Community involvement is alive and well at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF).
According to a National Assessment of Service and Community Engagement survey conducted at ESF in spring 2014 in the spring of 2014, about 76 percent of ESF’s undergraduate population volunteers in some way. “That says a lot about our students and their commitment to the surrounding communities,” said Meagan Pepper, ESF’s program coordinator for community service.
Nowhere is commitment to community service more evident than campus-wide blood drives.
Within the last few years, ESF has won several awards from the American Red Cross for its dedication to campus blood drives, including Outstanding Support for the Community Blood Drive Program (2011-12), Outstanding Blood Drive Collections (2012-13) and, most recently, the Blood Drive Sponsor Award given in September 2014.
This last award recognizes institutions that display “exemplary commitment to achieving the Biomedical Services’ mission to fulfill the needs of the American people for the safest possible, consistently available, most cost-effective blood and blood products through voluntary donations.”
Last year, ESF collected 230 units of blood during the five blood drives that were conducted during the academic year. That’s an increase of 3.6 percent from the previous year and a participation rate of 13.15 percent among students. In addition, ESF was the only college to win the award in the NY-Pennsylvania region.
