August 17, 2004
Senior Wins 2004 Palmer Award for
Bringing Her Vision to Reality
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In July, the LeaderShape Institute
recognized Mary Xu, a senior in MIS,
with the 2004 Palmer Award scholarship
for her commitment to community
service.
LeaderShape is a week-long leadership
program held annually at dozens of
college campuses across the country.
The Palmer Awards are given out each
year to the two LeaderShape graduates
who were best able to turn a vision for
their student organization into reality
that year.
Mary attended LeaderShape in spring 2003. It was there, she says, that she developed “stretch goals" for two extracurricular student groups.
Those organizations were the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Central and South Texas and the Texas Spirits. For the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Mary's goal was to raise enough money to grant wishes to three seriously ill children. For the Texas Spirits, she would get 50 children involved in service.
Each of these is in itself an ambitious undertaking, but Mary was confident in her ability to handle both. “My experience at LeaderShape,” she says, “helped me to have a ‘healthy disregard for the impossible.’”
Each wish for the Make-A-Wish Foundation “costs” $5,000. “That’s the upper limit,” explains Mary. “The money does go quickly since the wish usually includes the family. For example, if a wish child wants a trip to Disneyworld, the foundation has to buy plane tickets, a hotel room, and admission for the entire family, along with more activities and special parties at Disneyworld.”
Therefore, Mary needed to earn $15,000 to meet her first goal. “To raise $15,000 for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, I chaired a committee of twenty students to plan a large-scale benefit concert for fall 2003,” says Mary. She noted that it took “very careful planning and budgeting” to bring the concert about, as she had to cover internal and external publicity, find a webmaster and a designer for t-shirts and tickets, and work with band managers to bring the talent to campus. Ultimately, all these efforts paid off, and more than $15,000 was raised.
So far, that money has brought one child a computer and another a shopping spree, with one more wish yet to be granted. “The concert has been one of my proudest accomplishments,” says Mary, “because were it not for the courage to think big and bold, it wouldn’t have been possible.”
Perhaps even bolder than a benefit concert was Mary’s next goal: getting 50 Austin children involved in service.
At the time, Mary was the service chairperson for the Texas Spirits. Through that organization, she implemented the Commitment to Service Award, an essay contest in which 5th graders from East Austin were asked to write about the importance of service in their lives.
“I wanted young minds to start thinking about service and seeing it as a life-long commitment, and eventually to be come service enthusiasts,” she says.
Over 80 students submitted entries. Texas Spirits provided the winner with a plaque, the winner’s class with a pizza party, and the winner’s teacher with $100 for classroom expenses.
Mary is not alone among college students in her commitment to service. In 2002, a survey by the LBJ School of Public Affairs’ RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service found that 74% of the university’s undergraduates had volunteered that year, with an average commitment of 111 hours.
In contrast, a 2003 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicated that only 28.8% of all adults in the country had done the same.
For information on specific programs at the McCombs School, consult our contacts page. For media information, contact the Communications Director by phone at 512-471-3314 or by email at CommunicationsDirector@mccombs.utexas.edu.
