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Award personifies service learning, honors in name of UT faculty member |
| By
Jon Strunk |
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Dec 29, 2006 |
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Within a week, Donovan Nichols found himself walking down a very different path.
The graduate from The University of Toledo’s Honors Program was evaluating his job options when Dr. David Hoch made a suggestion: Apply for the AmeriCorps*VISTA [Volunteer in Service to America] position.
The job the former UT Honors Program director suggested was charged with coordinating, strengthening and implementing volunteer and service learning activities among UT students and community groups.
Only giving Nichols a couple of minutes to think about the offer, Hoch again suggested the service-learning position.
“I told him I would think about it,” Nichols recalled.
Nichols said, “Hoch replied, ‘Why don’t you go ahead and have that application on my desk by Monday.’”
Nichols’ application was on Hoch’s desk Monday and by the end of the next year, Nichols was finishing up his year as the AmeriCorps*VISTA student leader.
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| Julie Hoch accepted the award named for her husband in his honor from Dick Kinsley of Ohio Campus Compact. |
It was in recognition of that conversation and the hundreds of others like it that Ohio Campus Compact created the David Hoch Award for Service Learning. The organization, which advocates community service, posthumously named Hoch as the first recipient.
“The award is for university faculty and administrators who really get fired up about service learning and realize what it can do for students,” said Dr. Tom Barden, who took over leadership of the Honor’s Program after Hoch passed away earlier this year. “UT was at the forefront in Ohio when it came to service learning largely because Dave pushed it so hard and so effectively.”
Current AmeriCorps*VISTA student leader Ashley Nickel said the time she spent at UT was the most transformational point in her life, a transformation she attributes largely to Hoch.
“Dr. Hoch was the one who made me a more involved student, who helped make Toledo feel more like a home,” she said. “When you see a place as a home, you see the good and the bad, and I saw things that I want to have a hand in improving.”
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