March 2007
ACEE Participates in Day of Service
EVENT: The AmeriCorps program at The University of Texas at Austin, AmeriCorps for Community Engagement and Education (ACEE), will join other Austin-area AmeriCorps groups for the third annual Austin AmeriCorps Awareness Day. Over 300 Austin AmeriCorps members will perform service projects to beautify downtown Austin—including helping to clean up the music district after the South By Southwest Music Conference. Rosa Moreno-Mahoney, an ACEE alumnus and associate director of programs and training at the OneStar Foundation, which oversees AmeriCorps programs across Texas, will keynote the Kick Off Rally. Additional speakers include Katy Dooley, a program specialist from the state AmeriCorps*VISTA (Volunteers In Service to America) office, and current AmeriCorps members. At the conclusion of the Kick Off Rally, AmeriCorps alumni will lead current members in the AmeriCorps pledge.
The recognition ceremony is open to the media and the public.
WHEN: 8:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Saturday, March 24
WHERE: Participants will gather at the Austin City Hall Plaza, 301 W. Second St., at 8:00 a.m. The recognition ceremony and kick-off will take place from 8:30 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Participants will be engaged in service projects around downtown Austin from 9 a.m. to noon and will regroup at noon at Republic Square Park, 422 Guadalupe St., for lunch.
BACKGROUND: The University of Texas at Austin is home to a nationally recognized AmeriCorps program, AmeriCorps for Community Engagement and Education (ACEE), which is a program of the Charles A. Dana Center, a research unit in the College of Natural Sciences. Since 1994 ACEE has involved over 450 young men and women—including over 240 University of Texas at Austin students—in research-based literacy support for young struggling readers in 11 low-income schools in the Austin Independent School District.
ACEE currently works with 1,870 children in six low-income AISD elementary schools and is a respected partner with AISD in helping to accelerate young children's reading. Each year an average of 75% of the children ACEE works with reach or exceed grade-level criteria in reading by the end of the year. Further contributions of ACEE include:
- high-quality professional development and leadership opportunities for students. ACEE "grows" teachers—on average, 30% of ACEE alumni pursue a teaching certification, and over 20 ACEE alumni currently teach in Central Texas schools; and
- involving 40 current University of Texas at Austin students as literacy tutors for young children at the Lucy Read Pre-Kindergarten Demonstration School in the Austin Independent School District.
Austin is home to seven AmeriCorps national service programs, in which participants commit to a year of national service and complete from 300 to 1,700 hours of tutoring, mentoring, building environmentally sound houses, repairing trails or teaching after-school classes.
In return for their service, they earn a small living allowance and an education award from $1,000 to $4,725 that can be used for educational loans or tuition. Since 1994, these seven programs have leveraged over $40 million of federal, state, and local funding to serve Austin's low-income communities and schools. During this time, Austin AmeriCorps members have earned $6.8 million in education awards.
For more information, contact Mary Ellen Isaacs, ACEE program director, at 512-431-1454 or meisaacs@mail.utexas.edu.