Ginsberg Center E-Newsletter
October 2009
Ginsberg Alumni Recognized for Outstanding Service
By Caroline Massad
Brittany Galisdorfer
—Courtesy Brittany Galisdorfer.
Two Ginsberg Center alumni, Aaron Hurst, Founder and President of the Taproot Foundation, and Brittany Galisdorfer, Program Director for the Michigan Suburbs Alliance, received awards this fall for their outstanding service work.
Hurst accepted U-M's 2009 LSA Humanitarian Service Award in September. The award, which goes to living alumni, "recognizes noble character and citizenship and celebrates service to humanity that promotes greater understanding," according to the LSA website.
The Taproot Foundation, which Hurst founded in 2001, connects pro bono professional volunteers with nonprofits in need of expertise and services in areas like marketing, human resources, information technology and strategic planning.
Taproot is the largest nonprofit consulting firm in the U.S., and brings thousands of professional volunteers to the nonprofit sector each year. It also helps companies set up their own pro bono consulting programs and works to inspire pro bono work among the business community.
As an undergraduate, Hurst, who graduated in 1996 with a BGS in Service Learning, served for multiple terms as a site facilitator for Project Community, U-M's 40-year-old service learning course and a Ginsberg Center program. Hurst led fellow students in teaching creative writing at Cotton Correctional Facility, a men's prison in Jackson. He also initiated an expansion of creative writing seminars at four correctional facilities in the Ann Arbor area, and his section received a Faculty/Staff Community Service Learning Award from Michigan Campus Compact in 1996.
"Participating in Project Community both inspired me to found the Taproot Foundation and helped me to build many of the key skills I have needed to make it a success," Hurst said.
Hurst has received numerous other accolades, including a 2005 Ashoka Fellowship and the 2008 Alliance for Nonprofit Management Innovator Award.
Galisdorfer, a 2005 LSA graduate and now a first-year student at the Ford School of Public Policy, received the Detroit Free Press' Dave Bing Future Leader Award in October. Galisdorfer works as Program Director for the Michigan Suburbs Alliance. Since joining the organization in 2005, her work has included managing its financial operations and leading its intergovernmental cooperation programs.
A math major, Galisdorfer worked as a Michigan AmeriCorps Partnership member with a U-M Residential College project in 2006-7, in which she piloted interactive methods for teaching math, modeled on those used by Robert Moses in his Algebra Project, at Cesar Chavez Academy High School in Southwest Detroit.
Galisdorfer's leadership helped the program find a sustainable source of volunteers--Project Community--and connect it to the Young People's Project, a national after-school organization that also grew out of Moses' work, Residential College and Project Community Faculty Advisor Ian Robinson said.
"That was when we moved from something inspired by the Young People's Project to a place where we actually integrated with them," Robinson said. "Brittany was key in getting us to that point."
As an undergraduate, Galisdorfer also participated in Alternative Spring Break and worked with the Detroit Partnership (formerly the Detroit Project), a student initiative supported by Ginsberg that provides opportunities for students to volunteer in and learn about the city.
She said the Ginsberg Center's value to the U-M community is that it provides not only material resources like funding and meeting space, but also serves as "a home for dialogue."
"The Ginsberg Center played an important role in the progress of my understanding of social issues," she said. "Group dialogues on topics like diversity and the challenges of service provision give students an opportunity to step back from their work."
October 2009 Table of Contents
- Ginsberg Center Welcomes New Director
- U-M, Local Groups Finish Detroit Property Survey
- Project Community Alumni Survey Finds Evidence of a Lasting Impact
- Interfaith Action Program Looks Back on Year One
- Ginsberg Alumni Recognized for Outstanding Service
- New Partnerships Coordinator Joins Ginsberg Center
- University to Host 4th Annual "Careers for Public Good" Event