Awards & Recognitions

In recognition of exemplary contributions through research on service-learning and community engagement, IARSLCE honors those whose research contributes significantly to understanding and advancing community engagement, across all approaches and all educational sectors. We are pleased to announce the recipients of the 2022 awards.

Distinguished Career Award: Dr. John Saltmarsh

In addition to being one of the most prominent scholars in the field, Dr. Saltmarsh is a counselor, supporter, and champion who has used his positionality to create space for new leaders and scholars. This distinction recognizes his intellectual contributions and his mentorship to dozens of current and emerging leaders in service learning and community engagement. Recently retired as Professor of Higher Education at University of Massachusetts Boston, Dr. Saltmarsh is a Visiting Fellow with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. From his time at Campus Compact, to his leadership of NERCHE, to his stewardship of the Carnegie Elective Community Engagement Classification, Dr. Saltmarsh has shaped and sustained service learning and community engagement scholarship and practice. His impact is significant and lasting.  

Early Career Award: Dr. Samantha Francois

Dr. Francois is an Assistant Professor of Social Work at Tulane University. The Early Career award acknowledges and celebrates intellectual leadership through an emerging body of work that has begun to demonstrate broad and deep impact on community engagement. Dr. Francois is an exceptional scholar whose community-engaged research focuses on violence exposure, trauma, and mental health in Black adolescents and young adults. In addition to her academic appointment, Dr. Francois is Executive Director of the Violence Prevention Institute (VPI) at Tulane and Co-Director of the Center for Youth Equity (CYE), a CDC National Center of Excellence in Youth Violence Prevention. Her publications illustrate a sustained commitment to uplifting communities that are historically marginalized and oppressed Dr. Francois’ work is thoughtful, thought-provoking, and actionable and already having measurable impact in New Orleans and the Gulf South region.

Public Scholarship Award: Dr. Keith Watenpaugh,

Dr. Watenapugh is a Professor of Human Rights Studies, and the founding director of the Human Rights Studies program at University of California Davis. We recognize Dr. Watenpaugh for the reciprocity in his community-based work, exceptional rigor of scholarly work, a significant focus on accessibility of scholarly products, and research that is both highly generative and of significant public impact. This award specifically recognizes Article 26 Backpack, a universal human rights tool that empowers academic and employment mobility. The project serves those whose education has been disrupted by war, natural disaster, or economic collapse shape, store and share elements of their professional and educational identity. By providing a way to safely store and share educational background, employment history, professional achievements and goals, the Article 26 Backpack builds pathways of connection and inclusion, especially for refugee and at-risk youth.

Community Outcomes and Impact Award: Dr. Liza Grandia

Dr. Grandia is Associate Professor in the Department of Native American Studies at the University of California Davis. For more than 30 years, Dr. Grandia has been living in partnership and solidarity with indigenous communities in Honduras, Belize and Guatemala. Her work with communities has helped them to stop destructive infrastructure and development bank loans, but also leveraged her land research to help Indigenous communities develop practical strategies to defend land and territory. Dr. Grandia uses multiple modalities (films, comic books, even radio soap operas) in multiple languages to disseminate her research and ensure it is accessible so that it can be useful to local communities. Dr. Grandia also helped establish and supports an accredited Q’eqchi’ agroecology high school in northern Guatemala. As an advocate for “slow” and reciprocal ethnography with her grassroots collaborators, she aims to open pathways for lasting policy changes in service of social and environmental justice.

Dissertation Award: Dr. Macario (Mac) Benavides

Dr. Benavides is an Assistant Professor in the Staley School of Leadership at Kansas State University. Benavides received his doctorate in Leadership Communication from Kansas State in May 2022. He is receiving this award for his dissertation, “Hilos del mismo tejido”: Weaving community perspectives into community-based global learning through critical micro-ethnographic testimonio, which uses the metaphor of weaving to unravel and weave together the threads of local knowledge and academic conventions. It is scholarship that centers community voice, through testimonio, and underscores the challenges that emerge in international community engagement partnerships, while also offering important guidance on ways to ethically and effectively pursue these relationships. From these findings, Dr. Benavides offers a six-phase iterative process for establishing and maintaining reciprocal partnerships that aims to guide practice. 

We offer an honorable mention for the Dissertation Award to Dr. Lauren Wendling for her project Evaluating engaged research in promotion and tenure: Not everything that counts can be counted. Dr. Wendling received her doctorate in February 2022 in Higher Education and Student Affairs from Indiana University and is the Director of Institutional Success at Collaboratory.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award: ENDAVANT

ENDAVANT is a multidisciplinary research group aimed toward critical transformative education. The research group based at the University Jaume I (Spain) researches service-learning programs with aims towards the education of pre-service teachers to enhance their skills to properly attend to diversity. A second emphasis is towards the social service provided to children with special education needs, which engages the researchers and their students in establishing tools, analyzing strategies, and engaging in practice to effectively serve this population of students. The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion award celebrate ENfocament de la Diversitat com un AVANTatge (approach to diversity as an advantage in English) for their work to improve service-learning practice, the preparation of teachers, and the necessary work to create more inclusive education spaces for special needs students in classrooms.

Publication of the Year Award: The Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning

The Publication of the Year celebrates a single published scholarly article, book chapter, book, or book series that has had or will have a significant impact on the study and/or practice of service-learning and community engagement. The Publication of the Year is awarded to The Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, for its special issue, “Centering Social Justice in the Scholarship of Community Engagement.” The special issue features seven articles that offer insights towards advancing community engagement toward social change, sharing positive impacts, promise, and continued challenges facing the field. Edited by Tania D. Mitchell, Associate Professor of Higher Education at the University of Minnesota and Tabbye Chavous, Vice Provost for Equity and Inclusion & Chief Diversity Officer, University of Michigan Ann Arbor, the special issue was produced in partnership with the National Center for Institutional Diversity. This award also recognizes the contributions of the editorial team for this special issue, including:

  • Cecilia Morales, Senior Director of Campus and Community Partnerships, Sundborg Center for Community Engagement, Seattle University

  • Jeremy Glover, MJCSL Editorial Assistant

  • Neeraja Aravamudan, Director, Edward Ginsberg Center, University of Michigan Ann Arbor  

  • Nick Tobier, Professor, Stamps School of Art & Design, University of Michigan Ann Arbor

  • Mary Jo Callan, Vice President for Community Engagement & Executive Director of Swearer Center for Public Service, Brown University 

The communities and concerns centered in the journal issue speak to the urgent need for equity-focused community engagement. Through the seven articles, readers are challenged to recognize opportunities and confront barriers to enhance social justice through community engagement.

Congratulations to the recipients of the IARSLCE Awards. thank you to all of the nominees and Association members woh participated in the review process to determine this year’s recipients. Recipients will be honored n a celebration during the IARSLCE Conference in New Orleans in October 2023.

Previous Award Recipients

  • 2003: Andrew Furco, University of California at Berkeley

    2004: Robert Bringle, Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis

    2005: Sherril Gelmon, Portland State University

    2006: Barbara Holland, National Service-Learning Clearinghouse

    2007: Janet Eyler, Vanderbilt University

    2008: Shelley Billig, RMC Research Corporation

    2009: Dwight Giles, Jr., University of Massachusetts Boston

    2010: Barbara Moely, Tulane University

    2011: Jeffrey Howard, Depaul University

    2012: Rahima Wade, University of Iowa (posthumous)

    2013: Lorilee Sandmann, University of Georgia

    2014: Sarena Seifer, Community-Campus Partnerships for Health

    2015: Edward Zlotkowski, Bentley University

    2016: Barbara Jacoby, University of Maryland, College Park

    2017: Julie Hatcher, Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis

    2018: Patti H. Clayton

    2019: Nadine Peterson, University of Johannesburg

    2020: Nadinne Cruz

    2021: Dr. Jean Strait

  • 2008: KerryAnn O’Meara, University of Maryland College Park

    2009: Nicholas Long, Providence College

    2010: Timothy Eatman, Syracuse University

    2011: Tania Smith, Stanford University

    2012: Emily Janke, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

    2013: Eric Hartman, Providence College

    2016: Stephanie Stokamer, Pacific University

    2017: Amy Cook, University of Massachusetts Boston

    2018: Danielle Lake, Grand Valley State University and Timothy Shaffer, Kansas State University (co-recipients)

    2021: Dr. Clare Cannon, University of California at Davis

  • 2008: Julie Hatcher, Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis and Emily Janke, University of North Carolina at Greensboro (co-recipients)

    2009: Alan Bloomgarden, University of Massachusetts Amherst

    2010: Katrina Norvell, Portland State University and Elaine Ward, Dublin Institute of Technology (co-recipients)

    2011: Stephanie T. Stokamer, Portland State University

    2012: Lina Dostilio, Duquesne University

    2013: Travis York, The Pennsylvania State University

    2014: Kendra Brewster, City University of New York

    2015: Cynthia Toms, Westmont College

    2016: Nora Pillard Reynolds, Temple University

    2017: Kristi Farner, University of Georgia

    2018: Elisabeth Fornaro, Temple University

    2019: Thomas Dahan, Rutgers University, Camden

    2020: Dr. Colleen Rost-Banik, University of Minnesota

    2021: Dr. Melissa Quan, University of Massachusetts Boston

  • 2020: Dr. Elizabeth Yomantas of Pepperdine University for her chapter “Decolonizing Knowledge and Fostering Critical Allyship,” which appears in the book Teaching and Learning for Social Justice and Equity in Higher Education (Parson & Ozaki, 2020)

    2021: Dr. Rachael Shah, Associate Professor of English at the University of Nebraska- Lincoln, for her book Rewriting Partnerships: Community Perspectives of Community-Based Learning (Utah State University Press)

  • 2020: Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), Service-Learning and Leadership Office

  • 2019: Tania Mitchell, University of Minnesota

    2020: Professor Darren E. Lund (University of Calgary)International Award Recipient

    2021: Dr. Éilish Burke, Ussher Assistant Professor in Ageing and Intellectual Disability at Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin, and Associate Director of the Trinity Centre for Ageing and Intellectual Disability

  • 2019: Montagnard Dega Association / Montagnard American Association

    2020: Professor Tom Dee (Stanford University), Professor Emily Penner (University of California Irvine), and Assistant Superintendent Bill Sanderson (San Francisco Unified School District)

    2021: Dr. Katherine Kim, Adjunct Associate Professor at UC Davis School of Medicine and Principal at Health Science and Consumer Health Informatics at MITRE

  • 2019: Dotte Agency, University of Kansas School of Architecture and Design

    2021: Dr. Marianne LeGreco, Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro