NCSSM students honor Dr. King's legacy through service and cultural learning
NCSSM students and staff will celebrate the life of Dr. King by participating in cultural celebrations and community service. In addition to a keynote address by Carr Thompson, Senior Program Officer at Burroughs Wellcome Fund and serves on the NCSSM Board of Trustees, the celebration will include concurrent sessions with 31 different local and national service organizations and student service learning opportunities. During last year's celebration, NCSSM students performed more than 600 hours of service at organizations across Durham. This year, more than 200 students will volunteer at organizations across Durham, including American Red Cross, Cards for Soldiers, Eno River Association, Habitat for Humanity of Durham: ReStore, Hugs and Hope, MS Society, SEEDS, The Forest at Duke and the Veterans Transitional Housing Program.
>> See the celebration program, full schedule & organizations for concurrent sessions
About NCSSM Service Learning
Each year, NCSSM students give back more than 21,000 hours of service to hundreds of organizations in communities across North Carolina. Each student is required to complete three hours of work service each week at NCSSM and complete 60 hours of service in North Carolina while attending the school. This past spring, with leadership from students and staff, NCSSM set a Guinness World Record for the world's largest food drive, bringing in 559,885 pounds of food in a single day. Thousands across central and eastern North Carolina received a meal instead of going hungry because of this amazing community-supported event.
About D. Carr Thompson
Carr Thompson is a senior staff member of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund (BWF) and serves as Secretary of the BWF Board of Directors. Mrs. Thompson develops strategies to improve and leverage resources to advance inquiry-based science, mathematics, engineering, and technology education. In the area of public policy, Mrs. Thompson helped build the capacity and the relationships of policymakers in North Carolina including legislators, State Board of Education members, and the foundation community through the North Carolina Institute for Education Policymakers. She developed the foundational white paper to establish the North Carolina Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education Center that systemically improves K-12 science and mathematics teaching and learning; supported the creation of the North Carolina Grassroots Museum Collaborative, the first such collaborative in the U.S. to enhance hands-on science learning offered by more than 32 North Carolina science museums; and worked to expand the North Carolina Project SEED program, designed to strategically increase the number of under-represented minorities pursuing doctoral degrees in the sciences.
Mrs. Thompson serves on and has chaired several boards including the National Science Resources Center in Washington, North Carolina Network of Grantmakers (current chair), North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, North Carolina Central University Foundation, and the Public School Forum of North Carolina. She has also participated on review panels for the National Science Foundation. Her international experiences include the establishment of a Computer Processing Center in Ghana, West Africa, and studying schools systems in England, the Netherlands, Denmark, China, South Korea, India and Singapore. Mrs. Thompson has a BA in marketing/management from North Carolina Central University and management certification from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is married with four children and three grandchildren.