collaborates with READ, Rural Education and Action Development, a nonprofit based in towns they work in. Their projects, which have been developed via the needs of the population, center on menstruation education, diabetes, income generation, coding and hygiene and sanitation.
Civic Engagement Awards: 2015 Recipients
Five awards are presented for Civic Engagement, which encompass a wide range of activities by which students are engaged in service to the campus, local, national and/or international communities.
Underlying civic engagement is the assumption that students are developing skills and knowledge to help make meaningful differences in the lives of others and developing a holistic perspective on the interconnectedness between civic engagement and positive societal changes.
UC Davis Civic Engagement Awards
The UC Davis Civic Engagement Awards recognize students and organizations who have demonstrated a substantive and positive community impact through involvement and engagement. Recipients of this award not only excel in the areas of leadership and scholarship, but also seek to apply these abilities in innovative ways to improve the lives of others. Civic Engagement includes a wide range of activities by which students are engaged in service to the campus, local, national and/or international communities. Underlying civic engagement is the assumption that students are developing skills and knowledge to help make meaningful differences in the lives of others and developing a holistic perspective on the interconnectedness between civic engagement and positive societal changes.
There are a total of six civic enagement awards:
- First Year Award
- Graduate Student Award
- Undergraduate Student Award (three individuals awarded)
- Student Organization Award
Individual award nominees must have a cumulative 3.0 GPA and be in good standing with the university.
President's Volunteer Service Awards
The Community Service Resource Center is now a certifying organization for administering the President's Volunteer Service Award. This is a Federal Award that was implemented to foster taking positive action in the world. In order to receive this award you must complete the Community Service Award application that our center opens up in the winter, as well as be either a United States citizen or a lawfully admitted permanent resident of the United States. This does not affect your eligibility to receive the UC Davis Community Service Award or the Chancellor's Civic Engagement Award.