Winter Park, Fla. — Recent surveys conducted by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU) finds Rollins College is indeed educating students for global citizenship and responsible leadership. As part of its initiative Core Commitments: Educating Students for Personal and Social Responsibility, the AACU surveyed 23,000 undergraduate students and 9,000 campus professionals at 23 institutions. Rollins students surveyed reported that contributing to the larger community is a major campus focus.
Other findings include:More than 100courses at Rollins offer a community-based component. Seventy-five percent of Rollins students have taken community-based programs as an official part of a course. For the past two years, half of the incoming class (or about 250 students) have participated in a Living-Learning Community (LLC), where students live in residence halls with and take classes with the same classmates. Students who have participated in an LLC report that Rollins has contributed to developing their ethical and moral reasoning and that Rollins encourages them to produce a more moral world. Those who have participated in peer education roles at Rollins consistently report a more positive view of Rollins and its climate. About 80 percent of the professional staff and students at Rollins think personal and social responsibility should be a focus of a liberal arts education.
The Personal and Social Responsibility Institutional Inventory is a campus climate survey designed to gauge participants' perceptions about the opportunities for learning and engagement with issues of personal and social responsibility across an institution.
In 2007, Rollins College was selected from a pool of more than 125 applicants from all sectors of higher education to be one of the 23 member institutions of the Core Commitments Leadership Consortium. The Leadership Consortium is designed to bring together the most promising institutional practices related to educating students for personal and social responsibility.
Other community service recognitions for Rollins include:
- In 2007, the Corporation for National and Community Service named Rollins College to the President's Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll With Distinction for exemplary service efforts and service to disadvantaged youth. The Community Service Honor Roll is the highest federal recognition a school can achieve for its commitment to service learning and civic engagement. Honorees for the award were selected based on a series of factors including scope and innovativeness of service projects, percentage of student participation in service activities, incentives for service and the extent to which the school offers academic service-learning courses.
- In October 2007, Rollins received the top award in the state as the Florida institution most committed to being an engaged campus. Out of 51 colleges, universities and community colleges in the state are members of Florida Campus Compact, Rollins was honored with the engaged campus award for "Best in Class" in the independent category and also garnered the engaged campus "Overall Statewide Award."
"Rollins' service-learning and community-engagement opportunities bring the college's mission to life," said Rollins College President Lewis Duncan. "It is through the experience of applying what they have learned in the classroom that Rollins students become global citizens and responsible leaders."
Founded in 1885, Rollins College is Florida's oldest recognized college, and is consistently ranked by U.S. News & World Report as one of "America's best colleges." The College of Arts & Sciences offers full-time undergraduate programs in the liberal arts. The Hamilton Holt School serves the Central Florida community by offering exceptional undergraduate and graduate degree programs, during evenings and weekends, to students diverse in age, experience and professional development. The Crummer Graduate School of Business is consistently ranked by Forbes magazine among the best business schools for return on investment, and Forbes recently ranked the MBA program No. 1 overall in Florida. For more information about Rollins, visit our Web site at www.rollins.edu. |
