Award Types
Over the past several years, the Office of Community Engagement has proudly nominated students, faculty/staff, and community partners for their outstanding contributions to community engagement—first through the Iowa & Minnesota Campus Compact, and more recently through the Seed Coalition.
Beginning this year, the President’s Awards for Community Engagement will be presented by the University of Iowa in the following categories:
- President’s Student Leadership Award recognizes an individual student or a student organization that models a deep commitment to community engagement and leadership, evidenced by initiative, innovative and collaborative approaches to addressing public issues, effective community building, and integration of community engagement into the college experience.
- President’s Community Engagement Leadership Award recognizes a member of the faculty, administration, or staff or for a group (e.g., advisory committee, task force, project team) that has significantly advanced the university's distinctive civic mission by forming strong partnerships, supporting others’ community engagement, and working to institutionalize a culture and practice of engagement.
- President’s Community Partner Award recognizes a community-based partner or organization that has enhanced the quality of life in the community in meaningful and measurable ways and has engaged in the development of sustained, reciprocal partnerships with the college or university, thus enriching educational as well as community outcomes.
2025 Award Winners
Sun Joo Lee
President's Student Leadership Award
Sun Joo Lee, a Ph.D. candidate in Music Therapy at the University of Iowa, researches therapeutic group singing as an evidence-based intervention for Parkinson's Disease (PD). Her work addresses voice and speech impairments, depression, and social isolation in individuals with PD. As a Graduate Engagement Corps (GEC) member and GEC Grant recipient, Sun Joo partnered with the Iowa City Senior Center to create Tremble Clefs, a choir for individuals with PD. This community-engaged project demonstrates the power of music therapy to improve both physical and psychosocial well-being for those living with Parkinson's Disease.
Brady G'Sell
President's Civic Engagement Leadership Award
Brady G'Sell is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies. Her research explores the intersection of citizenship, kinship, and economy in the daily lives of South African families. Professor G'Sell co-created Iowa City's inaugural African Festival of Arts and Culture held this past fall and played a key role in planning the 2024 Engagement Summit hosted by the Office of Community Engagement. At the summit, she led the session "Do Good Well: Building Community Partnerships," highlighting best practices for fostering meaningful and mutually beneficial collaborations between faculty, students, and community organizations.
Open Heartland
President's Community Partner Award
Open Heartland is a nonprofit community center dedicated to empowering immigrant families to thrive in Johnson County, IA. The volunteer-run nonprofit organization provides 400+ families with access to basic necessities: food, clothes, hygiene, connections to local resources, youth and adult enrichment programs, and most importantly, community. Through the simple actions of neighbors connecting with neighbors, the Open Heartland community provides friendship and support to families as they navigate their new lives in Iowa.
2024 Award Winners
Alexis Slade
President's Student Leadership Award
Alexis Slade is completing her PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering, holds a Research Assistantship in IIHRHydroscience and Engineering, and is a member of the Office of Community Engagement's (OCE) Graduate Engagement Corps. Alexis's research has focused on measuring emissions of PCBs at Portland Harbor. She went to Portland, developed relationships with the community, put samplers in people's yards and community spaces and later led discussions about her findings with the people in the community. Alexis has done an exemplary job of integrating community engagement best practices into her research as a graduate student at Iowa.
Dr. Peter Gerlach
President's Civic Engagement Leadership Award
Peter Gerlach is a lecturer in International Studies and executive director of the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council. Dr. Gerlach is a member of the Office of Community Engagement's (OCE) Faculty Engagement Corps and teaches "Community Engaged Learning with Refugees and Immigrants in Iowa", a class that carries the Community Engaged Course designation. Dr. Gerlach utilizes the Community Engaged Learning model as the basis for his course exploring the lives of immigrants and refugees in Iowa. He has served as a panelist for OCE trainings and has been a guest speaker in the OCE's First Year Seminar on community engagement.
Neighborhood Centers of Johnson County
President's Community Partner Award
Neighborhood Centers of Johnson County (NCJC) is dedicated to building a better future for people in low-income neighborhoods through programs that educate, foster self-esteem, strengthen families, and create a sense of community. They are a community-based, family-centered, human services agency serving Johnson County, Iowa. There are two community centers in Iowa City that provide outreach and programming to an additional five targeted neighborhoods and a dozen schools. The programs and activities reach over 400 children/youth and 200 adults each day. The NCJC has provided essential resources and opportunities to the Iowa City community since 1973.
2023 Award Winners
Sepehr Yadollahi
President's Student Leadership Award
Sepehr Yadollahi, a graduate student in Urban & Regional Planning, exemplifies the curiosity, commitment, and talent of an effective leader and public servant. Sepehr is a productive contributor on numerous projects, including bicycle-safety research, a neighborhood plan in Iowa City, and a development project in Clinton, IA. His work on transportation and land use modeling provides innovative methods of engaging Clinton residents around an important local issue. Sepehr is active in his department and brings out the best in his peers. Even with the stress caused by unrest in his home country of Iran, Sepehr has been a positive role model for civic engagement during his time in Iowa.
Teresa Mangum
President's Civic Engagement Leadership Award
Teresa Mangum, the Director of the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies and Professor in Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies, is a longtime champion for public engagement at Iowa. Teresa has spearheaded numerous community engagement efforts, including most recently a Mellon-funded Humanities for the Public Good initiative, which is working to develop an interdisciplinary, publicly engaged graduate program focused on preparing humanities students for careers in the public sector. Teresa has served on campus committees that have advanced engagement as a university priority, while also developing the Obermann Center into a leading partner for nonprofit organizations across Iowa City and beyond.
Northeast Iowa RC&D
President's Community Partner Award
Northeast Iowa RC&D is a nonprofit organization advancing natural resource-based economic development and environmental protection in northeast Iowa, while also being one of the University of Iowa’s leading community partners. RC&D has collaborated with the university on community-engaged projects large and small, from multi-million-dollar watershed management initiatives to individual course-based projects focused on community infrastructure improvements. RC&D is a true community-based organization, laser-focused on developing mutually beneficial projects with the people of Iowa. This positively impacts not just the communities of Iowa, but also those at the university who are fortunate to call Northeast Iowa RC&D a partner.
2021 Award Winners
Charlotte Lenkaitis
President's Student Leadership Award
Charlotte served as the 2020 student executive director of the Food Pantry at Iowa with grace. She was faced with the extraordinary challenge of navigating how to continue food pantry operations in the pandemic and led the team through COVID modifications, increased community usage, and reduced costs through local partnerships.
Travis Kraus
President's Civic Engagement Leadership Award
As the director of the Iowa Initiative for Sustainable Communities, Travis ensured community-engaged learning continued this year despite the pandemic. Due to Travis’s leadership, over 100 students in 10 different departments participated in meaningful place-based engagement projects with Iowa communities. These projects transform student learning while enhancing sustainability in Iowa.
West Liberty Education Association
President's Community Partner Award
Following the 2016 Presidential Election, the West Liberty Education Association convened its members to consider how to actively support local immigrant families. The WLEA members voted to join an existing adult literacy program to help eligible residents prepare to become naturalized US Citizens. For three years, members and community volunteers mentored/taught adults the necessary skills to pass the test. On November 3rd, 58 new citizens voted in the Presidential Election thanks to WLEA.