Drake University junior Jazlin Coley and senior Maddy Stokes are among 25 college students from Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin who were selected for the 2018 class of the Principal Community Scholars Program.
Recipients were selected by Iowa Campus Compact in November after being nominated by faculty or staff from their college or university and a rigorous review process.
This semester is the second-ever cycle of the Principal Community Scholars Program, which is designed to encourage student leadership to meet community needs. Coley and Stokes will each receive a $1,000 scholarship from Principal upon completion of their service project.
“This year we decided to focus on students in the Midwest and got a strong pool of nominations,” said Iowa Campus Compact Executive Director Emily Shields. “These students have a deep commitment to bringing business solutions to meet community issues.”
Campus Compact is the only national higher education association dedicated solely to campus-based civic engagement. The Compact is a national coalition of nearly 1,000 colleges and universities–comprising a national office and 34 state and regional affiliates–committed to the public purposes of higher education.
“I love the fact that there is a support system out here that will encourage students to implement these types of ideas,” Coley said. “It’s wonderful to not only be recognized but to see that there are people rooting for you and encouraging me along the way.”
This year’s scholars proposed projects designed to engage their peers and their institutions. These projects tap into a variety of skills that can be offered by college students and will impact causes ranging from education to neighborhood vitality through research, fundraising, communications, and other means.
Stokes is a Drake University senior studying marketing, communications, and sales with a minor in English. She will be working with the Director of Community Engaged Learning to improve the tools that Drake uses to track community engagement and specific community partnerships. Her work will allow Drake to better understand the fullness of the partnerships that can and will increase Drake’s impact as a whole institution. Stokes will be gathering information and analyzing it to better understand how each branch of campus can better collaborate with one another on community engagement projects.
Jazlin Coley is a Drake University junior studying public relations with a psychology minor and a concentration in leadership. Her project is to further explore the Drake neighborhood so as to make Drake students more aware of the community that surrounds them. Her end goal is to produce a 45-minute Neighborhood Walking Tour.
“I hope to bridge the gap between the students and the residents that live in the neighborhood around us,” Coley said. “I feel as though there is a disconnect between the two and the opportunities, events and collaborating ideas would be endless if we worked on being one community.”