MC’s Seiber honored as 2021 Newman Civic Fellow
March 9, 2021\
Kris Seiber ’23, a child development and learning for teacher licensure K-5 major at Maryville College, was recently named a Newman Civic Fellow by Campus Compact for the 2021-2022 academic year.
The Newman Civic Fellowship is a year-long program for students from Campus Compact member institutions. The students selected for the fellowship are leaders on their campuses who demonstrate a commitment to finding solutions for challenges facing communities locally, nationally and internationally.
Campus Compact is a Boston-based non-profit organization working to advance the public purposes of higher education. The organization’s 2021-2022 cohort includes 212 students from 39 states, Washington, D.C., and Mexico.
The fellowship is named for the late Frank Newman, one of Campus Compact’s founders, who was a tireless advocate for civic engagement in higher education. In the spirit of Newman’s leadership, Campus Compact member presidents and chancellors nominate student leaders from their campuses to be named Newman Civic Fellows.
Seiber, who is from Maryville, Tenn., is a Bonner Scholar who volunteers with the after-school program at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center in Alcoa, Tenn. He also has served the Bonner program itself, keeping track of student service records and serving as a coach to his peers.
In his nomination letter, Maryville College President Dr. Bryan F. Coker described Seiber as “a compassionate and creative leader in the classroom and in the community.”
“As a Bonner Scholar, Kris serves 10 hours a week as a tutor and mentor to young people in our community, promoting a healthy learning and recreational environment and interacting with students and parents to encourage success,” Coker said. “As an encourager to his peers, Kris embraces differences with a ready smile and with deep curiosity and respect for others. He constantly seeks ways to strengthen our ties to one another and to lift up those whose voices may not be heard.”
Through the fellowship, Campus Compact provides Fellows with a variety of learning and networking opportunities that emphasize personal, professional and civic growth. Each year, fellows participate in numerous virtual training and networking opportunities to help provide them with the skills and connections they need to create large-scale positive change. The cornerstone of the fellowship is the Annual Convening of Fellows, which offers intensive skill-building and networking over the course of two days. The fellowship also provides fellows with pathways to apply for exclusive scholarship and post-graduate opportunities.
In his personal statement, which is included on his Newman Civic Fellows profile page, Seiber wrote that while growing up, he recognized a large socioeconomic gap in the community – and in high school, he began working with local food drives to help address the needs in the community.
“Through doing this, I fell in love with serving my community!” Seiber said. “When college came around, I became a Bonner Scholar. This allowed me to directly serve the population where the socioeconomic gap begins: children.
“As I have served there for almost two years, I have begun to realize that educating children and equipping them with life strategies, not just academic strategies, has the power to close the gap,” Seiber continued. “Thus, I have worked with the MLK Center’s director to implement, in both the after-school program as well as the summer camp program, a series of talks and activities to equip students on how to handle the ups and downs of life after school. My passion is to give under-privileged children the necessary tools and guidance they need so that they have the power to do and become whatever they desire.”
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About Campus Compact:
Campus Compact is a national coalition of colleges and universities committed to the public purposes of higher education. Campus Compact supports institutions in fulfilling their public purposes by deepening their ability to improve community life and to educate students for civic and social responsibility. As the largest national higher education association dedicated solely to campus-based civic engagement, we provide professional development to administrators and faculty to enable them to engage effectively, facilitate national partnerships connecting campuses with key issues in their local communities, build pilot programs to test and refine promising models in engaged teaching and scholarship, celebrate and cultivate student civic leadership, and convene higher education institutions and partners beyond higher education to share knowledge and develop collective capacity. Visit www.compact.org.