Pilar Pacheco. Courtesy photo
CAMARILLO — Pilar Pacheco, associate director of the Center for Community Engagement at CSU Channel Islands, has earned a prestigious statewide recognition for her impact on service-learning and campus-community partnerships throughout Ventura County and the CSU system, the university reported Thursday in a media release.
Pacheco received California Campus Compact’s 2014 Richard E. Cone Award for Excellence & Leadership in Cultivating Community Partnerships in Higher Education in January.
“We are grateful for Pilar’s leadership in furthering our work in California and we are pleased to highlight her exemplary work in the field of service-learning and civic engagement,” Elaine Ikeda, executive director of California Campus Compact, stated in the release. “In addition to being a passionate and skillful community leader, she is a humble individual who has worked quietly and tirelessly behind the scenes to promote service-learning and community engaged scholarship to administrators, faculty, students and community partners, with impressive results.”
California Campus Compact is a coalition of leading colleges and universities working to advance civic and community engagement in higher education. The award, named after renowned USC civic engagement and service-learning expert Dick Cone, is presented annually to one individual who has helped create partnerships between institutions of higher education and communities where student learning and the quality of life in communities are simultaneously improved.
“Pilar’s leadership has brought honor and recognition to the University and, more importantly, has facilitated students’ civic learning and reinforced the importance of education for the greater good,” CI President Richard R. Rush, who nominated Pacheco for the award, stated in the release.
As the Center for Community Engagement’s associate director for the past decade, Pacheco leads and coordinates campus initiatives and special projects related to service-learning and civic engagement. She creates campus infrastructure for academic and co-curricular service-learning programs, sets the vision for service-learning strategic planning, and fosters campus-community partnerships. In addition, she works with CI departments, faculty and students to bring programs to campus that address important social issues. She holds a Master of Arts in Education and a Bachelor of Arts in Child Development from California State University, Northridge.
One of Pacheco’s many notable recent accomplishments was obtaining approval from the Smithsonian Institution for CI to be one of only 15 locations nationwide to host the Bracero Oral History Project traveling exhibit. The two-month exhibit brought more than 2,000 people to campus to learn and participate in Bracero history. Pacheco helped to plan and create nine related educational events involving local schools and community groups as well as CI faculty, students and staff.
Though Pacheco already received the Cone award in name, she will have to wait until CI’s Celebration of Service on Wednesday, May 7, for a formal award presentation. That’s when California Campus Compact Executive Director Elaine Ikeda plans to visit the CI campus to honor Pacheco in person. The Celebration of Service is the Center for Community Engagement’s annual end-of-the-year event highlighting community engagement projects and best practices in service-learning.
“I am humbled and honored by this recognition,” Pacheco stated in the release. “The work that I do — and the work of the Center for Community Engagement — takes the hands of many faculty, staff, students and, most importantly, community partners, who are the foundation of our program. Our service-learning program could not exist without them. These partnerships allow the University and the community to build on each other’s assets and work together to contribute to the public good through our students’ learning and civic development.”
CI’s Center for Community Engagement supports and promotes high-impact service learning in our communities by cultivating long-term, sustainable partnerships that address societal challenges and foster engaged citizenship. For more information, visit www.csuci.edu/communityengagement/. Contact Pilar Pacheco at 805-437-8851 or pilar.pacheco@csuci.edu. To learn more about California Campus Compact and the Richard E. Cone Award, visit www.cacampuscompact.org.
About California State University Channel Islands:
CSU Channel Islands (CI) is the only four-year, public university in Ventura County and is known for its interdisciplinary, multicultural and international perspectives, and its emphasis on experiential and service learning. CI’s strong academic programs focus on business, sciences, liberal studies, teaching credentials, and innovative master’s degrees. Students benefit from individual attention, up-to-date technology, and classroom instruction augmented by outstanding faculty research. CI has been designated by the U.S. Department of Education as a Hispanic-Serving Institution and is committed to serving students of all backgrounds from the region and beyond. Connect with and learn more about CI by visiting CI’s Social Media.