Cumberland School of Law has announced its 2020 Spirit of Service award recipients. This annual award recognizes students, faculty and staff who have completed 30 hours or more of public interest/pro bono legal work and/or community service during the academic school year. Typically presented in May, this year’s award presentation was postponed due to COVID-19.

 

The 2020 award recipients are third-year students Ashley Jones, Jennifer Townsend, Robert Hunnicutt, Dana Oglesby and Julia Simmons, recent graduates Chandler Duncan and Kirkland Back, and Cumberland School of Law staff members Whitney Dachelet and Alan Stevens.

 

To be considered for the award, an applicant is required to complete 30 hours of volunteer service. However, the majority of the 2019-20 awardees volunteered over 50 hours, several giving more than 100 hours of their time. The organizations where they served included Start the Adventure in Reading (STAIR), UAB’s Hospital Elder Life program, Boys & Girls Clubs, Crisis Center Inc., Volunteer Lawyers Birmingham’s Project Homeless Connect, the Greater Birmingham Humane Society, and Cumberland’s Public Interest and Community Service Organization (CPICS).

 

In the application for the award, participants were given the opportunity to give a brief statement highlighting what they enjoyed about volunteering and what they gained from the experience. Their answers all shared a common statement that volunteering enabled them to connect with the community and allowed them to make a place or a situation better than they found it. One award winner summed it up this way: “Being able to serve my community has been the greatest blessing during my law school education.”

 

Congratulations to these award recipients and thank you for your service to your community.