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Danielle Bank

Biography

Someday, as a professor of history, Danielle Bank says she will stress the importance of education and lifelong learning, lessons reinforced for her during her first two years at North Central College. “If the knowledge I have acquired lives only within me and is not retained, either by a person, institution, or publication, then I have not accomplished anything,” she says.

As a volunteer English teacher for the Junior-Senior Scholars, a program dedicated to preparing financially disadvantaged minority elementary and secondary school students for college, Danielle has also learned that she must gain a thorough understanding of who her students are and where they are coming from. “I have come to realize that the ability to teach derives from one’s willingness to learn,” she says.

In addition, during her first two years of college, Danielle established a student chapter of AWARE (Advocates for a World of Acceptance, Respect, and Equality) dedicated to advancing mobility-related issues. She is also student coordinator of the forensics program, in connection with the Junior-Senior Scholars program, and is developing an independent study project on the history of disability policy in China, a topic that grew out of her advocacy work for the disabled and her classes in Chinese history and thought. The project will include fieldwork in China.

“Danielle has added something wonderful to North Central College; something that only a person with a unique combination of intellectual capacity, leadership savvy, and determination can accomplish,” says Laurie M. Hamen, vice president for student services and dean of students at North Central College.
 

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