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More than 60 Elon University students have traded their textbooks and laptops for hammers and paintbrushes over Spring Break this week as they take part in service trips to Argentina, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, as well as locales closer to home such as the Gulf Coast and Charleston, S.C.

Elon University trustees approved the 2010-11 fiscal year budget in a meeting held March 2. The board’s action places a priority on funding objectives of The Elon Commitment strategic plan, while maintaining Elon's affordable cost in setting next year’s tuition, room and board rates.

Elon University has been recognized for the fourth year in a row as a national leader in service-learning and civic engagement. The Corporation for National & Community Service named the university this week to the 2009 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll With Distinction for exemplary service efforts to America's communities.

On Feb. 23, Elon University President Leo M. Lambert and Scott Saylor, president of the North Carolina Railroad Company, toured the construction site of a new pedestrian tunnel under the railroad tracks on campus. The underpass is expected to open in late April.

At the deepest point of the 2009 financial woes, a class of Elon philosophy students turned to 19th century American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson to help understand America's response to the economic meltdown. What they found is published in new book titled "The Only Sin is Limitation: Essays on R.W. Emerson's multi-faceted influence on America."

The Periclean Scholars Class of 2012, led by sophomores Katie Kenney and Aisha Mitchell, raised more than $1,000 this month during a dance fundraiser to benefit the Children’s Nutrition Program of Haiti.

Three Elon University alumni have been named recipients of Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarships to help fund graduate studies overseas. Their recent selection brings to six the number of Elon students or alumni chosen for the prestigious award since 2006.

Elon University senior John McGreevy flew to Haiti over Winter Term as part of a research project. Within days he found himself helping the wounded, the widowed and the children made orphans following the impoverished nation’s largest natural disaster in generations. The environmental studies and biology double major from the Philadelphia region recently spoke with E-net about his experience.

Your heart should tell you it’s good to offer free surgeries in poor nations for children limited by certain physical handicaps. Andrea “Drea” Dorrow, the sixth student to be featured in a series of E-net profiles on the inaugural class of Lumen Scholars, can now tell you why it makes good public policy, too.