MLK’s hope for service reflected in UIC scholarship winners

“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’”

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love, 1963

UIC PhD candidate British Reynolds was in grammar school when she participated in her first community service opportunity. 

“It was simply picking up trash throughout the neighborhood and around the school,” she said. “I definitely have grown to greater engagement years later.” 

Reynolds, who also attended UIC for her undergraduate and graduate studies in education, has dedicated her research and teaching career to helping underserved communities. Her deep roots in civil and community service earned her one of UIC’s 2023-24 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Scholarships. 

As UIC students and staff celebrated the life of King this week by volunteering throughout Chicago, Reynolds reflected on the scholarship’s significance in her journey.  

“The scholarship recognizes students who are invested and committed to serving their communities,” Reynolds said. “I’m the type of person, I believe we should always give back because there’s always someone who sacrificed and did the work for you to end up where you are.” 

As many as 25 students each year – 15 undergraduate, five graduate and five doctoral – can be awarded the King scholarship. It is one of several available to UIC students who demonstrate a commitment to community service. Students at all levels have until Jan. 28 to complete applications in the SnAP portal for consideration for awards given in the 2025-26 school year.  

“We’re always looking for high-achieving students academically, and for the Dr. King scholarship in particular, we’re also looking for students who have a strong demonstration of Dr. King’s principles,” said Kara Holloway, director of scholarships. “Those students are advocates for social justice and civil rights.” 

To celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Jan. 20, UIC canceled Monday classes, and students were encouraged to participate in a day of service activity. On Jan. 25, students are encouraged to participate in the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Student Leadership Conference: Dreams of Justice. Presenters at the conference will discuss a future with Justice at its center. 

Rae Joyce Baguilat, director of Student Leadership and Civic Engagement, which helps facilitate the day of service, said learning outside the classroom is as important as what UIC students learn in it. 

“When we do leadership, civic engagement and service activities, they’re all really interconnected,” Baguilat said. “With the service aspect, I think a lot of times that’s where I have seen a lot of students come into Student Leadership and Civic Engagement, do some service component, and then realize, ‘Oh, I really like doing this, and I can see how it’s connecting to what I’m learning in the classroom.’” 

Baguilat, who has united students with the needs of Stone Temple Baptist Church in North Lawndale where King once preached, said community service allows students to reflect on history and their part in it.  

“If they participate for one day, then we can kind of make it transformational to say, ‘Oh, I was able to serve this, and it wasn’t that long. It was three hours of my day. I could do this another day,’” Baguilat said. If that one day builds into a lifetime of giving back to the community, students could begin to follow King’s hope for service.

In his 1963 collection of sermons called Strength to Love, King wrote: “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’” 

Reynolds said studying King’s writings on self-reflection and transformation in order to transform society is a key to community service.  

“What it takes to be transformative in that way is this love ethic, where you really have to be anchored into the people that you are working with to transform the world,” Reynolds said. “That’s something that I learned many years ago as a teenager in high school, and that’s something I still use in the work that I do today.” 

Holloway noted that UIC students have submitted scholarship applications with their civil service experience, demonstrating that they’ve looked beyond campus for ways to contribute and help. 

“And they will do things not only with existing local and national organizations, but sometimes they’re beginning their own programs as well,” Holloway said.  

Students who accumulate 100 or more hours of service each year are also eligible for other scholarship opportunities. Any student looking for more service hours can find opportunities on the campus groups portal.  

Reynolds, who taught in Chicago-area schools, said she saw that transformation in many of her students who realized the change they could make around them. 

“There are students,” she said, “who, like myself when I was in high school, they really realized, ‘I actually do have some power to make some changes. They may not be the grand changes that we see on a whole societal level, individually, but as a singular person, I do have impact. I can make a change, even if it’s with one other person.’”