Jeanette Clark: Cooking up a recipe for success
by Judy Petree
Spring 2005, Media Relations Manager, Public Relations

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How do you cook up a recipe for success? Just ask Augsburg student Jeanette Clark and she can give you the proper ingredients. Plus, as any good cook will tell you, you need to get into it up to your elbows, and that is just what Clark is doing.

Since entering Augsburg as a freshman in 2003, Clark has not only immersed herself in several campus programs, but has recently been named a “Neighborhood Hero” by the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency and the WB Minnesota. This award recognizes individuals within the community who are making a difference.

Clark, a double major in Youth and Family Ministry and Metro-Urban Studies, is an outstanding young adult committed to others and the community. During her freshman year at Augsburg, Clark not only established herself, but also helped to establish a successful non-profit organization, the Campus Kitchen at Augsburg College (CKAC), which is a hunger relief organization that serves Minneapolis and is part of the national Campus Kitchen Project.

“Campus Kitchen has reminded me that our work and lives are about people,” Clark said. “Our culture often neglects this truth ... and our society needs more leaders who realize this. I realized I could and should speak up and make a change in the world. I began to see that there was no excuse for my silence, and that I could cause change just as well as any other person.”

During the summer of 2004, Clark continued her volunteer work with the CKAC program by taking part in the Summer Job Training Program. The program offers opportunities to unemployed or underemployed in the community, to gain valuable job skills and experience by providing a hands-on experience in a professional culinary environment. While half of the trainees were in the kitchen learning culinary skills, Clark taught a class on professionalism and conflict resolution in the work place.

Clark is not only involved in the CKAC program, but many other organizations as well, including: the Augsburg Campus Ministry; LINK (an Augsburg student led community organization that connects the students to the community); Augsburg Echo newspaper as a staff writer; a volunteer tutor at Safe Place, an after school program for Somali children; VIBE Urban Youth Ministry; Augsburg Inreach/Outreach retreat leader; a volunteer at the Family Opportunities Living Collaborative; and a member of the Augsburg College Band. Clark has also been very involved in her home congregation at All Saints Lutheran Church in Minnetonka.

Breaking News: Clark receives Marina Christensen Justice Award.