2024 - Elgin Community College honored with Two Elgin Image Awards

Elgin Community College (ECC) received two Elgin Image Awards from the Enhancing Elgin Committee of the Elgin Development Group. These awards recognize outstanding individuals, businesses, and organizations that are making a powerful difference in the City of Elgin by promoting the positive aspects of why Elgin is a great place to live, work, learn, do business, get involved, visit, and enjoy.

Clare Ollayos, DC, a member of the ECC Board of Trustees, received the Volunteer Extraordinaire award. Ollayos has been a member of the board since 1995. She is deeply committed to student success, trustee development, and legislative advocacy. As an ECC trustee, she served two consecutive terms as board chairperson and three terms as vice chairperson.

Ollayos has been volunteering for nearly five decades and has made a profound impact on the Elgin community through extensive and diverse volunteer efforts, which span education, arts, and social service organizations, civic missions, and task forces.

The Center for Civic Engagement (CCE) received the award for Creating a Difference Groups—Organization or Business. ECC launched the CCE in the fall of 2023 to help train students as civic leaders who will engage with students on campus, in their communities, and in our democracy.

During the 2023-24 academic year, the CCE’s student civic leaders helped 122 students register to vote, and another 271 already-registered students received email or text reminders about the upcoming election. The organization also hosted voting drives at the college for the first time in over a decade during the Illinois primary election in March of 2023. This was the highest turnout among early voting sites in Kane County.

Ollayos and the Center for Civic Engagement were honored at the awards ceremony on Tuesday, October 29. For more information about the Elgin Image Awards, visit elgindevelopment.com.