Distinguished Career Award: Dr. Elaine K. Ikeda

Since 2000, Dr. Ikeda has served as the Executive Director of LEAD California, formerly California Campus Compact. Prior to her leadership of LEAD California, Dr. Ikeda worked with the National Service-Learning Clearinghouse – Higher Education. For three decades, Dr. Ikeda has played a national leadership role in the design, development, and implementation of civic and community engagement programs designed to meet community needs. Through her research, conference workshops, webinars, retreats, and institutes, she has generated new knowledge and she has trained a multitude of higher education faculty, staff, students, and administrators in all areas of community engagement and service-learning. She has impacted the SLCE field significantly by building the capacities of others for high-quality research, scholarship and practice. Early in her career, Dr. Ikeda served as a researcher on the seminal study How Service Learning Affects Students (UCLA Higher Education Research Institute, 2000) which examined the comparative effects of service-learning and community service on the cognitive and affective development of college undergraduates. Dr. Ikeda is nationally recognized for being a pioneer in investigating and addressing the ways service-learning and diversity intersect – in part, through her efforts to implement lessons learned from the study How higher education is integrating diversity and service learning: Findings from four case studies (Vogelgesang, L. J., Drummond, M., & Gilmartin, S. K., 2003, California Campus Compact). She recognized early in her career the existence of a lack of support for higher education community engagement professionals of color. To address this and other challenges, she created a transformative two-year leadership development experience for practitioners in California (the Bridge Building Leadership Initiative). Dr. Ikeda also developed Diving Deep – a national gathering of experienced scholar-practitioners dedicated to imagining new and different ways to approach impactful community engagement. Throughout her career, Dr. Ikeda has advocated for community partners and for the development of a greater understanding of the perspectives of community organizations which engage with higher education. Working with a team of outstanding SLCE scholars, Dr. Ikeda led one of the most significant investigations of community partner perspectives in the research literature (Community Voices: A California Campus Compact Study on Partnerships, 2007). This study involved 99 experienced community partners from colleges and universities across California, Under her leadership, LEAD California has created numerous high-quality research studies, reports, guidebooks, trainings, and white papers. In consideration of her many impactful, influential, and long-lasting contributions as a service-learning and community engagement scholar, educator, administrator, expert, and champion, IARSLCE is proud to present Dr. Elaine K. Ikeda with the 2024 Distinguished Career Award.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award: Dr. Jessica DeSpain

Dr. DeSpain is Professor of English and Co-Director of the Interdisciplinary Research and Informatics Scholarship (IRIS) Center at Southern Illinois University - Edwardsville. Dr. DeSpain began her career as a scholar of transatlantic literature and book history. In 2009, she co-founded the IRIS Center, an initiative that has had a significant impact on both community partners and faculty members. With the development of IRIS, Dr. DeSpain’s scholarly focus has grown to include community-engaged scholarship in the digital and public humanities with an emphasis on exclusionary practices which constitute access barriers to digital tools and methods for scholars and practitioners of color and gender minorities. Her scholarship examines the ways technology replicates and amplifies the bias of technology creators. Dr. DeSpain founded the Recovery Hub for American Women Writers, a cross-institutional infrastructure project that provides consultations, tech resources, and peer review for scholars engaged in literary recovery. The Recovery Hub works to ensure that at least 50% of peer reviewed projects recover Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, and LGBTQIA+ stories and voices. The Recovery Hub is committed to broadening conversations about gender to include trans, intersex, and nonbinary identities, as well as to compensating all forms of labor. Dr. DeSpain also developed Realizing Inclusive Student Engagement in the Digital Humanities (RISE-DH) – a year-long fellowship program for Black students that integrates the study of Black literature and culture with technical skills training to increase access to and interest in the digital humanities. Dr. DeSpain is also the creator and director of the Community-Oriented Digital Engagement Scholars (CODES) program. This program, which is supported by two significant NEH grants, provides alternative educational pathways for historically marginalized students by engaging them with complex problems, with an emphasis on entanglements between environmental issues, spatial justice, and racial justice. CODES is designed around high-touch, high-impact practices such as service-learning, community engagement, cohort-based research teams, and faculty mentorship. Her nominators indicate that perhaps her greatest strength is her ability to build coalitions, create a sense of belonging, and execute large projects with multiple partners. At a time when DEI scholarship and programs are being challenged and undermined across the globe, the work of scholars such as Dr. Jessica DeSpain is more urgently needed than ever.

Dissertation Award: Stories from the Field: Black Service-Learning Student Experiences by Dr. Rochelle Smarr

The Dissertation Award acknowledges and celebrates a dissertation that advances research on service-learning and community engagement through rigorous and innovative inquiry and has the potential for impact on the study and/or practice of service-learning and community engagement, including the communities, cultures, and systems within which it is undertaken. Dr. Smarr received her doctorate in 2023 from the University of California, San Diego/California State University, San Marcos (UCSD/CSUSM) Joint Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership. Her dissertation, Stories from the Field: Black Service-Learning Student Experiences utilized a grounded theory qualitative research methodology to investigate the lived experiences of undergraduate Black students in service-learning courses. Her research led to four findings: importance of reflection, disposition to service, kinship, and service-learning’s impact on career aspirations. She concluded that Black students persist past minor dissonance in their service-learning experience and experience positive community engagement experiences. Dr. Smarr’s scholarship has important implications for research, policy, and practice in all areas of SLCE. As one nominator wrote, “by amplifying the voices of marginalized students and advocating for their inclusion in academic discourse, she seeks to dismantle systemic barriers to access and success. Her work not only advances our understanding of service-learning but also contributes to broader efforts to promote social justice and equity within educational systems.” Dr. Smarr currently serves as the Director of Experiential Learning, Teaching and Learning Commons University of California San Diego – La Jolla, California.

IARSLCE is pleased to recognize Dr. Christian Compare with Honorable Mention for the Dissertation Award. Dr. Compare serves as a post-doctoral research fellow and lecturer in the Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, Italy. His dissertation, The Transformative Potential of Community Engagement in Higher Education: An Analysis of Service-Learning Effects on Students, Communities, and Institutions, examines three research questions: What are the effects of service-learning on students’ citizenship development? How does service-learning impact local communities? Does service-learning sustain faculty members in their pursuit of engaged scholarship? Dr. Compare incorporated quantitative and qualitative methods demonstrating excellence in sampling, measurement strategies, analyzes, and interpretation. His study utilizes data from 14 European countries and involves 110 students, 22 faculty members, and 12 community partners. The findings of the dissertation led the researcher to re-conceptualize Butin’s 4Rs conceptual model of SLCE, adding a fifth dimension of relatedness to reflexivity, respect, reciprocity, and relevance. One nominator noted, “in a field that aspires to being multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary, a significant contribution of this dissertation is Dr. Compare bringing his expertise in Community Psychology to the theoretical development of the research.”

Publication of the Year Award: Virtual Service-Learning. Theoretical Frameworks and Proposals for Innovative Action (Aprendizaje-Servicio virtual: marco teóricos y propuestas de acción innovadoras)

This volume brings together voices from different continents examining e-service-learning experiences by critically reflecting on the experiential learning and digital dimensions of e-service-learning. The volume represents one of the first efforts to rigorously analyze the growing utilization of e-SL projects – a practice which dramatically increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors include twenty-five SLCE experts from four nations, three continents, and fourteen different universities, as well as CLAYSS and the Ibero-american Service-Learning Review. The writers include SLCE scholars, practitioners, and professors in fields ranging from computer science to philosophy. The book’s editors are Juan García Gutiérrez & Marta Ruiz Corbella, professors in the Faculty of Education at National Distance Education University in Spain. One nominator indicated that “the book offers an innovative and deep perspective on virtual service-learning, addressing crucial issues such as the effective implementation of projects, the evaluation of impact, and the connection between academic learning and social commitment, as well as different examples of institutionalization. The book contributes significantly to the understanding and development of this educational methodology.” Because the book has the potential to positively transform educational policies at the institutional, national, and international levels, IARSLCE is pleased to recognize this outstanding scholarship as the Publication of the Year.

Community Outcomes and Impact Award: Dr. Roxana Chicas

Dr. Chicas serves as Assistant Professor in the Emory University Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing. She is a nurse-scientist engaged in pathbreaking scholarship and policy advocacy to advance health equity for agricultural workers and other vulnerable occupational groups in the United States. Her community-engaged research is aimed at examining and mitigating the impacts of heat exposure and dehydration on farm workers. An estimated three million farmworkers in the US, the majority of whom are Latino, are critical members of the US agricultural economy. A significant number of farmworkers are at high risk for heat-related illnesses, including acute kidney injury (AKI) related to exposure to extreme ambient heat. A bicultural and bilingual nurse-scientist, Dr. Chicas combines biomedical science, healthcare delivery, and community-based participatory research to understand the health effects of environmental and occupational exposure on farmworkers. She is recognized for leading the first field-based randomized controlled trial for reducing core body temperature using real-time biomonitoring technology. Her work represents a scientifically innovative and socially significant community-based research study that has impacted public policy and created greater humanitarian concern for a critical yet vulnerable population. She is described by her colleagues as a thought leader on community engaged scholarship and a subject matter expert who is frequently sought after for local, state, and national media, including PBS, NPR, and ABC News to speak about the vulnerability of the farmworker population. One nominator writes, “because of the deep trust that she has built with farmworker communities, her intervention work is well received. Her body of work stands to impact occupational health/safety, global nursing care delivery, and public policy. She has fully committed herself to dissemination, translation, and advocacy. Dr. Chicas brings energy, timely knowledge, and a phenomenal network of allies, advocates, and community partners to help advance the working, living and health conditions of farmworkers.” Given these accomplishments, IARSLCE recognizes Dr. Chicas with the 2024 IARSLCE Community Outcomes and Impact Award.

Early Career Award: Dr. Lauren Wendling

Since 2018, Dr. Welding has served as the Director of Institutional Success at Collaboratory, an organization that supports higher education institutions in documenting and understanding their community engagement and public service activities in order to improve practice. Dr. Wendling’s scholarship includes peer-reviewed journal articles, open scholarship, online webinars, in-person presentations, and the development of software systems to support community engagement. Her nominators point out that Dr. Wendling’s significant work in the area of faculty rewards is particularly important to the field with several of her studies deepening our understanding of the barriers and opportunities to rewarding community-engaged scholarship. Her 2019 work (Wendling and Besing) provides an analysis of community engagement terms within and across university-level promotion and tenure policies – contributing significantly to the research literature and our understanding of how language policy influences faculty culture and practices. Dr. Wendling has built on her participation in the IARSLCE’s Practitioner-Scholar Community by producing high-quality scholarship including her 2024 article entitled An Analysis of Community Engagement in Institutional-Level Strategic Plans. Her nominators write, “Dr. Wendling’s scholarly contributions in the area of institutionalizing community engagement as well as building the infrastructure for faculty rewards are essential to the field.” In recognition of her excellence as a scholar-practitioner in the community engagement field, IARSLCE awards Dr. Wendling the Early Career Award.

International Research Award: Dr. Amy Vatne Bintliff

This award recognizes excellence in research and scholarship that advances the study and practice of service-learning and community engagement within and/or across borders and cultures, expanding knowledge on cultural, regional, and national practices in service-learning and community engagement theory and practice, especially work that centers or engages in non-US contexts. Dr. Bintliff works closely with the Africa Education & Leadership Initiative (Africa ELI), a local initiative in Uganda that supports needy local and refugee youth. Serving as the lead researcher on this collaborative community engaged project, Dr. Bintliff aims to improve the well-being needs of the Uganda refugee youth that Africa ELI supports. She has developed a cultural exchange platform between USDC undergraduate students and Africa ELI refugees. Dr. Bintliff is the lead author of Facilitating Trauma-Informed SEL with Refugee Youth in Uganda via an International Research-Practice Partnership: Lessons Learned from the Wellbeing Club – a 2024 article published in Social and Emotional Learning: Research, Practice, and Policy. One nominator writes, “Dr. Bintliff is one of the most inspiring individuals I have encountered in my career. Her work in communities in San Diego and Uganda is exemplary. Her impact on the field is already remarkable and will continue to grow. The models she has developed, including Wellbeing Clubs in schools in Uganda refugee camps, are innovative, community transforming and life changing.” Given her commitment to engagement within and across borders and cultures, IARSLCE recognizes Dr. Bintliff with the 2024 International Research Award.

Congratulations to the recipients of the IARSLCE awards. Thank you to all of the nominators and to the association members who participated in the review process to determine this year's recipients. Recipients will be honored in a celebration during the IARSLCE Conference in San Diego in October 2024. Please join IARSLCE and learn more about upcoming events and opportunities offered by the association.

Awards & Recognitions