The second annual University of Louisiana Academic Summit welcomed Lorilee Sandmann as the service-learning keynote speaker to share her national research on the recipients of the Carnegie Foundation’s Community Engagement Classification.

Sandmann is an education professor at the University of Georgia and is recognized as a national leader in the scholarship of engagement. Her research projects focus on the leadership and organizational change in the community engagement of higher education, and the faculty roles and rewards related to engaged scholarship.

The University of Louisiana Academic Summit is a two-day conference to showcase the academic excellence of the nine universities in the UL school system. It features service learning, art, performance and undergraduate research. ULM hosted guests and speakers from the nine universities and surrounding states.

President of the University of Louisiana System Sandra Woodley was excited to have Sandmann and believes that the work of the Carnegie Foundation is beneficial not only to Louisiana, but nationally.

“[Sandmann] just has such great energy around this particular issue.  The issue was student learning and service-learning,” Woodley said. “And I think today we see all of these great examples of these students that are getting involved with their faculty on doing projects that actually have an impact in the community. I applaud the Carnegie Organization for taking that work to a higher level, providing some recognition and also a framework for the institutions who want to get into this work.”

The Carnegie Foundation is an independent policy and research center that is currently researching the improvement and approaches to building the scholarship of teaching and learning.

Freshman history major Kaitlyn Huff doesn’t think that service-learning should be a big priority among a university.

“I didn’t feel as though the speaker genuinely contributed anything to the seminar. It was supposed to an academic seminar, but it felt more like a commercial for the organization,” Huff said. “[Sandmann’s] presentation was on community engagement, but the community shouldn’t be the first priority of the faculty.”

Huff believes that the focus of a university should be on the student-teacher relationships and not the university-community relationship.