River Bend Times

Saint Ambrose University recently issued the following announcement on August 30.

Certainly, Sarah Eikleberry, PhD, an Associate Professor and Assistant Chair of Kinesiology at St. Ambrose, didn't venture into civic activism with an eye on winning a statewide honor from the Jaycees organization.

Until recently, Eikleberry had little awareness one of the oldest civic organizations in the United States even existed.

She knows now.

After winning the Outstanding Young Educator Award from the Quad City Jaycees organization in 2020, she was honored this month as the 2021 JCI state organization's Outstanding Young Iowan for her work in her community.

"I was really surprised," said the Chicago-area native who joined the SAU faculty in 2013. "I know people like Kit Ford, who has been an adjunct in the Theology Department, also won it. She does really outstanding, focused work in the community, so I was really surprised they thought I was worthy. You just don't think of yourself that way."

Clearly, others see Eikleberry's body of work as extremely worthy. Since, the last words of the Jaycees long-held credo states "service to humanity is the best work of life," the bar is set high for such a statewide honor.

Eikleberry's service most recently includes launching a 501 (c)4 organization called "Take Back," which is actually focused more on paying forward. Formed in collaboration with other service-minded Davenport residents, "Take Back" has helped less fortunate neighbors weather the pandemic by delivering food and household goods, conducting voter registration, and creating neighborhood networks to keep those without access to the internet an opportunity to stay connected.

"We all knew there were people who were definitely isolated, whether it be from resources or information or, of course, one another, as many of us were ourselves," she said. "But unlike us, a lot of these folks didn't have a computer they could take home or necessary access to software that was going to let them talk digitally to someone else. A lot of my neighbors don't have cell phones. They don't have internet."

For Eikleberry's generation, and even a few before, civic volunteerism and political activism were less a passion than they were for the generation that launched the Jaycees, Rotary, and Kiwanis organizations in the aftermath of World War I and for those generations that helped them grow into community-enhancing assets through the 1970s.

"As a young person, I really didn't know how to be involved in the community I grew up in," she said. "It can be really overwhelming to think about making change in your community or even knowing what needs to be changed."

She got a sense of the power of involvement as a graduate student at the University of Iowa, where a unionized group of graduate assistants were able to affect change at the university, state, and even federal levels.

"I really did learn a lot about how things are connected," she said.

At St. Ambrose, Eikleberry models that understanding as the faculty advisor to SAU PRISM (Promoting Respect in Sexual Minorities). "They also teach me a lot," she said of a new generation of students that is more prone to activism, involvement, and service.

Today's students are not alone. Jaycees membership is limited to persons between the ages of 18 and 40, and the Quad City Jaycees organization has grown stronger with and through the involvement and active participation of a lot of St. Ambrose grads over the past decade-plus.

When Eikleberry was honored with the 2020 Quad City Jaycees Young Educator Award, she was thrilled to note the young members especially valued her work promoting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion through her leadership of PRISM. They cheered loudest, she said, when it was noted the PRISM membership's lobbying efforts for a ban on conversion therapy of minors resulted in a new Davenport city ordinance.

Eikleberry is particularly proud of how those efforts align with St. Ambrose's long, strong history of fighting for civil rights.

"I didn't need a history book to know how it ties into working at St. Ambrose," she said. "Some of the first people I met when I got to St. Ambrose during Civil Rights Week were Msgr. (Marvin) Mottet, Ernie Rodriguez, and Henry Vargas. I was able to learn about the power of LULAC (League of United Latin American Citizens) and some of the unions in town. And also I learned the history of people like Fr. Bill O'Connor and the priests and faculty who were involved in the community in very serious ways. These are things we really hang our hats on as an institution."

Original source can be found here.