State Farm Insurance Company has awarded $50,000 to The University of Texas-Pan American toward a project to promote service learning and safety awareness among South Texas educators and students.

The twofold initiative, titled Project SELS (Service Learning and Safety), will incorporate workshops and other communication tools to engage more faculty, teachers and students in service learning activities related to their studied disciplines as well as opportunities for State Farm agents to promote safety awareness practices to create safer neighborhoods in South Texas.

Amelia Folkes, State Farm public affairs specialist, was joined by Congressman Rubén Hinojosa (TX-15), State Senator Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, University administrators and staff and local State Farm agents during a press conference Jan. 29 to announce the grant award.

Folkes said the partnership between State Farm and UTPA began with support for HESTEC (Hispanic Engineering, Science, and Technology) Week, which Hinojosa founded eight years ago to encourage students to pursue study of and careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields.

“We have a proud and long lasting relationship with UT Pan American. This is something important to this community and our students’ futures. Through today’s grant we hope to really make a dent in some of our community’s schools and use service learning as a technique to teach kids that it pays to be civically engaged and to give back to their communities in service while still learning, and show teachers how to take book learning outside the classroom,” she said.

Dr. Rebecca Mitchell, assistant professor of English and chair of the English Department’s Service Learning Committee, said the goal of service learning is to engage students in meaningful service that is directly relevant to the curricular goals of their coursework and directly benefits the community. Continued...