In a healthy partnership, each participant brings a distinctive contribution to the service, so that the two working together are able to do more than either could do alone; the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The partnership that has formed between Gateway Community College and local air conditioning businesses in Phoenix, Arizona, serves as a good example.

In Phoenix, heat can cause health problems, especially for homebound elderly residents. Evaporative coolers do the job of cooling things down in most low-cost houses. However, when these coolers break, the fifty dollar repair bill is beyond the means of many low-income residents.

Enter: the partnership.

Gateway Community College offers HVAC (heating, ventilation, air-conditioning) certification among its associate degrees. Students training to get certification usually don t get experience working with evaporative cooling systems. They could get hands-on experience with these systems by providing repair services to residents whose air conditioning systems, and health, could be saved in the process. The college, however, has neither the material resources nor the transportation systems to provide these services. Local air conditioning businesses are inclined to develop strong relations with their customers, and help those in need. They have the materials and transportation needed to repair systems for paying customers. However, providing this service free of charge would be too time-consuming and costly, without the organizational services and support of the college students.

Six years ago, Professor Clyde Perry at Gateway put this set of needs and resources together: the need of elderly metro-Phoenix residents for functional air conditioners; the need of HVAC students at Gateway for hands-on experience working with evaporative cooling systems; and the resources of the college and the local businesses. Together, they formed the Evaporative Cooler Services Project, a day of service in March when air-conditioning technicians and students match up to provide services for residents throughout the area.

The project is now a staple in metro-Phoenix. Thirty-two HVAC students at Gateway participate in the specialized training that precedes the day of intense service. These 32 students are paired off with professional technicians. Using trucks and equipment donated by local businesses, each pair services up to four evaporative coolers in a single day, in homes of elderly residents who have requested the service.

Companies are able to build their customer relations through the program, and students receive essential practice in a skill they would not otherwise learn. Both have the opportunity to do so in an effort to better the community.

From Service Matters 1998: Engaging Higher Education In the Renewal of America s Communities and American Democracy

From Service Matters 1998: Engaging Higher Education In the Renewal of America s Communities and American Democracy

From Service Matters 1998: Engaging Higher Education In the Renewal of America s Communities and American Democracy

Contact person: Rose Washington, Special Project Director, External Relations, ccr {at} usc(.)edu

USC Neighborhood Outreach web page: http://www.usc.edu/dept/CCR/nbrhd0.htm

What is your nation of residence? Why are you crossing the border? How frequently do you cross in a month? For what purposes do you cross the border?

The research that the students compiled dispelled a number of common misconceptions about border crossings here, at the most traversed transnational border in the world. Contrary to popular belief, nine out of ten crossings were not by tourists or smugglers, but by commuters who were going back and forth as part of their daily routine.

Faced with this new information, community leaders on both sides of the border suddenly realized that the economies and lives of their two cities were intertwined. Policy makers came together to discuss how they could make border crossing easier for these every day commuters. By the time discussion was through, their efforts had been profiled by papers from The San Diego Tribune to The New York Times, and the United States Congress had passed a bill authorizing expansion of the border to make crossing easier.

This small study with large implications provides important insight into democracy. Democracy, ideally, is a system where people come together to engage in civil discourse a process of participating in informed discussion of how their community looks today, and how they envision it looking tomorrow. Unfortunately, community members often don t have access to the information they need to make informed decisions about their community, and there are typically few places in a town or city where people can come together for such discussion.

The San Diego Dialogue, an initiative of the University of California that was the springboard for this cross-border research project, seeks to rectify both of these situations. The Dialogue is the name given to a center based at the university founded to provide the information, public education, and forum for effective civil discourse in the San Diego-Tijuana region.

The Dialogue is led by a group of one hundred regional leaders of industry, government, the media, academic institutions and nonprofit organizations in Mexico and the United States. The group identifies issues of regional significance in three issue areas: regional integration; equity, diversity, and urban development; and globalization. For any particular issue, the progress of promoting civil discourse follows five steps. First, a plenary session is held providing public education and introducing the issue. Second, working groups are formed that include community members interested in the issue. Third, faculty and research fellows from the university provide applied research on the topic to give the working groups information they need to make informed decisions. The fourth key step in the development of civil discourse is the holding of community forums. The Dialogue regularly convenes workshops, roundtables, and community discussions that focus on research findings and regional issues. The group also sponsors a regular forum for discussion of cross-border policy issues that attracts participation from nearly 500 business, government, and academic leaders; and a regular breakfast forum series in which 200-300 business executives and public officials discuss economic issues and trends.

Once discussion of an issue is complete, the last step in the process is the publication of results. These may be published as separate articles available to the community, or as part of the San Diego Dialogue Report, the group s monthly newsletter.

By the time proceedings are published, community members have become involved in the process of sharing ideas that makes democratic communities come to life. Starting with a sociology class that got people talking all over the nation, the University of California, San Diego, has developed a project that has gotten people talking in a much more important venue: their own communities.

From Service Matters 1998: Engaging Higher Education In the Renewal of America s Communities and American Democracy

For more information: http://www.sddialogue.org/

A fine example of the opportunities that exist is the Boys & Girls Club at Trinity College. The Club is the first Boys & Girls Club in the country to be located on a college campus, and Trinity students fill all of its volunteer positions. Trinity students also are involved in the Club through internships, service-learning, and research. They serve the needs of more than 300 inner-city, low-income children who have enrolled in the Club since its opening in February. In true community spirit, the Club s construction was financed with gifts from Hartford-area corporations, foundations and individuals, including Trinity College trustees. The Club also was the first new building to be constructed as part of a neighborhood renewal effort spearheaded by Trinity College that calls for three new schools, a family resource center, new home ownership opportunities, job training, support for existing retail establishments, and new business assistance.

Retired General Colin Powell, now chairman of America s Promise: The Alliance for Youth, participated in the dedication of the Club and designated Trinity as the nation s first “”College of Promise.”" He said that Trinity s “”commitment to improving the quality of life in Hartford and to helping the city s young people dream and believe they, too, might someday attend college and live the American dream is exemplary. What are the other hundreds of colleges and universities throughout the country doing on behalf of at-risk youth? Why can t they all be Colleges and Universities of Promise?”"

The Club s activities are focused on education and the development of social skills, using Trinity students as teachers, role models and mentors. The activities include daily homework sessions; recreation that fosters team-spirit; positive competition and social skills; arts and crafts; a computer club that uses academic-oriented software; a newsletter; a percussion workshop; and a Saturday basketball league. The newest addition is a wilderness club that involves students and staff in educational trips and outings to foster positive relationships, an awareness of nature and the environment, self-awareness, character-building and self-esteem.

This program offers Trinity students an opportunity to use their skills and their athletic, intellectual, artistic and teaching/tutoring talents for the benefit of a community in need. Students engaged at the Boys & Girls Club become increasingly civic-minded; they become more aware of the real issues and problems of inner-cities. Although it happens outside the classroom, this represents true and invaluable learning, and it stimulates intellectual inquiry, civic action and leadership. This process helps mold Trinity students into responsible, involved, caring, and effective leaders of the future. It builds citizens who are more concerned about solving social problems than just studying and talking about them.

Contact person: Angel Huertas, Unit Director, Boys & Girls Club at Trinity College, yankee {at} hotmail(.)com
Web site: http://www.learningcorridor.org/bgc.htm

From Service Matters 1998: Engaging Higher Education In the Renewal of America s Communities and American Democracy

Website: http://www.trincoll.edu/pub/heights/education.htm

Operation Bridgeport was organized by Phyllis Macklett, the director of community service, at Sacred Heart University as a method of introducing faculty not only to service-learning, but also to the neighborhood. While Sacred Heart draws a considerable portion of its student body from the neighboring community of Bridgeport, few faculty members live in the area. As a result, faculty are largely unfamiliar with the neighborhood, which is in the most poverty-stricken district in the state. Through Operation Bridgeport, a small group of faculty spend a weekend in downtown Bridgeport at the St. Charles Urban Center to learn more about the lives of the people who live just outside the place where they teach.

The program begins with a guided bus tour, narrated by a Sacred Heart professor, that transports faculty from the richest parts of the city to the impoverished downtown area. After arriving downtown, faculty meet with the leaders of community organizations from the area, between doing service work in the neighborhood at Habitat for Humanity sites, food pantries, or youth centers.

Sunday morning brings a unique twist, when faculty members cook breakfast for Sacred Heart students who live in some of the most impoverished sections of Bridgeport. After the breakfast, students deliver a presentation to faculty on their experiences growing up and living in Bridgeport. According to Ms. Macklett, the presentations never fail to move faculty members, many of whom were previously unaware of the hardships faced by some of their students.

A faculty-administration brainstorming session that comes at the end of the weekend brings ideas from faculty excited about new possibilities. In the past, faculty have suggested new courses and new community activities for Sacred Heart. The outgrowth of one weekend was a free Grassroots Leadership Training Seminar Series for community leaders from Bridgeport. Faculty involved in the series gave seminars on grantwriting, communication skills, and group organizing.

Several faculty who attend the weekend have gone on to incorporate service-learning and community engagement into their classes. Dr. John DeGraffenried, one faculty member introduced to service-learning in the first Operation Bridgeport, now offers free after-school art classes as a community service in high schools in Bridgeport and neighboring towns. He ends each year with an art show. Bridgeport youth who once would have never come to Sacred Heart University s campus have their art on display there; Sacred Heart faculty who once would have never met these youth, see the work that the youth produced under the tutelage of a fellow faculty member.

From Service Matters 1998: Engaging Higher Education In the Renewal of America s Communities and American Democracy

For more information: http://www.sacredheart.edu/mission/service/lead-serv/OpBpt/

From Service Matters 1998: Engaging Higher Education In the Renewal of America s Communities and American Democracy

Contact: Ann St. Laurant, Director, 860-297-5291 or via email at ann.stlaurant {at} trincoll(.)edu
web page: http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/ocir/program/neighborhood_revitalization.htm

Service Matters 1998: Engaging Higher Education In the Renewal of America s Communities and American Democracy

Not all community service, however, is good community service. Unfortunately, service can easily be done badly optimistic ideas thrown together can cause more harm than good. Fortunately, service can also be done well bringing mutual benefit to those serving and those served. The Harris Homes First Grade Initiative provides an example of co-curricular service at its best.

The initiative started in 1996, when parents at Harris Homes in Atlanta suggested that their children be exposed to college life through mentoring. The idea was a tried and true one: mentors are matched one-on-one with children whom they serve as a teacher and friend once a week. In the process, the children gain new visions of what the future might look like. One hundred twenty-five first graders from Harris Homes were paired with 125 freshman college students from Spelman College and Morehouse College, and a co-curricular service project had begun.

This alone would be a strong, on-going, co-curricular service. But there s more. The college students realized over time that their one-on-one relationship with these children could not so easily be relegated to a once-a-week relationship. For one thing, college students are part of a college, and it was difficult to separate their service work from that. So, mentees would come over to campus for visits with their mentors. And have lunches with their mentors. And sleepovers.

Just as college students are part of their college, the mentees they worked with were part of families. As it had been at the beginning of the program, parents input remained a driving force of the program. Mentors invited entire families onto campus, offered to share university resources, and acted as resources for neighborhood parents to address issues and concerns in the neighborhood.

It is now three years later. The mentees, now third graders, have become a familiar part of campus. Their small bodies have made frequent appearances in the cafeteria. Regularly, their shouts are heard across the campus green.

Their families too are part of campus. Support for Harris Homes parents is formalized in a peer group that meets on campus monthly to discuss common concerns. Classrooms are used for town meetings, and libraries for research.

Last year, outside funding made possible the founding of the Dean Rusk Enrichment Academy, an after-school program specializing in science and technology instruction for Harris Homes mentees that is run collaboratively by Spelman and Morehouse mentors and Harris Homes parents.

The Harris Homes Initiative has succeeded by being ongoing and long-term; building upon human relationships; involving thorough engagement with community members; and evolving over time to meet changing ideas, abilities, needs, and visions. From the start of the Harris Homes co-curricular service project in 1996, the Spelman and Morehouse students wanted their mentees to get the message that: This is college and you can come here. Over the course of three years, that message has been joined by a chorus of others: this is your neighborhood, this is your family, this is your community.

From Service Matters 1998: Engaging Higher Education In the Renewal of America s Communities and American Democracy

Service Matters 1998: Engaging Higher Education In the Renewal of America s Communities and American Democracy

Web site: http://www.communityschools.org/extendedservices.html

e-mail: ccs {at} iel(.)org

Launched in 1995 with initial funding from the Council of Independent Colleges, the Center for Service Learning is staffed by two full-time staff and the sixteen service scholars, students selected both for their high school service record and their four-year commitment to leadership at Millikin. Under the new Millikin Program of Student Learning, all incoming students and their faculty and student mentors participate in the Annual Day of Caring out in the community as part of orientation. Over 600 students spend the day at such places as the Children s Museum, the Zoo, the County Health Department, the United Way, the Decatur Memorial Hospital, the shelter for battered women and their children, and the Easter Seals pathways to independence facility. Some students continue their service commitment during the year by returning to the facility/agency they visited during First Week.

While many students develop their own personal service project as a result of their initial experience, all sections of the two University Seminars taught in the freshman and senior years incorporate a service project and related reflection components appropriate to the seminar s topic. Elementary school mentoring and literacy projects are especially popular. Many departments include service projects in courses required for their majors. Co-curricular activities such as the increasingly popular Alternative Break Program provide opportunities for sustained or intensive work in a community, whether in the Dominican Republic, areas of need in the United States, or local community organizations. Because of Millikin s century-long, mission-based commitment to experiential education and the integration of theory and practice, many service projects involve the application of discipline-based knowledge and skills. (Choir students and faculty, for example, have both sung and taught in schools and communities in Santo Domingo and the countryside.)

At their best, service-learning experiences at Millikin are beneficial for both the community and for the students. For many local community organizations, students augment service delivery, meet crucial human needs that might otherwise go unmet, and provide a basis for future citizen support. For students, community service affords an opportunity to enrich and apply classroom knowledge, explore one s vocational direction, develop civic and cultural literacy, improve citizenship, develop one s own style of learning, establish job links, and foster a concern for social problems, which leads to a sense of social responsibility.

Contact person: Michel Wakeland, Director, Center for Service Learning

Web site: http://www.millikin.edu/servicelearning/

In 1990 Ken Reardon, an associate professor in urban and regional planning, became the director of the university s East St. Louis research project, and suggested one critical change. Instead of doing research on East St. Louis, as they had done for the last three years, the university would start doing research with East St. Louis. With that change, Dr. Reardon changed the nature of the project from a study in traditional research, to a national model in participatory action research.

This new approach had a ripple effect. Initially, research had focused on large-scale improvements within the city. University planners had developed enormous projects to encompass whole neighborhoods. When they began working with the community, faculty realized that residents didn t want lofty plans for changing their whole city. They wanted to take on problems one at a time, fixing East St. Louis piece by piece. Small-scale change replaced sweeping proposals.

The way the research itself was conducted also changed. Initially, the university had followed academic research models regularly used in urban planning. Once they began working with residents, they realized that no single model could be applied to East St. Louis. They picked pieces from here and there, and put together their plans as they went, modifying projects to fit the new ideas brought by residents. Reports written to fit academic specifications have had to be reworked and rewritten to be effective for community residents to use them with policy makers and funders.

The outcomes of the action research have been significant. In 1994, through regular meetings with urban planning faculty and students, the Emerson Park neighborhood association, representing the poorest neighborhood in East St. Louis, developed a five-year community development plan. In 1998, after completing the plan one year ahead of schedule, they initiated new discussions with faculty and students for a second five-year plan, which will include a $20 million project to develop 300 homes in the neighborhood. Another typical achievement came earlier in 1998 when the collaborative research team produced sufficient data on housing, transportation, and zoning to convince the St. Louis Bi-State Development Corporation to locate a new stop on their light rail system in Emerson Park a move that is expected to bring new revenue to the neighborhood and make jobs more accessible to residents.

The burgeoning relationship between the University of Illinois and various neighborhoods in East St. Louis continues to grow. A new Neighborhood Technical Assistance Center, opened in East St. Louis and staffed by the University of Illinois, augments action research with training and technical assistance in areas like computer literacy and grant writing.

Through action research that is truly collaborative, constructive, and community-focused, the University of Illinois has helped East St. Louis to build on their assets and increase their social capital as a community. Collaborative efforts and collaborative successes have re-energized neighborhoods and begun a process of transformation. When the university arrived in 1987, East St. Louis residents could think of no reason for faculty to stay. In a recent community retreat in 1998, faculty had a different problem. After asking residents to discuss future directions, and current strengths and weaknesses in the action research they were doing together, residents came up with a list of strengths, and a host of new ideas, but even after much prodding, they couldn t come up with any weaknesses.

From Service Matters 1998: Engaging Higher Education In the Renewal of America s Communities and American Democracy

Contact: East St. Louis Action Research Project: http://www.eslarp.uiuc.edu/

From Service Matters 1998: Engaging Higher Education In the Renewal of America s Communities and American Democracy

From Service Matters 1998: Engaging Higher Education In the Renewal of America s Communities and American Democracy

Website: http://www.massart.edu/at_massart/ under “”Community Service Learning”" then “”Co- Curricular Activities”".

From Service Matters 1998: Engaging Higher Education In the Renewal of America s Communities and American Democracy

Contact person: Ms. Andrea Goicochea – Beans & Bread/Frederick Ozanam House Partnership Liaison, mgoicochea {at} loyola(.)edu

Web: www.loyola.edu/about/jesuitidentity/centerforvaluesandservice

At Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, Minnesota, there is no such clear distinction between the university and the surrounding neighborhood. Metro State was founded and designed to be a college without walls, an institution so integrated into the local community of Dayton s Bluff that their resources were indistinguishable. Students regularly went into the community to get needed services, like food and books. As a result, they were familiar with the surrounding neighborhood.

This is an example of shared space: places in the community where individuals from on and off campus interact. Shared space, however, can be brought to a level beyond this. People not only need places where they can interact, but also where they feel a sense of belonging. It is rare for community residents to feel that there are any places on a college campus where they are particularly welcome, just as it is rare for college students to feel that they belong in most of the off-campus community. When a college or university breaks this barrier, they have created shared space at a higher level.

Four years ago, Metro State began an effort to bring shared space in Dayton s Bluff to this higher level. Responding to demands by both students and Dayton s Bluff residents for a new library, Metro State President Susan Cole suggested that a shared facility could be created. She entered discussions with members of the community, and plans for the Community Library and Information Access Center were born.

As its name suggests, the center will be the joint possession of the St. Paul Public Library and Metro State University. The library will include two major components a family center that specializes in children s literature and includes a teen study area, and a 20,000 volume collection of frequently-used academic texts and reference books. A computer system will provide access to the St. Paul Public Library, as well as to Metro State.

As such, the library truly is shared space: a place that students on campus and families in the community can both call their own. By sharing responsibility for the design, construction, and eventual use of the library, planners from Metro State and Dayton s Bluff are creating a place where campus and community combine. Though not yet completed, years of planning and design around the new library have already recast Metro State University not as a college without walls, but as a college that has worked with the community to build the walls that bring them together.

From

Service Matters 1998: Engaging Higher Education In the Renewal of America s Communities and American Democracy

Website: Library plans are online at http://www.metrostate.edu/library/libimgs.htm

1) strengthen the capacity of residents to build and maintain a strong urban environment;

2) provide community based learning opportunities for students;

3) develop the capacity of the university to serve as an institutional resource in partnership with the community.

Created an extensive partnership with Dayton s Bluff Elementary School that combines services-learning and curriculum enrichment programs (e.g. the America Reads program, Family Literacy, Peer Mediation, Philosophy for Children, Environmental Education, and College for Kids an on-campus college awareness program) with social service, parent education, and affordable housing initiates focused on involving low income parents in addressing issues of concern to themselves and their families.

Co-organized a comprehensive planning process to identify priority development projects for the community with an emphasis on creating more affordable housing and neighborhood businesses, and enhancing the physical and natural environment of the neighborhood.

Conducted ongoing community based research projects, both individually and in cooperation with other area colleges and universities, including a major study of the neighborhood economy; a community capacity inventory featuring interviews with over 100 community residents on contributions they have or could make to the neighborhood; an inventory of “”problem properties”" and a “”tool box”" of strategies residents can use to convert these properties into neighborhood assets; and a multi-year study on issues and opportunities for members of newly emerging Asian-American, Latino, America Indian, and African American communities in Dayton s Bluff and St. Paul s East Side more generally.

Established a campus based community health clinic operated by the university s school of nursing to provide both on site and outreach health services and practicum placement opportunities for nursing students.

Created both practicums and community service field placements in the Dayton s Bluff community for students in the social work, community violence prevention, law enforcement and criminal justice, teacher preparation and accounting programs.

Adopted an institutional “”shared use”" approach that includes the creation of a joint community-university library, and the establishment of a community job resource center on university property. Having received approval (and initial funding) from the state legislature, the library will be one of the country s first joint university-community libraries. The job resource center is operated by a community non-profit, with support from the university s career placement director and student interns. It focuses on supporting public assistance recipients in the transition from welfare to work.

Contact person: Susan Giguere, Director, Center for Community-Based Learning (CCBL)

CCBL web site: http://www.metrostate.edu/ccbl/CCBLindex.htm