Community Service Office lauded by local agency

In an early February ceremony attended by several representatives from Lehigh, the university’s Community Service Office was awarded the Miller Keystone Blood Center’s Local Leader Award for both 2014 and 2015.

Lehigh’s blood drive donations averaged 375 annually, contributing to the efforts to save the lives of more than 1,000 individuals in the Lehigh Valley each year.

Carolina Hernandez, director of the Community Service Office, said the award was “testament to a great group effort that was spearheaded by our student coordinators Nick Leight and Brennen Stenke.”

Hernandez said that Leight ’16, a bioengineering major, and Stenke ’17, an environmental studies major, recruit students, staff and faulty to donate blood during blood drives held at Lehigh each year.

“We’re also grateful to the men on PIKE (Pi Kappa Alpha) for being our partners on campus,” she said. “They generously provide dinner to the campus organization that generates the most blood donors on our campus.”

The Miller Keystone Blood Center noted that the generosity of the Lehigh family yields the highest donations of all colleges and universities in the Lehigh Valley, and is the second largest in the region served by the center.

John Smeaton, vice provost for Student Affairs, said that this latest acknowledgement is “a great example of the highly successful programs organized through our Community Service Office, and is further evidence of not only their dedication, but also the generosity of the members of the Lehigh community.”

Established in 1971, the Miller Keystone Blood Center is an independent, not-for-profit community organization that serves as the only blood provider to 21 hospitals in Berks, Bucks, Carbon, Dauphin, Lehigh, Luzerne, Northampton, and Schuylkill (Pa.), and Hunterdon and Warren (N.J.) counties. The only blood transfused at these hospitals is donated through Miller Keystone.

It is a member of America’s Blood Centers, a national network of independent, non-profit community blood centers that provide approximately 60 percent of the blood products transfused in the United States.