Excellence Unveiled: Lynn Blanchard
The Carolina Center for Public Service director talks about its programs and its 25-year legacy of giving back.
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Each month, WCHL will feature stories highlighting Carolina excellence from outstanding Tar Heels to share why they’re passionate about their work and shine a light on their important contributions to the community, state and beyond.
Tune in to Excellence Unveiled during morning, noon and evening drive times to hear their stories and find out what ignites their passion for their work. Excellence Unveiled is an exclusive program on WCHL, sponsored by UNC-Chapel Hill. You can listen to WCHL at 97.9 FM or 1360 AM.
Read a transcript of the segment below
Chancellor Lee H. Roberts: Welcome to Excellence Unveiled, sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I’m Chancellor Lee Roberts, and it’s my pleasure to shine a light on our talented Carolina community and its outstanding work. This month, we feature Lynn Blanchard, director of the Carolina Center for Public Service, to talk about some of the ways the University serves the people of this great state.
Lynn Blanchard: The Carolina Center for Public Service has a mission that I sum up by saying, we connect the energy and expertise of the University to communities and community priorities. But we support students, faculty and staff in doing the work and building their skills to be able to be better partners. The APPLES Service Learning program is a very unique program in that it’s older than the center, and it was started by students, and it continues to be a student-run organization that’s supported by student funding, led by students and supported by staff. We have programs for graduate students, such as the Community Engagement Fellowships. We have programs for faculty, such as the Thorp Faculty Engaged Scholars, which is a two-year program for faculty doing engaged research with communities, so there are programmatic activities. I should also mention we have a number of internships that’s particularly relevant for this area because many of those internships are in this area that are paid internships through either APPLES or the centers. It is very rewarding. I’m inspired almost every day by learning about something or someone that’s done something, and it really makes what we do worthwhile. I think as a center, what I’m – and, I think all of our staff would agree -, that we’re most proud of, is the work that we’re doing is making a difference in multiple ways.
They’re learning from the communities and community partners they work with, but they’re also making a real difference as they do the work. We just celebrated our 25th anniversary. It was a wonderful time. Importantly, we coupled that with a service event, and we had about 130 people, I think, show up to package 50,000 meals. There were nine different community partners from right around this area that received those meals, from Table and Cora Food Pantry, TROSA, the Inter-Faith Council, the Jackson Center and Heavenly Groceries, PORCH. All of these folks benefited some from this service event, and it’s a way of thanking them for many of their partnerships with the center. I will have to say we owe so much, particularly to the nonprofit community here in Chapel Hill and Orange County.
