Ranked in National Top 25 for Fourth Consecutive Year

DePaul University has always encouraged its students to walk in the footsteps of the university’s patron, St. Vincent de Paul, who was known as the “Apostle of Charity.” Its exemplary community-based service learning program (CbSL), which infuses the curriculum with service opportunities for students, has been a cornerstone of the university’s efforts to produce graduates who will go forth and serve their communities.

Those efforts have not gone unnoticed.

For the fourth consecutive year, DePaul’s service learning program has been honored at the national level. In U.S. News & World Report’s annual college rankings issue this month, “America’s Best Colleges 2007,” DePaul was ranked among the nation’s top 25 service learning programs. The publication sought out “schools with outstanding examples of academic programs that are believed to lead to student success,” and then invited college presidents, chief academic officers and deans of students to name 10 institutions that were the best examples of each program type. Those mentioned most often were honored in the publication under the section titled “Programs to Look For.” The recognized schools are not ranked further within their categories, and DePaul was the only Illinois university honored for service learning.

“In service learning programs, required (or for-credit) volunteer work in the community is an instructional strategy,” the publication wrote. “What’s learned in the field bolsters what happens in the class and vice versa.”

At the heart of DePaul’s efforts to support its university mission of care and service to others and the needs of society is the Irwin W. Steans Center for Community-based Service Learning. Established in 2001 through a $5 million endowment from philanthropist, banker and DePaul trustee Harrison I. Steans, the center creates an opportunity for students to develop a lifelong commitment to service, civic engagement and leadership. By integrating academic coursework and community service, the Steans Center is able to address the needs of community agencies that do not have the resources to hire additional paid staff.

Collaborating with faculty in more than 25 departments and programs across the university, more than 2,500 DePaul students engaged in direct service, project development or community-based research at 130 organizations as part of the 150 CbSL-related courses offered on campus last academic year.

“It is an honor to continue to be publicly acknowledged as a leader in the field of service learning,” said Howard Rosing, executive director of the Steans Center. “DePaul’s work with communities, both in Chicago and internationally, provides a means for the university to carry out its mission of serving the underserved in a respectful manner, and to educate a diverse body of students to be civically engaged in efforts to resolve critical social issues.”

Through the Steans Center, DePaul continues to find innovative ways to collaborate with the most socially and economically challenged communities. The center’s most recent initiative is an effort to develop long-term partnerships to assist schools and community organizations in Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood – an area with a median household income of slightly more than $18,000, an unemployment rate of approximately 25 percent, and one of the highest high school drop-out rates in the city.

“If we, as a society, have learned any lesson from the catastrophic events surrounding Hurricane Katrina, it is that colleges, universities, major employers and other civic institutions cannot afford to ignore the many challenges faced by their neighboring communities,” Rosing said.

In addition to the Steans Center, DePaul’s commitment to community service is reflected in several campus organizations and institutes, including University Ministry’s Community Service office; the DePaul Community Service Association; Amate House; the Center for Community Research; the Center for Community Technology Support; the Center for Latino Research; the Egan Urban Center; the Humanities Center; the Mental Health Center; the Schiller, DuCanto and Fleck Family Law Center; and the Coleman Entrepreneurship Center, as well as dozens of student political and community advocacy groups. Student volunteers also take part in more than a dozen weeklong service immersion trips around the country, as well as two annual community service days, where students perform nearly 8,000 hours of community service tasks around the city.

With an enrollment of 23,148 students on two city and four suburban campuses, DePaul is the largest Catholic university in the nation and the country’s 10th-largest private, not-for-profit university. DePaul is an innovative and diverse university offering pragmatic educational programs that instill values, including a commitment to community service. It has also been named one of the nation’s 81 “Colleges With a Conscience” by Princeton Review.