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President Obama recently honored certain colleges and universities for their community service work.  Simmons College is one of 4 Massachusetts Colleges that received the Honor Roll with Distinction Award.

Through this LearnandServe program Obama hopes to foster more community involvement from the colleges and universities in the United States.

The award is set up so that you can be recognized for your contributions at 3 levels.  You can almost look at it like the Gold, Silver and Bronze.  The Gold is the President’s Award, the Silver is the Honor Roll with Distinction and the Bronze is the Honor Roll.  Given the amount of colleges being recognized and Massachusetts high amount of colleges I was surprised not to find some of the better known colleges and universities like Harvard, MIT and Boston University.

Though Massachusetts did not make the list of 6 that received the most distinguished award they had 4 on the list of Honor Roll with Distinction and 29 on the Honor Roll list.  The Honor Roll with Distinction winners are:

• Bay State College
• College of the Holy Cross
• Emmanuel College
• Simmons College

The colleges and universities were honored in two categories: general community service, which considers the scope and quality of an institution’s community service, service-learning, and civic engagement programs; and service to youth from disadvantaged circumstances.

The Boston area Colleges on the above list have structured programs designed to facilitate community service from their students.  Simmons College for example:

During the 2008-2009 academic year, the Simmons College Scott/Ross Center for Community Service engaged more than 2,600 students in community service activities. Through the Scott/Ross Center for Community Service, students took part in a variety of tutoring and mentoring partnerships with community schools and organizations. For example, last year management students created a financial literacy program for inner city high school students, presenting them with information about short and long-term savings, identity theft, and cell phone plans.

These are great examples of the intangible value that living in an area where we have so many higher education institutions.  The full list can be found here.  I for one know that we can do even better next year, both in representation on the list and in even higher honors.  Congrats on all who made the lists!