PHILADELPHIA Ira Harkavy, associate vice president and director of the Center for Community Partnerships at the University of Pennsylvania, has been awarded the 2002 Thomas Ehrlich Faculty Award for Service Learning. The award recognizes outstanding faculty contributions for integrating service into the curriculum and for efforts to institutionalize service learning at colleges and universities.

"Ira is not only one of the parents of the modern service learning movement," said Penn President Judith Rodin, "but he has also made seminal intellectual contributions to the field, including the concept of academically-based community service with its emphasis on the integration of research, teaching, service, problem solving and structural change."

Harkavy will be presented with $2,000 and deliver a keynote address at the National Gathering of the Educators for Civic Engagement in Montana in June and receive the award at Campus Compact National Summit in November.

The Thomas Ehrlich award is given by Campus Compact, a national coalition of 817 college and university presidents committed to the civic purposes of higher education. The award is named for Thomas Ehrlich, former chair of the Campus Compact board of directors and president emeritus of Indiana University. He is also a former provost of the University of Pennsylvania and a member of Penn Board of Trustees.

Harkavy is the first person to be selected by a unanimous vote of the selection committee since the award was established in 1995.