February 25, 2021

Downtown Selinsgrove has gotten an extra dose of River Hawk pride with new streets signs emblazoned with Susquehanna’s athletics logo.

An anonymous community donor sponsored the project, which led to the installation of the street signs at Susquehanna Avenue and Pine and Broad streets. Selinsgrove’s Borough Council approved the signs and collaborated with the donor on the project.

“We appreciate the donor’s interest in this project and in highlighting Susquehanna’s position in the community we’re proud to call our home,” said Malcolm Derk ’05, interim chief of staff and director of grants and foundation relations at Susquehanna. “We value the relationship the university and its students have with the Selinsgrove community, and these signs are a great addition to welcome visitors, students and alumni.”

The signs are a “fun and colorful” way to draw people’s attention to the borough’s assets “and highlight all the things we love about the town,” council member and SU alumna Sara Lauver ’04 said.

Plans are to install similar signs throughout the borough highlighting more of its assets, also funded by the anonymous donor, including the boat launch on the Isle of Que and the Selinsgrove Speedway. Street signs promoting the Selinsgrove Area School District already exist near all of its schools.

Susquehanna has a long history of collaborating with the Selinsgrove community. In 2020, with its season canceled by the COVID-19 pandemic, SU’s football team launched a Season of Service, through which they made improvements to Kidsgrove, a nonprofit playground on Sassafras Street in Selinsgrove.

Several teams, including women’s basketball, field hockey, and men’s soccer, were pen pals with the fourth and fifth graders at Selinsgrove Area Elementary School. Susquehanna University women’s basketball team conducted a month-long fundraising campaign, collecting $3,055 for the Thyra M. Humphreys Center for Breast Health at Evangelical Community Hospital in nearby Lewisburg.

Other annual efforts include:

• SU GIVE (Susquehanna University: Get Into Volunteer Experiences) brings together first-year students, faculty, staff and orientation team members to complete service projects at locations throughout the central Susquehanna Valley.
• Susquehanna Engaging in Regional Volunteer Experiences (SU SERVE) is a year-round effort in which students, faculty, staff, alumni and parents volunteer in their communities and log their hours with SU.
• Founded in 2017, SU’s Service Leaders program embeds first-year students for their entire four years at Susquehanna with regional community partners that support youth development.
• SU Clean Sweep brings together fraternities, sororities and athletic teams to pick-up trash along the Central Business District of downtown Selinsgrove each Sunday while students are on campus.
• Accounting majors in the Sigmund Weis School of Business provide free tax help to assist low-income taxpayers through the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program.