Second Annual Innovation Challenge To Foster Higher Education-Affiliated Service Year Positions

WASHINGTON, April 8, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Service Year Alliance, the Corporation for National & Community Service (CNCS), Campus Compact, and the Lumina Foundation will be hosting the second Service Year + Higher Ed Innovation Challenge at the Aspen Institute on April 12, 2016. Each college or university finalist in the Challenge will have the opportunity to compete for a prize to support the planning and creation of new education-affiliated service year positions. The Challenge seeks to promote innovative ideas related to the integration of learning and service during the college experience. There will be two categories of entrants – public and private – with each category winner receiving $30,000. Additionally, an Audience Choice Award winner will receive a $10,000 prize. Lumina Foundation is supporting the prize.

This is the second year of the Service Year + Higher Ed Innovation Challenge. Last year, challenge winners were Drake University, Miami Dade College, and the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

Service Year Alliance is an initiative of Be The Change, Inc. and the Aspen Institute that seeks to make a year of national service – a service year – a common opportunity, cultural expectation and new civic rite of passage for young people growing up in America. More information about the challenge can be found at http://www.sychallenge.org.

The event is invite only, but will be available via livestream from 10:30 AM to 4:30 PM. Watch at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEB5Zjc-2nQ. Press and cameras are welcome at event and a Q&A will follow.  Any press interested in attending should contact Tara Maller at [email protected]. Anyone else interested in attending should contact Rachael Weiker at [email protected].

Join the conversation live via Twitter at @ServiceYr and #SYHigherEd.

WHO:

Finalists: Austin College, Averett University, Drexel University, University of Arkansas, University of Pittsburg, Virginia Tech. For more information on the participant proposals, visit http://www.sychallenge.org/2016-challenge-finalists/

Judges: Shirley Sagawa, CEO of Service Year Alliance, former Chief Service Officer of The National Conference on Citizenship and former Deputy Chief of Staff for First Lady Hillary Clinton; John Bridgeland former Director,White House Domestic Policy Council under President George W. Bush, Member, White House Council for Community Solutions under President Obama, and Service Year Alliance Board Member; Andrew Seligsohn, President of Campus Compact; Holly Zanville, Strategy Director at the Lumina Foundation; Bill Basl, Director of AmeriCorps at the Corporation for National and Community Service.

WHEN: Tuesday, April 12, 2015, 9:45 AM – 6:00 PM.

WHERE: The Aspen Institute, 1 Dupont Circle, Suite 700, Washington, DC  20036

Service Year Alliance is an initiative of Be The Change, Inc. and The Aspen Institute that seeks to make a year of national service – a service year – a common opportunity, cultural expectation and new civic rite of passage for young people growing up in America. This new organization was created through the recent merger of the Franklin Project, ServiceNation, and the Service Year Exchange.

Lumina Foundation is an independent, private foundation committed to increasing the proportion of Americans with high-quality degrees, certificates and other credentials to 60 percent by 2025. Lumina's outcomes-based approach focuses on helping to design and build an accessible, responsive and accountable higher education system while fostering a national sense of urgency for action to achieve Goal 2025.

The Corporation for National & Community Service (CNCS) is a federal agency that engages millions of Americans in service through its AmeriCorps, Senior Corps, Social Innovation Fund, and Volunteer Generation Fund programs, and leads the President's national call to service initiative, United We Serve. For more information, visit NationalService.gov. CNCS also administers the Presidents Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll, the highest honor a college or university can receive for its commitment to volunteering, service-learning, and civic engagement.

Campus Compact is a national coalition of nearly 1,100 colleges and universities committed to the public purposes of higher education. We are a network comprising a national office and 34 state and regional Campus Compacts. As the only national higher education association dedicated solely to campus-based civic engagement, Campus Compact enables campuses to develop students' citizenship skills and forge effective community partnerships. Our resources support faculty and staff as they pursue community-based teaching and scholarship in the service of positive change.

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SOURCE The Aspen Institute

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