2020 Betsy Alden Outstanding Service-Learning Awards
Community Partner Award Winner: Syretta Hill
The Betsy Alden Outstanding Service-Learning Awards recognize annually one community partner, one faculty member, and one graduating senior for their outstanding commitment to the ideals of service-learning.
Nominator Lalita Kaligotla, Associate Director of Sanford’s Hart Leadership Program, collaborated with Syretta Hill, StepUp Durham’s Executive Director, for her service-learning course “Civic Engagement & Community Leadership: Lead the Way Durham (PUBPOL 270). Kaligotla’s students worked with Hill to develop a fundraising video. Told through the lens of client success stories, the video showed how StepUp’s mission to “transform lives through employment and life skills training,” is having an impact and making a difference.
Kaligotla writes:
“Syretta Hill is an eager, engaged, and thoughtful collaborator and a wonderful mentor to my students. She synergistically balanced the needs of her organization with the students’ skills and learning objectives. Her ability to connect with people and connect them to one another reinforced the importance of reciprocity, partnership building and fostering community – all skills that will prove vital to them in college and beyond.”
COMMUNITY PARTNER: Syretta Hill
Syretta Hill has served as StepUp Durham's Executor Director since September of 2015. Before serving at StepUp, she worked for seven years as a community organizer and neighborhood relations director for Habitat for Humanity of Wake County. She also served as a workforce development trainer for a local school district and operations director at a small publishing company while living in Philadelphia. The daughter of parents who worked in the prison system, Syretta became passionate about StepUp Durham's mission to walk alongside people facing barriers to employment (including a criminal background) and the organization's emphasis on community listening and racial equity. Syretta holds an M.A. in Education from Temple University and a B.A. in Communication from the University of South Florida. She is a mother of two and has been married for 17 years. Citation: StepUp Durham website.
Nominator: Lalita Kaligotla, Associate Director of Duke Sanford’s Hart Leadership Program
ABOVE: SYRETTA HILL OF STEPUP DURHAM AND HLP ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR LALITA KALIGOTLA DISCUSS THEIR PARTNERSHIP FOR THE SERVICE-LEARNING COURSE “CIVIC ENGAGEMENT & COMMUNITY LEADERSHIP: LEAD THE WAY DURHAM (PUBPOL 270)” AT THE UNIVERSITY COUNCIL ON CIVIC ENGAGEMENT (UCCE) MEETING IN FEBRUARY 2020.
“THROUGH HER ENERGY, VISION AND EXAMPLE, SYRETTA HILL HAS LEFT AN INDELIBLE IMPRESSION ON MY STUDENTS AND THIS, IN MY EXPERIENCE, IS A RARE TREASURE, AND THEREFORE WORTHY OF RECOGNITION.”