UC Student Receives State Recognition for Leadership in Community Service

Megan Hathaway, a fourth-year civil and environmental engineering major at the University of Cincinnati and a University Honors student, is a 2011 recipient of the Charles J. Ping Award from Ohio Campus Compact. The award recognizes Ohio undergraduate students’ outstanding leadership and contributions to community service on campus and in their communities. Hathaway will be honored by Ohio Campus Compact at UC’s University Recognition Ceremony at 4 p.m., Sunday, May 15, in the Great Hall of Tangeman University Center.

Hathaway, of White Oak, Ohio, has dedicated much of her UC service to arming the battle against cancer. She personally has raised thousands of dollars for UC’s Relay For Life fundraiser to support the American Cancer Society – UC’s largest student-organized community service event on campus – and has served as co-chair of the UC student Relay For Life committee that organizes the overnight event.

Relay For Life at UC is the number one collegiate relay in the states of Ohio and Pennsylvania. Over the past eight years, Relay For Life at UC has donated more than a half million dollars to the American Cancer Society for education, advocacy, patient services and research programs – including American Cancer Society-funded research at UC. Hathaway will be serving in the next Relay For Life at UC April 29-30.

Hathaway is president of Colleges Against Cancer, a UC student organization that is part of a national collaboration of college students, faculty and staff dedicated to fighting cancer, volunteering for the American Cancer Society, and improving college communities by instating and supporting programs of the American Cancer Society. She has said that her dedication to these causes is in memory of her adopted grandmother, Sharon Standriff, who succumbed to cancer in 2006.

As a UC freshman in 2008, Hathaway cut several inches from her strawberry-blonde hair when she was among hundreds of students to participate in the Pantene Beautiful Lengths Campaign to create real-hair wigs for women fighting cancer. She’ll be cutting her hair again this spring, as she helps coordinate another Beautiful Lengths event on campus on May 12.

Hathaway also serves as director of community service on UC Student Government. In that role, she coordinated with UC’s Center for Community Engagement to help create the Student Leadership Service Council. “The advisory group serves to recognize the successes and improvements that need to be made to volunteerism across campus,” says Hathaway.

Because of her service and leadership, Hathaway was honored to be among the outstanding female undergraduates to carry the ivy chain at last December’s Commencement Ceremony. A UC tradition that dates back as far as 1903, the women who carry the ivy chain at Commencement are selected because of their scholarship, leadership and service to the university as well as the City of Cincinnati.

She was recently initiated into Sigma Phi Women’s Honorary – an organization for the advancement of women. Membership is the highest honor to undergraduate women at the University of Cincinnati.

Hathaway is in a five-year program in the College of Engineering and Applied Science. She will graduate from UC in 2012.

Ohio Campus Compact is a non-profit membership organization of 47 Ohio colleges and universities with strong community service, service-learning, and/or civic engagement programs on their campuses. The Charles J. Ping Award is granted annually to undergraduates from Ohio Campus Compact member institutions who exhibit outstanding leadership in their community service endeavors, both on their campus and within their community.

UC Center for Community Engagement

Community-Engaged Learning at UC

Student Activities & Leadership Development