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Michigan Campus Compact honors Kromer and Frost
The Michigan Campus Compact in February recognized two CMU faculty members for their dedicated efforts to promote service learning among their students.
During MCC’s annual conference at
Schoolcraft College in Livonia:
- Tom Kromer, teacher education and
professional development professor, was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award
- Bruce Frost, engineering and technology
instructor, received the Faculty/Staff
Community Service-Learning Award
MCC promotes efforts to educate Michigan college students to become civically engaged citizens.
Lifetime Achievement Award
Kromer, who has taught at CMU since 1969 and is a supervisor of CMU student teachers in mid-Michigan, was among CMU’s first advocates for service-learning.
He said his engagement in service-learning began in 1992, when his department received a small grant to create and execute service-learning initiatives. Service-learning quickly became a key component of Kromer’s work with student teachers and a primary focus of his scholarly endeavors.
Kromer said true service-learning is defined by three components: it incorporates the curriculum, it benefits someone in a nonprofit manner, and it involves a reflection activity that allows participants to process the experience.
“When kids see that their learning can make a difference in someone’s life, they are
empowered by the experience and begin to see the direct relationship between what they learn and its application in the real world,” he said.
Faculty/Staff Community
Service-Learning Award
Frost has spent nearly his entire life building houses and crafting new generations of construction managers. He also has built better citizens among his students at CMU. Long before the notion of service-learning began sweeping American classrooms, Frost was asking his construction students to give back to the community by participating in class building projects geared toward the needy.
“I think it’s a mandate for us to enrich the
environment in which we live,” Frost said.
“It’s an encouragement for students to
engage their community.”
Evidence of Frost’s service-learning is all over Mount Pleasant and mid-Michigan. Students have built several houses with Habitat for Humanity, and his classes also have painted and remodeled the Isabella County Soup Kitchen. •
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