Student Consultants Win Award for Helping Nonprofits

Dartmouth's first undergraduate consulting group dedicated to making a positive impact in the Upper Valley has received an award from the Campus Compact for New Hampshire, which, according to its website, "promotes citizenship education by expanding higher education's role in educating students not only for careers and jobs but also for their roles as active and engaged community members."

The Student Group Leadership Award was given in a virtual ceremony last month to Social Impact Nonprofit Consulting (SINC), a new organization.

"SINC consultants regularly tackle such varied and transformative projects as developing a curriculum for a comprehensive training on systemic poverty for staff at LISTEN, a community service agency in Lebanon, N.H.; providing a cost-benefit analysis of the work done by the Vermont-based COVER Home Repair; and developing education materials for childhood lead screenings for the Public Health Council of the Upper Valley," says Ashley Doolittle, associate director of the Dartmouth Center for Social Impact.

"We are so proud of our students for applying their knowledge to helping local social-sector organizations serve our community," says Doolittle.

Campus Compact also gave a Good Steward Award to Svetlana Grushina, senior lecturer in speech at the Institute for Writing and Rhetoric. 

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Svetlana Grushina (Photo by Eli Burakian '00)

"Professor Grushina teaches public speaking in a compelling way that explores how new media shape our lives and livelihoods," says Doolittle. "She has partnered closely with the center to integrate community-driven experiential learning projects into her courses."

Doolittle says students have praised Grushina for helping them stay engaged in their education throughout the pandemic.

"She is a leader in her field, and both the Upper Valley and the College are lucky to have such an accomplished, inspiring, and dedicated faculty member," Doolittle says.

In addition to the Dartmouth awardees, Campus Compact recognized, with a Community Partner Award, the Windsor Central Supervisory Union, a Vermont school district with close ties to Dartmouth faculty.

"WCSU collaborates with the Dartmouth Center for Social Impact in several ways, all of which help students learn about becoming effective change makers in the world across diverse disciplines," says Doolittle. "They ignited student passion for learning and assessment in Associate Professor of Education David Kraemer's educational testing course, and they supported human-centered design students in Assistant Professor of Engineering Eugene Korsunskiy's senior design challenge course. They are currently partnering with Simone Oppen, visiting lecturer in classics, to co-produce a virtual staged reading of Aeschylus, and Emily Walton, an associate professor of sociology, to identify racial injustices."