Cunningham Retires After 19 Years of Directing the Summer Service Project; Smith Shappell Appointed Director

In 1986, Sue Cunningham was looking for a job after spending a number of years working with a refugee resettlement program in South Bend. Instead she found a vocation at the Center for Social Concerns.

In December, Cunningham, who is as close to the mother of the Summer Service Program as there can be, plans to retire after 19 years of nurturing students and building relationships with alumni clubs and community organizations.

In a move that will ensure the continuity and future growth of the program, Andrea Smith Shappell, who directed the program for the first three years of its existence and who teaches a follow-up course to the program, will assume the role of director beginning in January.

One look at Cunningham's office reveals her dedication to the program. A map of the United States hangs on the wall with pins placed in clusters across the country, in all the major cities and beyond, indicating the locations of service project sites. Below the map, a chart filled in with the names of nearly two hundred students, organizes the sites by alumni club sponsors.

Stacks of student journals and papers line her bookshelves, and next to them, an even higher stack of notebooks rest on her desk. They are her own journals - saved since the day she arrived at the CSC - containing records of every single phone conversation she has ever had.

"In all honesty," she admits, "There has never been a day when I did not want to come to work."