Waltham Partnership for Youth presents Brandeis with Good Neighbor Award

Brandeis earns local honor for its community service and outreach to Waltham schools and nonprofits.

Photo/Heratch Ekmekjian

Left to right: Lucas Malo, director of community service; Kaytie Dowcett, director of Waltham Partnership for Youth; Marya Levenson, Director of Teacher Education; Waltham Mayor Jeannette McCarthy

Brandeis University received the 2018 Good Neighbor Award from Waltham Partnership for Youth on Wednesday, April 11 at the annual Linking Education and Business Breakfast.

The event focused on high-impact partnerships between business and community members in solving critical challenges involving local youth.

Brandeis, which logs 40,000 hours of community service each year to Waltham-specific schools, organizations and groups, was honored with the Good Neighbor Award in front of Waltham Mayor Jeannette McCarthy, teachers and civic leaders.

“Brandeis has been involved in supporting the Waltham community in so many enriching ways,” said Kaytie Dowcett ’99 MPP’15, the director of Waltham Partnership for Youth, a non-profit that works to improve outcomes for local students. “There is a breadth and depth to the way Brandeis contributes to Waltham – there’s direct service on behalf of its students, service in classrooms and in teacher education and work with nonprofits and local fundraising. Brandeis’ approach is one of relationship building and collaboration.”

Three Brandeis staff members attended the breakfast to accept the award on behalf of the university: Lucas Malo, the director of community service; Anique Olivier-Mason PhD'12, director of education, outreach and diversity at the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC); and Marya Levenson, the Harry S. Levitan Director of Teacher Education and Professor of the Practice of Education.

“As someone who lives in Waltham and works at Brandeis, I am doubly honored to be recognized as a good partner by Waltham Partnership for Youth,” Levenson said. “It’s a priority for us to work well with the middle schools and high schools in the district in which we are located and have been proud to work so close with Waltham education leaders. That’s the way it should be: we learn from Waltham and Waltham learns from us.”

In 2016, The Waltham Group, the largest student-led club at Brandeis, celebrated its 50th Anniversary of running programs in the local community. To-date the organization has 75 student leaders who partner with 40 organizations through 19 service programs supported by 1,000 student volunteers.

Malo, who oversees the thousands of hours of community service conducted by the Waltham Group each year, was also proud to receive the honor on behalf of the university.

"It’s an honor to be recognized with two of my colleagues, Marya Levenson and Anique Olivier-Mason, and represent Brandeis University in celebration of the dedicated work of the department of community service and passionate student leaders of the Waltham Group,” Malo said. “I am proud to work at an institution that fully engages and is invested in its local community.”