Kate Nesbit has spent the past 10 months giving the entirety of herself to service. She has given herself to the organization she serves with, College Possible, a non-profit that strives to make college admission and success possible for low-income students. She has given herself to her students, 40 high school juniors at Columbia Heights High School in Minnesota. With Kate’s guidance, these students have just successfully completed year one of the intensive two-year College Possible high school curriculum of coaching and support to put them on that path to college admission and success. She has also given herself to her community, both to her fellow AmeriCorps members at College Possible, but also to the Columbia Heights High School community in which she spends so much of her time. I am delighted, thrilled, and not surprised one bit to be nominating Kate Nesbit for a 2013 Service Impact Award.

The biggest impact Kate has made in her term of service with College Possible has been with her students. These 40 students have come together around Kate to form the closest, most loving and most supportive community I have seen in my three years with this program. The attendance in her after school sessions was always phenomenal. One of the big reasons why she was able to sustain such great attendance is that her lessons were among the most creative and engaging interactive performances I’ve ever seen. In their weeks-long preparations for the ACT, Kate’s students were not merely told the correct placement of commas, semi-colons, etc., but they were rather invited to discover, play, act, shout, and teach each other all of the many and various facts needed to well on that test. As a result, Kate’s cohort of students have ended their junior year with the highest average ACT score in all of College Possible, setting them up for what will be an exciting and life-changing senior year as they apply to five or more colleges.

Kate has also engendered much love among her peers at College Possible. For example, all of the AmeriCorps members who coach high school juniors must meet weekly in lesson planning groups, in addition to meeting weekly as a whole team to discuss ideas and strategies for effective and creative teaching. Kate has been an invaluable contributor to these meetings, lighting up everyone’s face with delight as she demonstrates exciting and engaging activities which others may use as tools for their own group of students. All of our junior coaching sessions are stronger for her input.

In summary, Kate Nesbit has selflessly devoted the last 10 months of her life to others, and has done so to such an effective degree that she has left a lasting impact on the futures of her students, academically and otherwise. Furthermore, through her service, she has challenged us all to be better people, professionally and personally, at College Possible. Again, it is with the utmost sincerity and pleasure that I nominate Kate for the 2013 Service Impact Award.