Huntingdon receives national recognition for community service for third consecutive year  Montgomery, Ala.—For
the third
consecutive year, Huntingdon College has been selected to the
President's Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll by the
Corporation for National and Community Service. The awards
program cited more than 9,300 reported service hours in a wide
range of programs and activities undertaken by Huntingdon students,
faculty and
staff during the 2011–2012 academic year, including service to
Common Ground Ministries, Family Sunshine Center, Floyd Elementary
School, Friendship Mission, Habitat for Humanity, Montgomery Area Food
Bank, Montgomery Zoo, Montgomery Area Non-traditional Equestrians
(MANE), the Arthritis Foundation, Children's Hospital, Make-A-Wish
Foundation, American Cancer Society, SaveFirst, and in support of
special needs populations and other organizations.
Huntingdon students are indoctrinated to a culture of service
from their first days on campus. Each year, two days before fall term
classes begin, new students are part of the Big Red Weekend Day of
Service, when they put their hands to work for various local
causes. The fall 2011 Big Red Weekend Day of Service placed 273
students, faculty, and staff in service with Common Ground
Ministries, the Family Sunshine Center, Floyd Elementary School,
the Friendship Mission, Habitat for Humanity, Montgomery Area Food
Bank, the Montgomery Zoo, and MANE. Students cleaned, organized, worked with animals, constructed, painted, and completed yard work.
Huntingdon Greek Life students, who are required to serve and to report
their community service hours each year, organized and conducted the
Jingle Bell Run for the Arthritis Foundation on campus and raised funds
for cancer research, Make-A-Wish Foundation, Children's Hospital, and
other causes during 2011–2012. Campus Ministries students volunteered
hours for the Friendship Mission and Common Ground Ministries and
partnered with the Commuter Student Organization to pack 99 shoe boxes
for Operation Christmas Child. Likewise, members of intercollegiate
athletic teams and Student Life clubs and organizations contributed
hours to various service projects.
Continuing a strong annual partnership, several Huntingdon students
volunteered their time working for MANE, where they received training to
assist special needs, non-ambulatory children with riding horses. The
students also groomed and worked with the horses and helped with
facility maintenance for the program.
During Huntingdon's annual Martin Luther King Day Great Day of Service
in 2012, a group of Huntingdon students joined with the Tuskegee
University Wesley Foundation to clean, paint, and complete small home
repairs in the Tuskegee area, where Huntingdon was founded in 1854 under its first name, Tuskegee Female College.
In a unique community service effort, Huntingdon's Action and Awareness
Committee raised $300 and 300 canned goods for the Montgomery Area Food
Bank during a service adaptation of the popular book and movie, The Hunger Games.
The efforts, designed to increase awareness about the issues of food
shortage and hunger in the community, pitted students from various
academic departments against each other in dodgeball and Nerf wars.
Huntingdon academic programs have found a dual purpose in service
programs, which promote public welfare and teach college students vital
skills simultaneously. During the 2012 tax season, 31 Huntingdon
business and accounting volunteers completed certification training and
served in the SaveFirst program, where they prepared tax returns at no
cost for approximately 670 families, helping the families to secure
nearly $1.5 million in tax refunds and saving them $201,000 in
commercial tax preparation fees. Likewise, as part of an ongoing
partnership with local schools, Huntingdon's sport science and physical
education students worked in adapted physical education programs with special needs students from Brewbaker Junior High and Robert E. Lee High School's Community-Based Integration (CBI) Program. The schools bused students to the Huntingdon campus five times a
semester for Adapted Sport Day, where they were taught learning
skills they can use for the rest of their lives.
Collectively, Huntingdon students and faculty contributed more than
2,000 hours of service in the SaveFirst and Adapted Physical Education
initiatives.
The Huntingdon Collegiate Exchange Club, the only college-level Exchange
Club in the United States, was founded in the fall of 2011. During
their inaugural year, the club sponsored and taught three Boy Scout
badges, distributed Golden Books outside a local grocery store,
presented a Presidents' Day program for local third graders, and
conducted three Alabama State Science Olympiad events. Club members
also collected donations of coloring books, crayons, toothbrushes,
toothpaste, and teddy bears for abused children, presenting their
donations to the Family Sunshine Center.
Huntingdon College has a 158-year commitment to nurturing growth
in faith, wisdom, and service and to graduating individuals
prepared to succeed in a rapidly changing world. The College's motto, "Enter to grow in wisdom; go
forth to apply wisdom in service," is engraved in stone
above the door of Huntingdon's historic Flowers Hall. Ranked in the top tier of regional colleges by U.S. News and World Report
and consistently listed in the Princeton Review's "The Best Colleges:
Region by Region," Huntingdon is listed on the National Register of
Historic Places. Washington Monthly, which ranks colleges on the basis of their contribution to the public good, places Huntingdon in the top 20% of 352 baccalaureate colleges.
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