Carroll County Mom Nominated for Statewide Volunteer Award

West Middle School volunteer Vicki Mahr has been named a semifinalist for the 2011 Comcast Parent Involvement Matters Awards, and she credits her children for motivating her to want to make a difference.

This awards program, a collaboration between Comcast and the Maryland State Department of Education, recognizes parents and legal guardians for their exceptional support of public education and is the nation’s first statewide initiative of its kind, according to a news release from Carroll County Public Schools (CCPS). 

Mahr is the mother of three girls. The oldest, Anna, graduated from Westminster High School in 2008;  Beth is currently a senior at Westminster High School; and Claire is a seventh-grader at West Middle School. Vicki Mahr has been volunteering in the schools for many years, and the tasks she takes on vary from making copies for teachers to training volunteers to mentoring students at the Career and Technology Center. 

Mahr said there are essentially three reasons she volunteers in the schools. 

"These are my kids," Mahr said. "They are spending a good amount of their awake hours away from me and I don't need to control that, but I want to know what is happening with them in that time, and if I can be a part of it, then I want to do it. I am lucky that I have the time to do it." 

Mahr said the second reason she volunteers is simple: "It's fun."

"I enjoy being in the school. Some kids love seeing their parents in the schools, some kids don't, but kids always love seeing their friends' parents in the school," Mahr laughed. 

According to a CCPS news release, the Comcast Parent Involvement Matters Awards Program recognizes parents from local school systems across the state of Maryland. Parents are nominated for demonstrating significant, positive impact in their education communities in one or more of the five areas of parental involvement: Communication, Volunteering, Learning, Decision Making and Community Collaboration.

Mahr is an active member of the PTO and is involved in a wide variety of activities at West Middle School, such as coordinating and organizing social activities for students, providing support for teachers, helping with fundraising efforts, and advocating for parent issues.

Mahr was nominated for the award based on her volunteer work at West Middle School, but she is also very involved with the Project Lead the Way Engineering Technology program at the Career and Tech Center. With a chemical engineering degree and 20 years of experience in the field, she said she is committed to helping young girls (and boys) find their way in the engineering field.

“Vicki is an outstanding representative of a parent who knows and lives the belief that education matters,” West Middle School Principal Tom Hill said in a news release. “She models that belief through her actions every time she is in our school.”

The 2011 Comcast Parent Involvement Matters Awards will be presented during an evening celebration on Friday, May 20. Five finalists and a statewide winner, selected from the 24 semifinalists, will be announced at the awards ceremony.

Mahr gave a third reason she feels compelled to spend so much of her time volunteering in the schools, and it has to do with all of us.

"The challenges are so huge in front of our kids that are in middle schools right now that they need as much help as they can get to learn what's going on in the world. They have the opportunity to be the next great generation.

"I think volunteering in the schools shows kids that other people, besides teachers and parents, care and want to help them," Mahr said. "I am interested in helping our future leaders in any way I can. I even tell my own kids the world is bigger than that little keypad."