Nelda Ault Receives Award for Work with Refugee Center

Nelda Ault, community service coordinator at Utah State University’s Val R. Christensen Service Center, has received the 2014 Cache Interagency Council’s Outstanding Individual Award. Awards were presented on Oct. 22 during the CIC’s fall conference at Bridgerland Applied Technology Center. The Outstanding Individual Award recognizes those who provide outstanding service to the community and who are involved with CIC.

Ault was nominated for the award based on her ongoing work with Cache Valley’s refugee community and her role in founding the Cache Refugee and Immigrant Connection. CRIC helps the refugee community learn life skills that will help them in their daily lives. Since helping in its founding, Ault has taught drivers education class, English classes, life skills classes and recently started resume and job-seeking classes. The organization is also starting a community garden so people can grow food from their countries.

Beyond her work with CRIC, Ault embodies the idea of the outstanding individual in numerous other ways. Once her VISTA volunteer position ended at Wilson Elementary School, she was still seen at the bus stop several times with refugee children she was helping get safely to school from their homes.

“I don’t know if this time was ‘on the clock’ or not but here is the thing: to Nelda, it doesn't matter,” a co-worker said. “If the kids need to get to summer school, she will do what needs to be done to make it happen. Nelda is a gem in our community.”

More information on CRIC can be found online.

Contact: Sean Damitz, Center for Civic Engagement and Service-Learning, (cell) 435-770-6104,

sean.damitz@usu.edu