History of the Bennion Center - Staff
The Lowell Bennion Community Service Center was dedicated in 1987 by Chase Peterson, President of the University of Utah. He stated, “No university can rest merely with the transmission of old or the generation of new knowledge. It must also help students reach out to larger opportunities and responsibilities. That is what the Bennion Center is all about.”
Students have been doing just that – directing projects designed to address an identified community need, usually in partnership with an existing public or private agency. Projects that served elderly people, youth, and special populations were among the first programs offered, and still provide the bulk of our volunteer opportunities.
The Bennion Center adheres to a team approach to recruiting, training, and selecting issues on which to focus. Through student leadership, volunteer participation grew dramatically (from 546 to 1409 volunteers) in the first year. In academic year 2006-2007, the Center had 7,884 student-volunteers performing more than 250,000 hours of service to our communities. The US Dept of Labor values those hours of service at nearly $5 million--that is the value of charitable service donated in one year by U of U students to communities across Utah and the western region of the U.S.
Growth in numbers, however, has taken a back seat to range and quality of programs, from focusing on our connections with agency partners, engaging faculty in the emerging pedagogy of service-learning, promoting civic engagement campus-wide, and strengthening the service-learning scholars program.
While new ideas and innovative strategies to implement them are flourishing, the Bennion Center continues to model itself on the life its namesake, Lowell Bennion, who embodied respect for all people, believed in social and economic justice for all, and acted firmly on his beliefs. The Center began on the optimistic note chanted by its students, “Ain’t nothin’ to it, but to do it”; the same hope and energy holds true today.
Click here to read Lowell Bennion's biography.
