James Shields Honored With Community Service Award

The North Carolina Campus Compact has selected James Shields, director of the Bonner Center for Community Learning , as its 2008 Civic Engagement Professional of the Year. Lisa Keyne, executive director of North Carolina Campus Compact, will present the award to Shields at an awards dinner on May 28.

The annual award recognizes one staff person at a North Carolina Campus Compact-member campus that has worked towards the institutionalization of service, created and strived towards a vision of service on their campus, supported faculty and students and formed innovative campus-community partnerships.

Shields, a 2000 graduate of the college, trains and supervises 60 Bonner Scholars annually as they each complete 140 hours of service per semester. He coordinates 12 committed community service sites, including The McLeansville Prison Literacy Program, Glenwood Library ESOL and Project Home, a partnership with the Greensboro Housing Authority.

He has promoted student-led civic engagement campaigns on Guilford’s campus and in the community, such as voting and diversity awareness drives, the Real Talk Series, the King Campaign, "Hip Hop Now" and Express Yourself Week. As the chair of the Greensboro Collegiate Council, Shields also builds collaborative service efforts among students at area colleges.

Additionally, he supervises student groups who participate in service trips overseas and partners with the African American Studies department to teach about the Underground Railroad in area schools.  In his free time, he stars in "Pathway to Freedom," the stage play about the Underground Railroad, at the Snow Camp Outdoor Theatre.

The North Carolina Campus Compact is a coalition of almost 40 colleges in the state collaborating to increase campus-wide participation in community service. It is affiliated with the 1,100-member National Campus Compact.

The winner of the Civic Engagement Professional of the Year Award is selected by a national committee, which this year included officials from the University of Washington (Seattle), Michigan State University, the Colorado Campus Compact and the National Campus Compact.

Past recipients of the award are Jenny Koehn, Appalachian State University (2007) and Jason Denius, East Carolina University (2006).

May 20, 2008