Marion Jackson, distinguished professor of art and art history at Wayne State University, received the Michigan Campus Contact (MCC) Faculty/Staff Community Service-Learning Award, the highest honor offered to faculty and staff in the state of Michigan. MCC, a nonprofit organization focused on college student civic engagement, bestowed the annual award to Jackson during their 2010 Institute held Feb. 9 in Acme, Mich.

The award recognizes Jackson's influence on and the engagement of students to be involved in community service or service-learning through modeling, influencing or instruction. Jackson is a longtime advocate of using the arts as a means of engaging with the community.

Jackson has been teaching African American Art History since 1998, insisting that the course meet in the evening in order to make it available to a wider, working audience. She incorporated into the course a public African American art history lecture series that was free, open to the public, and widely publicized. The successes of her service-learning experiences inspired a new proposal from Jackson called "Arts Corps Detroit," which provides a visible structure to enable creative volunteers in Detroit to contribute to enriching, improving and healing the urban community through the arts.

Wayne State University is a premier urban research university offering more than 350 academic programs through 13 schools and colleges to nearly 32,000 students.