universities and community schools

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UNIVERSITIES AND COMMUNITY SCHOOLS Communities Universities Schools VOLUME 7, NUMBER 1-2 FALL-WINTER 2002 A P u b l i c a t i o n o f t h e U n i v e r s i t y o f P e n n s y l v a n i a

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Page 1: UNIVERSITIES AND COMMUNITY SCHOOLS

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Page 2: UNIVERSITIES AND COMMUNITY SCHOOLS

S T A T E M E N T O FP U R P O S E

Universities and Community Schools will not duplicate thework of any existing publication or association. Its uniquepurpose is to help establish an international informal “visiblecollege”—or network of—academics and practitionersworking, in different places and ways, to increase thecontributions universities make to the development andeffectiveness of community schools. Establishing such asystematic, sustained network is mandatory, we believe, forthe university-school connection to function positively andsignificantly. (“University” is broadly conceived, i.e., all“post-secondary” institutions of “higher education.”)

We envision Universities and Community Schools as helpingto spark a worldwide informal movement which aims toovercome major community and societal problems by devel-oping mutually beneficial, innovative partnerships betweenuniversities and schools.

There is no subscription price for receiving Universities andCommunity Schools. We would like all those interested in thefocus and purpose of this journal to receive copies. We,therefore, encourage those on our mailing list to suggestadditional names.

We also encourage interested readers who are not on ourmailing list to contact us. Please write or call us at thefollowing address and phone number:

Ira HarkavyCenter for Community PartnershipsUniversity of Pennsylvania133 South 36th Street, Suite 519Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-3246(215) 898-5351

For additional information about the Center for Community Partnerships,Please visit our web site at:http://www.upenn.edu/ccp

This issue of Universities and Community Schools is fundedby the Wallace-Reader’s Digest Funds as part of a multi-yeargrant to support the replication of Penn’s university-assistedcommunity school model and to encourage the developmentof national network of colleagues interested in this work. TheWallace-Reader’s Digest Funds seek to enrich community lifethrough support of education, arts and culture.

Executive EditorsLee Benson

University of PennsylvaniaIra Harkavy

University of Pennsylvania

Associate EditorJohn L. Puckett

University of Pennsylvania

Assistant EditorJoann Weeks

University of Pennsylvania

Board of EditorsMichael W. Apple

University of Wisconsin/MadisonMary Frances Berry

University of PennsylvaniaNevin C. Brown

The Education TrustMorton Coleman

University of PittsburghPablo Eisenberg

Georgetown UniversityJames W. Hilty

Temple UniversityRoger Hollingsworth

University of Wisconsin/MadisonErnest Jones

Philadelphia WorkforceDevelopment Corp.

Ellen C. LagemannSpencer Foundation

James A. LarkinUniversity of Pennsylvania

Jo LazarusJoint Education Trust of South Africa

Marc V. LevineUniversity of Wisconsin/Milwaukee

Bruce MuirheadUniversity of Queensland-Ipswich Campus

Laura Pires-HesterConsultant

John MohanUniversity of London

John RennieCommunity Education DevelopmentCentre, United Kingdom

Steven I. SchlossbergMarvin E. Schuman

Philadelphia Federation of TeachersSue Marx Smock

Wayne State UniversityHenry Louis Taylor, Jr.

SUNY at BuffaloSir David Watson

University of Brighton, United Kingdom

Page 3: UNIVERSITIES AND COMMUNITY SCHOOLS

2001 as Turning Point 3By Lee Benson and Ira Harkavy

The Role of Community-Higher Education-School Partnerships in Educational and Social Development and Democratization 5

By Lee Benson and Ira Harkavy

Linking Intellectual Resources and Community Needs at the University of Pennsylvania 29

By Francis E. Johnston and Amelia Rosenberg Weinrab

Motivation During the Middle School Years 49By Eric M. Anderman

To Change a University, Start with the Community 59By Stephen L. Percy and Mary Jane Brukardt

Organizing the Campus to be in Partnership with Schools and the Community 65

By Jilaine W. Fewell, Christine G. Overtoom and Oliver P. Jones

Beyond Community Involvement and Service Learning to Engaged Universities 79

by Hal A. Lawson

Integrating Services and Training 95By Kevin W. Allison , JoAnne Henry, Humberto Fabelo, Marie Chapin and Catherine Howard

Capitalizing on the Popularity of Sport and Physical Activity Among Underserved Youth: 106

By Nick Cutforth and Don Hellison

Conference Summaries 113October 1999 National Conference on University-Assisted Community Schools

March 2001 International Conference on Higher Education-Assisted Community Schools as Sites of Civic Engagement

T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S

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2 0 0 1 A S T U R N I N G P O I N T : T H E C O M M U N I T Y - H I G H E R E D U C A T I O N -

S C H O O L P A R T N E R S H I P I D E A B E C O M E S A

N A T I O N A L A N D I N T E R N A T I O N A L

M O V E M E N T

Lee Benson & Ira HarkavyUniversity of Pennsylvania

When the first four-page issue of Universities and Community Schools waspublished in 1989, the idea of genuinely collaborative, mutually beneficial, partner-ships among communities, higher education institutions (“higher-eds” for short), andpublic schools was in its visionary, experimental stage. To mix metaphors shamelessly,this 141 page issue of the journal demonstrates that by 2001 that visionary idea hadtaken firm root, spread widely, and flourished in an impressive variety of innovativeforms. Developed in the United States, it is now radiating out to such distant coun-tries as South Africa and Australia.

Though subsequent issues of Universities and Communities Schools will con-tain reports from other countries, this issue limits itself to American examples. Butas the paper by the two of us which follows this introduction demonstrates, Americanhigher eds are now closely collaborating with higher eds in other countries to develop“The Role of Community-Higher Education-School Partnerships in Educational andSocietal Development and Democratization.” That lengthy title was specified by TheJoint Education Trust, which commissioned the paper for presentation to theDepartment of Education, South Africa. It specified that title in order to make clearthe tripartite nature as the foundation of its comprehensive long-term plan to help over-come severe post-apartheid problems and significantly improve the democratic qual-ity of life in South Africa.

Before commissioning us to write the paper, delegations from South Africahad made several visits to the University of Pennsylvania, and had been impressed bythe positive results achieved by the higher education-assisted community schools ithad helped develop in West Philadelphia. They had also become convinced that thepartnerships model which Penn had developed with its local community and publicschools was relevant enough and flexible enough to be highly effective in South Africa.Copies of the paper were widely circulated in advance of a three-week visit to SouthAfrica by one of us, Ira Harkavy, in the summer of 2000 and served as the basis ofstimulating, fruitful discussion with high-ranking South African academics and gov-ernment officials. Those discussions lead to the conclusion that the community-highered-school partnership idea could indeed be creatively adapted to the needs andresources of societies other than the United States. Subsequently, similar collabora-tive relationships have been developed between Penn and Australian universities andthe Australians are now in the process of adapting the basic community-higher ed-school partnership model to their own particular needs and resources.

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I N T R O D U C T I O N

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The second paper in this issue is by Francis E. Johnston and Amelia RosenbergWeinreb of the University of Pennsylvania, “Linking Intellectual Resources andCommunity Needs at the University of Pennsylvania.” As that title suggests, it pres-ents a systematic, intensive candid evaluation of how well Penn’s resources have beenused to meet the needs of its local community, West Philadelphia, with particular atten-tion to the community’s public schools. The third paper by Eric M. Anderman, of theUniversity of Kentucky, “Motivation During the Middle School Years: The Case ofCommunity Schools,” reports on another evaluation study of university-school part-nerships. In this instance, the study focused on the results of a partnership betweenthe University of Kentucky and a middle school with which it worked to test the util-ity of the higher ed-assisted community school model.

The next paper by Stephen L. Percy and Mary Jane Brukardt of the Universityof Wisconsin-Milwaukee, “To Change a University, Start With the Community,”focuses on the changes produced in a university when it reorganizes itself to use itsresources to help improve the quality of life in its local community, in this case theentire city of Milwaukee. Appropriately enough, the paper which follows it by JilaineW. Fewell, Christine G. Overtoom, and Oliver P. Jones, “Organizing the Campus ToBe In Partnership With Schools and the Community: Ohio State’s CampusCollaborative,” also reports the results of collaboration between a university, OhioState, and its neighboring communities in Columbus, Ohio.

The next paper by Hal Lawson of the State University of New York at Albany,“Beyond Community Involvement and Service Learning to Engaged Universities,”doesn’t report on specific university-community relationships; instead it examines thegeneral problems universities confront when they try to transform themselves into“engaged universities.” It is followed by a paper authored by a quintet of faculty atVirginia Commonwealth University, “Integrating Services and Training,” that exam-ines the specific problems a university confronts when it develops and implements an“interdisciplinary training experience for professional students in nursing, social work,and child clinical psychology” working to provide health services for a local ele-mentary school. This issue concludes with a paper by Nick Cutforth of the Universityof Denver and Don Hellison, of the University of Illinois at Chicago, whose title isvirtually self-explanatory, “Capitalizing on the Popularity of Sport and PhysicalActivity Among University Youth: Breaking New Ground in University/CommunityCultures.”

Taken together, we believe that the papers in this issue strongly support our intro-ductory proposition that by 2001 the visionary community-higher education-schoolpartnership idea “had taken firm root, spread widely, and flourished in an impressivevariety of innovative forms.”

T H E R O L E O F C O M M U N I T Y -H I G H E R E D U C A T I O N - S C H O O L

P A R T N E R S H I P S I NE D U C A T I O N A L

A N D S O C I E T A L D E V E L O P M E N TA N D D E M O C R A T I Z A T I O N

Lee Benson

Ira Harkavy

U N I V E R S I T Y O F P E N N S Y L V A N I A

P A P E R C O M M I S S I O N E D B Y T H E J O I N T E D U C A T I O N T R U S TI N P R E P A R A T I O N F O R

I R A H A R K A V Y ’ S V I S I T T O S O U T H A F R I C A

July 2000

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I N T R O D U C T I O N — B E N S O N & H A R K AV Y

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To begin this action-oriented, real-world prob-lem-solving paper, we sketch a classic goodnews/bad news scenario. In our scenario’s opti-mistic version, the 21st century becomes theglobal Democratic Century—the century whichwitnesses practical fulfillment of the democraticpromise long heralded by progressive prophetsand visionaries. In its pessimistic version, a radi-cally different outcome materializes: the 21st cen-tury world becomes so divided by such “savageinequalities” that anything like democratic prac-tice becomes unimaginable. What will actuallyhappen in the 21st century, of course, probablywill fall somewhere between those opposite poles.They are best conceived, therefore, as ideal-type“fields of force” pulling societies, indeed theworld, in opposite directions.

Which “field” will prove most “forceful”?That depends. Depends on what? Depends onwhat individuals and institutions do—and fail todo. Higher education, we believe (hope), willfunction as the most powerful agent of change inthe 21st century, the Agent most likely to have themost profound, most far-reaching, effects. Howcan we justify that proposition? Before trying todo so, we sketch a few more details of our possi-ble 21st century scenarios.

First the good news: At the dawn of the newmillennium, democracy is both the primary modeof societal organization and the prevailing conceptof how a good society should work. As the dis-tinguished political scientist Robert Dahl observedin his magisterial book, On Democracy (1998):“During the last half of the twentieth century theworld witnessed an extraordinary and unprece-dented political change. All of the main alterna-tives to democracy either disappeared, turned intoeccentric survivals, or retreated from the field tohunker down in their last strongholds.”1 But Dahlthen went on to emphasize that little reason existsto indulge in democratic triumphalism: less thanhalf the world’s population now actually lives ineven nominally democratic societies and, even inlong-established democracies, crises of participa-tion and confidence in government continuallymanifest themselves. Nonetheless, it seems clearthat the democratic idea now functions as the mostpowerful animating idea inspiring and motivatingindividuals and institutions throughout the world.Metaphorically speaking, new communicationand information technologies increasingly providethe “wings” which, directly and indirectly, carrythe democratic idea across the globe.Authoritarian leaders and governments, for

example, cannot effectively seal off informationand ideas transmitted in nanoseconds throughcyberspace. It also seems clear, however, the irre-pressible communication and information revolu-tions which spread the “democratic word” cansimultaneously put democracy in great jeopardy.

Global democracy is not the inevitable out-come of the rapidly accelerating communication/information revolution. On the contrary. Takinghistory as our guide—particularly the horrendoushistory of the past century (e.g., Holocaust,Hiroshima, Chernobyl)—it becomes obvious thatextraordinary advances in science and technologycan produce unspeakable horrors rather thanhuman progress. Unless controlled by an interna-tional movement powerful enough to develop sci-ence and technology for democratic humane pur-poses, the accelerating global informationrevolution may forcefully exemplify the “law ofunintended consequences” and create “digitaldivides” and “savage inequalities” which, in turn,produce a self-aggrandizing plutocracy of, by, and for the very highly educated and the very, very rich.

As philosopher William Sullivan has empha-sized, creating the necessary conditions to realizethe humane use of science and technology is any-thing but a new problem. To a significant extentit constituted the fundamental problem of the 18thcentury Enlightenment, the fundamental problemof human existence to which Francis Bacon haddirected attention as early as the 17th century,namely: How can human beings organize, pro-duce, advance, and practically use knowledge sothat the “advancement of learning” contributesoptimally to “the relief of man’s estate?”2 Forbrevity’s sake, we identify that extraordinarilycomplex problem as Bacon’s Problem.

A great admirer of Bacon, John Dewey’s workis best viewed as focused on solving an updateddemocratic version of Bacon’s Problem. InDewey’s version, it takes this form: How can sci-ence and technology be conducted and controlledto help bring about the Humane Democratic Age(again our term) of human evolution and therebyjustify the Enlightenment’s faith in the progress ofhuman reason? In his major political work on thePublic and Its Problems (1927), Dewey argued,optimum development of human beings’ biologi-cal capacity for intelligent, imaginative thoughtand behavior required modern democratic soci-eties to base themselves on a radically new type

of local community. Transcending the oldparochial local community, the new local com-munity Dewey envisioned would be characterizedby humanistic, progressive, universalistic values,as well as deep, trusting, personal relationships.Only by constructing such historically unprece-dented face-to-face “democratic cosmopolitanneighborly communities” (our term for Dewey’screative concept and theory) could a democraticPublic find itself, practice participatory democ-racy, function as a rational, collaborative, cohesivebody to realize the full societal benefits of mod-ern science and technology, and thereby solveBacon’s Problem.3

Given Dewey’s fundamentally “bookish” tem-perament, however, by “nature” and training hewas ill-suited and ill-prepared to engage in thesystematic analysis of conflict and power insocial organizations and societies. Understandablybut unfortunately, therefore, he evaded the hard,practical problems involved in specifying theagents (individuals or institutions) and strategieslikely to construct, develop, and maintain the cos-mopolitan neighborly communities he envisionedas mandatory for democratic progress. He subse-quently changed his mind but in his early writingsDewey tended to identify the schooling system asthe strategic subsystem in modern society.4 Ineffect, he essentially argued, only a democratic,integrated (pre-K through 16+), real-world prob-lem-solving, schooling system would, on balance,enable human beings to benefit from the profoundchanges resulting from a rapidly industrializingsociety. Alas, as was true of Dewey’s lifelong bodyof work, though he advocated a radically changedAmerican schooling system, he characteristicallyevaded grappling with fundamental problems ofconflict and power. Since he evaded grapplingwith the hard problems of conflict and powerentailed by his proposed changes, he failed tospecify the agent(s) and strategy that could actu-ally bring about the democratic schooling systemand society he advocated. Very bluntly stated,Dewey essentially wished for radical changes, hedidn’t do the hard thinking needed to realize them.

Having praised Dewey’s democratic visionsand sharply criticized his intellectual evasions, weare obligated to try to do what we criticized himfor not doing: we have to specify the agent(s) andstrategy likely to realize his—and our—demo-cratic visions. To begin that process, we assert thisgeneral proposition: In the 21st century, American

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B E N S O N & H A R K AV Y T H E R O L E O F C O M M U N I T Y- H I G H E R E D U C AT I O N - S C H O O L PA R T N E R S H I P S

It is not possible to run a course aright when the goal itself is not rightly placed.—Francis Bacon, Novum Organum (1620)

Democracy has been given a mission to the world, and it is of no uncertaincharacter. I wish to show that the university is the prophet of this democracy,as well as its priest and its philosopher; that in other words the university isthe Messiah of the democracy, its to-be-expected deliverer.—William Rainey Harper, The University and Democracy (1899)

The truth of a scientific proposition, finding, or an abstract ethical principleis not a static property inherent in it. Truth happens as the result of the man-agement of human affairs. It becomes true, is discovered and made true byactions [original emphasis]…Knowledge cannot be separated from the processof its implementation…Truth is knowledge that is gained through the processof implementation. Truth is thereby not only equated with implementation,but it is only said to have occurred, or resulted when implementation hasoccurred.—C. West Churchman and Ian I. Mitroff, The Management of Science andthe Mismanagement of the World (1998)

To be a great university we must be a great local university [emphasis added].—Shirley Strum Kenny, President, State University of New York, Stony Brook,New York Times (August 18, 1999)

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higher educational institutions, particularlyresearch universities, will have both the capacityand the motivation to function as the strategicagents powerful enough, determined enough, tocreate integrated real-world problem-solvingschooling systems and democratic cosmopolitanneighborly communities. Later in the paper, wesketch our reasons for believing that they can berealized in practice. Here we simply note that ouroverall strategy derives from this basic assump-tion: In the global era of an irrepressible, accel-erating communication/information revolutionwhere great capacity for knowledge-productionand use really is power, American universities(broadly conceived) can be persuaded that theirprimary mission should be to help bring about theparticipatory democratic society John Deweyenvisioned as the optimally intelligent, optimallymoral, form of human social organization. To jus-tify the Neo-Deweyan priority we give to univer-sities and schooling systems as agents of pro-gressive societal change, we turn to the“Dewey-Plato debate.”

1. Education and Society: John Dewey vs. Plato

Plato was the philosopher John Dewey mostliked to read. Though he admired Plato, theirworldviews differed radically. For our purposes,we need note only two basic differences: Plato’sworldview was aristocratic and contemplative,Dewey’s was democratic and activist. Despite theirmany differences, in certain crucial respectsDewey shared Plato’s views about the relation-ships between education and society. To make thepoint economically, we quote Steven M. Cahn, a leading philosopher of education. According to Dewey:

…philosophy of education was the mostsignificant phase of philosophy…[F]or Dewey“all social philosophy was at bottom philosophyof education implicitly or explicitly.” As he putit, “it would be difficult to find a single impor-tant problem of general philosophic inquiry thatdoes not come to a burning focus in matters ofthe determination of the proper subject matterof studies, the choice of methods of teaching,and the problem of the social organization andadministration of the schools.”5

Noting that other philosophers also empha-sized the importance of education, Cahn quotedKant’s proposition that “the greatest and most

difficult problem to which man can devote him-self is the problem of education.” Cahn thenobserved that he knew of:

…only two major philosophers who exem-plified this principle in their philosophicalwork, one was Dewey, the other was Plato. Hetoo found it difficult to discuss any importantphilosophic problem without reference to theappropriateness of various subjects of study,methods of teaching, strategies of learning. Butwhile Dewey’s philosophy of education restedon his belief in democracy and the power of sci-entific method, Plato’s philosophy of educationrested on his belief in aristocracy and the powerof pure reason. Plato proposed a planned soci-ety, Dewey a society engaged in continuousplanning. Plato considered dialectical specula-tion to be the means toward the attainment oftruth; Dewey maintained that knowledge is onlyacquired through intelligent action…Suffice itto say that John Dewey is the only thinker everto construct a philosophy of education compa-rable in scope and depth to that of Plato.6

Summarized even more starkly: Plato’s phi-losophy of education aimed to achieve aristocraticorder, Dewey’s to achieve democratic community.

Like the ancient Greek philosopher, Deweytheorized that education and society were dynam-ically interactive and interdependent. It followed,then, that if human beings hope to develop andmaintain the particular type social order or soci-ety they regard as the optimum form of humansocial organization, they must develop and main-tain the particular type of education system con-ducive to it. Stated in negative propositional form:No participatory democratic schooling system, noparticipatory democratic society. Stated posi-tively: To develop and maintain a participatorydemocratic society—Dewey’s optimally intelli-gent, optimally moral, form of society—humanbeings must develop and maintain a participatorydemocratic schooling system.

Dewey strongly affirmed the truth of that the-oretical proposition. As noted above, however, hewas temperamentally “bookish” by “nature” andtraining. Since he was ill-suited and ill-preparedfor the systematic analysis of conflict and power,let alone the effective use of power, he failed todevelop and implement any concrete plan to applythat proposition in practice. After leaving theUniversity of Chicago in 1904 and becoming anacademic “superstar,” Dewey continued to preachthe necessity of pragmatic action. But for some

complex set of reasons that we can only guess at,he essentially evaded his responsibility to practiceactively what he preached eloquently—a scholas-tic evasion which, given Dewey’s prestige andinfluence, helped rationalize, legitimate, and per-petuate the strong tendency of “AmericanScholars” to “wimp out” and leave the action-oriented, purposive integration of theory andpractice much “more honor’d in the breach thanthe observance.”

Ironically, in direct contrast to the philosoph-ically contemplative Plato who pragmatically cre-ated a remarkably influential Academy to imple-ment his aristocratic philosophy of education andsociety, the philosophical activist Dewey failed toeven try to institutionalize his democratic philos-ophy of education and society, except by “laypreaching” (to quote our colleague, MurrayMurphey). That is, despite the powerful exampleof Plato’s Academy—an Academy whose elitist,idealist, philosophy continues to dominateWestern schooling systems to this day—Deweyflagrantly violated his own powerful general the-ory of “how to think” intelligently. Essentiallyrelying on rhetoric, he failed to work instrumen-tally to institute the inquiry-based, action-oriented,experimental, democratic schooling system logi-cally required by his participatory democratic phi-losophy of society. Put another way, he took noaction to institute the democratic “AmericanAcademy” necessary to overthrow Plato and bringabout the participatory democratic society hedeeply believed in and passionately wanted to helpconstruct the type of society based upon the“belief that democracy as an ethical ideal callsupon men and women to build communities inwhich the necessary opportunities and resourcesare available for every individual to realize fullyhis or her particular capacities and powers throughparticipation in political, social and cultural life.”.

In our judgment, democratic American aca-demics should stop indulging in never-ending,hermeneutic disputes over what Dewey “really”said or meant to say. Stated more forcefully, theyshould shut down the Dewey-interpretation indus-try. They should shut it down because it is “fruit-ful of controversies but barren of works,” to invokeFrancis Bacon’s characterization of the unpro-ductive “childish chatter” of the dogmatically dis-putatious ancient Greek philosophers whoadmired clever idealist arguments but disdainedpractical action in the “inferior material world.”

Breaking free from scholastic deconstruction anddisputation, democratic American academicsshould constructively pay homage to Dewey byacting to progress beyond him and practicallysolve the problems he evaded. Theory is notenough; theory-guided, theory-testing, theory-developing, experimental action is vital.

Specifically, how do we transform the overallAmerican schooling system so that it activelyfunctions as the “democratic public work” whichDewey, in effect, called for?7 How do we best over-throw Plato and successfully implement Dewey’sdemocratic schooling theory so that it becomestrue in real-world practice, not simply in abstractprinciple? Most critically, how do we develop andimplement democratic pedagogy and democraticschools for democratic citizenship? Those are terribly hard problems. They require terribly hardthought and work. To focus attention on them and stimulate sustained, integrated theoreticaldebate and experimental action, we sketch our“solutions”.

2. Democracy, Democratic Schoolingand the American Research University

The path toward democratic schooling beginswith and runs through the America research uni-versity. Moreover, as suggested above, we view theAmerican research university as the primaryAgent to advance societal democratization bymeans of democratic schooling. In 1990, whilepresident of Harvard, Derek Bok, highlighted thegrowth in importance of universities since WorldWar II:

…all advanced nations depend increas-ingly on three critical elements: new discover-ies, highly trained personnel, and expert knowl-edge. In America, universities are primarilyresponsible for supplying two of these threeingredients and are a major source of the third.That is why observers ranging from Harvardsociologist Daniel Bell to editorial writers fromthe Washington Post have described the modernuniversity as the central institution in post-industrial society…8

Bok did not explicitly emphasize, however,what we regard as the most critical reason forhigher education’s leadership role. We think itaxiomatic that the schooling system functions asthe core subsystem—the strategic subsystem—of modern information societies. More than any other subsystem, it now influences the func-tioning of the societal system as a whole; the

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subsystem, which, on balance, has the greatest“multiplier” effects, direct and indirect, short andlong-term. We think it equally axiomatic that uni-versities—particularly elite research universitieswith highly selective arts and science colleges—function as the primary shapers of the overallAmerican schooling system. The powerful role ofresearch universities stems not only from theirenormous prestige and power—they serve, ineffect, as the reference group that defines andshapes the entire schooling hierarchy—but fromtheir far-reaching role in educating teachers.

At the turn of the twentieth century, WilliamRainey Harper, the first president of the Universityof Chicago (1892-1906), identified the urban“Great University” (his term) as the most strategicorganizational innovation of modern society. Tobuild a great university and help realize in practicethe democratic promise of America, Harper arguedthat the University of Chicago must take seriousresponsibility for developing and implementingsolutions to active engagement with the severeproblems confronting its dynamically growingcity, particularly its public school system. Criticizedby a university trustee for sponsoring a journalfocused on pedagogy in precollegiate schools, forexample, Harper emphatically proclaimed: “As auniversity we are interested above all else in ped-agogy” [emphasis added]. Harper’s devotion to ped-agogy logically derived from two propositions cen-tral to his truly Messianic vision for the Universityof Chicago in particular, for American universitiesin general, and (eventually) for universitiesthroughout the world.

1. “Education is the basis of all democraticprogress. The problems of education are,therefore, the problems of democracy.”

2. More than any other institution, the uni-versity determines the character of theschooling system. To quote him:“Through the school system, the char-acter of which, in spite of itself, the uni-versity determines and in a larger meas-ure controls…through the school systemevery family in this entire broad land ofours is brought into touch with the uni-versity; for from it proceeds the teach-ers or the teachers’ teachers.”9

Has Harper’s vision been realized? On bal-ance, has the American higher educational systempositively contributed to the successful function-ing of the American schooling system? To answer

that question, we obviously must first determinehow best to conceive and measure “successfulfunctioning.” Do scores on standardized tests, forexample, really tell us much about the state ofAmerican schooling? Does the widening chasm inthe educational achievement of urban, largelyminority (primarily African-American and Latino)youth and their largely white suburban counter-parts tell us much more? To answer such very hardquestions requires us to think very hard and tospecify explicitly the aim(s) and methods ofschooling.

Once again, Dewey’s work, with its strongemphasis on education for democracy, provides agood theoretical beginning. In a recent article on“Democracy and Inquiry,” Charles Anderson per-ceptively summarized Dewey’s position:

Dewey thought that democratic citizenshipcould be understood as the unifying aim of edu-cation [emphasis added}. But Dewey thought ofdemocracy as but one manifestation of a powerthat was vested in and distinctive in humanity.That power was inquiry…

Inquiry, Dewey taught, was the method ofdemocracy. It was also the method of science.And as the century wore on, it in fact becamethe method of management, of the law, of edu-cation itself.

Here then is a theme that can unify edu-cation as it unifies the spheres of everyday life[emphasis added]. Citizenship now cariesenhanced meaning. It pertains not just to pub-lic affairs but to our performance in every realmof life [original emphasis].10

Informed by Dewey’s theory of “inquiry-based, real-world action-oriented, participatorydemocratic schooling for participatory demo-cratic citizenship” (our lengthy term for Dewey’spowerful set of concepts), we are convinced that,on balance, American universities have had, andcontinue to have, harmful effects on the Americanpublic school system. Rhetorically proclaimingdemocratic purposes, American higher educationhas strongly tended to function in practice as anessentially Platonic, elitist, anti-democratic sys-tem. Put another way, Plato (updated by VilfredoPareto and his modern Machiavellian theory ofcirculating elites) still dominates the Americanuniversity and helps ensure the inability of pub-lic schools to perform their roles well, particularlytheir critical role of effectively providing

democratic schooling and democratic pedagogyfor a democratic society. To “prove” (sic) thatcomplex theoretical proposition would require along paper. Here we simply call attention to thedirect and indirect harmful effects resulting from:(1) the powerful university pressures to producehigh school graduates suitable for admission toessentially Platonic prestigious colleges; (2) the“deliberate choice” of leading Graduate Schoolsof Education to largely ape the much more pres-tigious Schools of Arts and Sciences, thereby “dis-tancing themselves from both the task of trainingteachers for elementary and secondary schoolsand that of addressing the problems and needs ofthose schools.11

Our position is simple, unequivocal: no dem-ocratic radical reform of American higher educa-tion, no successful democratic schooling reform,no truly democratic society. Summarized suc-cinctly: Participatory democratic societies requirethe development of participatory democratic uni-versities. The radical reform of higher educationwill most likely occur, we hypothesize, in the cru-cible of significant, serious, sustained, activeengagement with public schools and their localcommunities. Scholastic, abstract, contemplative,ivory tower isolation neither sheds intellectuallight nor produces societal fruit. Fortunately, a rap-idly growing and deepening University CivicResponsibility Movement is now emerging andworking to create a new “engaged,” democraticAmerican university with major intellectual andsocietal promise.12

During the 1960s, it will be recalled, angryrebellious students demanding “relevance,” “par-ticipation,” and “community,” fought unsuccess-fully to get universities to take appropriate respon-sibility for the quality of life in their localcommunities. Dormant for more than a decade,the movement for university civic responsibilityrevived during the 1980s and 1990s. This time,however, it was primarily led by university presi-dents and administrators. What seems to bodeparticularly well for the durability and futurestrength of the revived movement is this unprece-dented development: In remarkable contrast to the1960s, university presidents, faculty, and studentsare now beginning to work together, enthusiasti-cally and collaboratively, to improve the qualityof life in their local communities. (History some-times does “teach lessons” that some humanbeings sometimes do learn.)

Following Donald Kennedy’s stimulating leadin a recent book, Academic Duty, we viewAmerican higher education as now in the earlystages of its third “revolution.”13 The first revolu-tion, of course, occurred in the late 19th century.Beginning at Johns Hopkins in 1876, the acceler-ating adoption and uniquely American adaptationof the German model revolutionized Americanhigher education. By the turn of the century, theuniquely American research university had essen-tially been created. The second revolution beganin 1945 with Vannevar Bush’s “endless [research]frontier” Manifesto and rapidly produced the BigScience, Cold War, Entrepreneurial University.14

The third revolution, we believe, can be dated(somewhat arbitrarily) as beginning in 1989. Thefall of the Berlin Wall, the crack-up of the SovietUnion, and the end of the Cold War provided thenecessary condition for the “revolutionary” emer-gence of the Democratic Cosmopolitan CivicUniversity—the radically new type of “GreatUniversity” which William Rainey Harper proph-esized would be capable of advancing democraticschooling and practical realization of the demo-cratic promise of America for all Americans.

How can we credibly explain the emergenceof the Democratic Cosmopolitan Civic Universitya century after Harper first envisioned it? Largely(though oversimply), as a defensive response to theincreasingly obvious, increasingly embarrassing,increasingly immoral, contradiction between theincreasing status, wealth, power, and dominantrole of American higher education in Americansociety—particularly its elite research universitycomponent—and the increasingly pathologicalstate of American cities.

To paraphrase Oliver Goldsmith’s late 18thcentury lament for The Deserted Village, whileAmerican research universities flourished in thelate 20th century as never before, “ill-fared theAmerican city, to hastening ills a prey.” IfAmerican research universities really were sogreat, why were American cities so pathological?After the Cold War ended, the contradictionbecame increasingly obvious, troubling, indefen-sible, immoral.

Put another way, the manifest contradictionbetween the power and the performance ofAmerican higher education sparked the emergenceof the Democratic Cosmopolitan Civic University.Knowledge is Power. Power means—or powerbased on great capacity for knowledge-production

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and use should mean—Responsible Performance.Accelerating external and internal pressures forcedresearch universities, therefore, to recognize (very,very reluctantly) that they must function asmoral/intellectual institutions simultaneously, sym-biotically engaged in the advancement of univer-sal knowledge and the improvement of local wellbeing. Put still another way, after 1989, the com-bination of external pressure and enlightened self-interest increasingly spurred American researchuniversities to recognize that they would benefitgreatly if they functioned simultaneously as uni-versal and as local institutions of higher education,i.e., democratic cosmopolitan civic institutions notonly in but of and for their local communities.

To reduce (if not avoid) misunderstanding, weemphasize that we view the “third revolution” asstill in its early—very early—stages. As the oldacademic joke has it, American universities con-stitute such remarkably self-contradictory, inter-nally-competitive and conflictual, institutions thatthey tend to move with all the speed of a runawayglacier. But things are changing, in the right direc-tion. One indicator of positive change is the accel-erating number and variety of “higher eds”— aless cumbersome term than “higher educationalinstitutions”—which now publicly proclaim theirdesire to collaborate actively with their neighbor-ing public schools and local communities.Predictably, to-date, public proclamations of col-laboration far surpass tangible, interactive, mutu-ally respectful and mutually beneficial, collabo-ration. Nevertheless, progress is being made.

To help accelerate progress to the point wheremajor changes become firmly institutionalizedand produce really significant results, we call foracceptance of this radical proposition: All highereds should explicitly make solving the problem ofthe American schooling system their highest insti-tutional priority; their contributions to its solutionshould count heavily both in assessing their insti-tutional performance and in responding to theirrequests for renewed or increased financial sup-port. Actively helping to develop an effective, inte-grated, optimally democratic, pre-K throughhigher ed schooling system, we contend, shouldbecome the collaborative primary mission of, andprimary performance test for, American universi-ties and colleges.

Primary mission, of course, doesn’t mean solemission. Obviously, American higher eds nowhave—and will continue to have—important mis-

sions other than collaboratively helping to solvethe problem of the American schooling system. Ifspace permitted, we would try to show in detailhow those other missions would benefit greatlyfrom successful collaborative work on the school-ing problem. Here we restrict ourselves to bare-bones statement of three corollary propositions:(1) Given the radically disruptive, complex con-sequences (e.g., political, economic) of theextraordinarily rapid development of informationsocieties throughout the world, given the criticalrole schooling must play in such societies, solv-ing the schooling system problem should now con-stitute American society’s highest priority. (2)Solving the overall problem of the schooling sys-tem must begin with changes at the higher edlevel. (3) If higher eds genuinely take responsi-bility for solving the overall schooling systemproblem, in the long run, directly and indirectly,they will secure much greater resources than theynow have to carry out all their important missions.

In the short run, we concede, our proposedmission change would require higher eds to expe-rience the trauma entailed by any attempt tochange academic priorities and cultures radically.In effect, we are calling on higher eds to reallo-cate the largest share of their intellectual (andother) resources to the immediate improvement oftheir neighboring public schools and communities.Given their present ferociously competitive, “pureresearch” orientation (fixation?), how in the worldcan we possibly expect higher eds to answer ourcall positively rather than derisively, dismissively,contemptuously? Is our proposal to change aca-demic priorities so lacking in good sense, so “rev-olutionary,” so anachronistically ultra-leftist, thatreaders will angrily reject it as irresponsible, self-defeating, delusionary utopianism? To pun aphrase: Are we nuts?

We can pose the question less colloquially,more academically: Since they themselves are notexperiencing any crisis, why should self-congrat-ulatory, self-aggrandizing, increasingly rich, pres-tigious, powerful, “successful,” American univer-sities take on the terribly hard job of trying totransform themselves into civic institutions whichactively, wholeheartedly, accept collaboration withtheir local schools and communities as their cat-egorical imperative for the new millennium?They should try to do that, we contend, for good(in several senses) institutional reasons: If theysucceed, they will be much better able than they

are now to achieve their morally-inspired,devoutly-believed, self-professed, loudly-trum-peted, missions; namely, to advance, preserve, andtransmit the knowledge, as well as help producethe highly-skilled, well-educated, cultured, trulymoral citizens, necessary to develop and maintainan optimally democratic society.15 At bottom, weare convinced, American universities and aca-demics do not primarily want to do well, they pri-marily want to do good. In a sense, how best tosatisfy that desire is the principal—and princi-pled—problem American universities and aca-demics must solve in the 21st century.

To understate the case extravagantly, the rad-ical transformation sketched above will be extraor-dinarily hard to achieve. But it is not impossible,we contend, provided that universities and aca-demics really embrace it as their categoricalimperative and work creatively to develop andimplement a strategy in which community-highereducation-school partnerships function as thecore means to realize an effective, compassionate,“democratic devolution revolution.” To delineatethat strategy, we (very oversimply) recite therecent history of our own university.

3. Penn’s Engagement with Local PublicSchools as a Practical Example of“Democratic Devolution Revolution”

Since 1985, Penn has increasingly engageditself with its local public schools in a compre-hensive school-community-university partnership,the West Philadelphia Improvement Corps(WEPIC). In its fifteen years of operation, theproject, has evolved significantly. Moreover, it hashelped spawn a variety of related projects whichalso engage Penn with public schools in its localcommunity, West Philadelphia. From its inception,we conceptualized Penn’s work with WEPIC as designed to forge mutually beneficial and mutually respectful university-school-communitypartnerships. In recent years, we have begun toconceptualize that work in much broader terms;namely, as part of a (literally) radical attempt toadvance a “democratic devolution revolution.”16 Itis from that “lofty perch,” we believe, that anoverview of Penn’s work (and the work of manyother higher educational institutions increasinglyengaged with their local public schools and com-munities) is best comprehended.

For nearly a generation, John Gardner,arguably the leading spokesperson for what we

lengthily call the “New American Democratic,Cosmopolitan, Civic University,” has been think-ing and writing about organizational devolutionand the university’s potential role in it. ForGardner, the effective functioning of organizationsrequires the planned and deliberate rather than adhoc and haphazard devolution of functions:

We have in recent decades discoveredsome important characteristics of the large-scaleorganized systems—government, private sector,whatever, under which so much of contemporarylife is organized. One such characteristic, perhaps the most important, is that the tendencyof such systems to centralize must be counteredby deliberate dispersion of initiative downwardand outward through the system. The corpora-tions have been trying to deal with this realityfor almost 15 years and government is now pursuing it…

What this means for government is a substantially greater role for the states andcities. And none of them are entirely ready forthat role…Local government must enter intocollaborative relations with nongovernmentalelements.

So how can colleges and universities be ofhelp?17

In effect, Gardner proposes a multisidedinvolvement in “contemporary life” for “highereds,” including building community, conveningpublic discussions, educating public-spirited lead-ers, offering continuing civic and leadership sem-inars, and providing a wide range of technicalassistance (broadly conceived). An effective, com-passionate, democratic devolution revolution, heemphasizes, requires much more than practicingnew forms of interaction among federal, state, andlocal governments and among agencies at eachlevel of government. For Gardner, governmentintegration by itself does not meaningful changemake. New forms of interaction among the pub-lic, for-profit, and non-profit sectors are alsomandatory. Government must function as a col-laborating partner, effectively facilitating ratherthan imposing cooperation among all sectors ofsociety, including higher educational institutions,to support and strengthen individuals, families,and communities.18

To extend Gardner’s observations about uni-versities (and similar observations by such highlyinfluential thinkers as Ernest Boyer, Derek Bok,Lee Shulman, Alexander Astin), we propose a

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democratic devolution revolution.19 In our pro-posed “revolution,” government serves as a pow-erful catalyst and largely provides the fundsneeded to create stable, ongoing, effective part-nerships. But government would function only asa second-tier deliverer of services, with universi-ties, community-based organizations, unions,churches, other voluntary associations, schoolchildren and their parents, and community mem-bers functioning as the first-tier operational part-ners. That is, various levels and departments ofgovernment would guarantee aid and significantlyfinance welfare services (broadly conceived as“promoting the general welfare”). Local, person-alized, caring services, however, would actually bedelivered by the Third (private, non-profit, vol-untary associations) and Fourth (personal, i.e.,family, kin, neighbors, friends) Sectors of society.Put another way, government would not be pri-marily responsible for the delivery of services; itprimarily would have macro fiscal responsibilities,including fully adequate provision of funds.

The strategy we propose requires adapting thework of local institutions (e.g., universities, hos-pitals, faith-based organizations) creatively andintelligently to the particular needs and resourcesof local communities. It assumes that colleges anduniversities, which simultaneously constitute pre-eminent international, national, and local institu-tions, potentially constitute very powerful part-ners, “anchors,” and creative catalysts for changeand improvement in the quality of life in Americancities and communities. (That assumption, itseems worth emphasizing, served as the intellec-tual inspiration and foundation for William RaineyHarper’s conception of the urban “GreatUniversity” he worked so passionately to constructin Chicago at the turn of the 20th century.)

For colleges and universities to fulfill theirpotential and really contribute to a democraticdevolution revolution, however, will require themto do things very differently than they do now. Tobegin with, changes in “doing” will require highereds to recognize that, as they now function, theyconstitute a major part of the problem, not a sig-nificant part of the solution. To become part of thesolution, higher eds must give full-hearted, full-minded devotion to the hard task of transformingthemselves and becoming socially responsiblecivic universities. To do that well, they will haveto change their institutional cultures and structuresand develop a comprehensive, realistic strategy.

A major component of the strategy beingdeveloped by Penn (as well as by an increasingnumber of other urban higher educational institu-tions) focuses on the development of university-assisted community schools designed to help edu-cate, engage, activate, and serve all members ofthe community in which the school is located. Thestrategy assumes that universities can help developand maintain community schools which functionas focal points to help create healthy urban envi-ronments and that universities find that worthdoing because, among other reasons, they func-tion best in such environments.

Somewhat more specifically, the strategyassumes that, like higher eds, public schools canfunction as environment-changing institutionsand become the strategic centers of broad-basedpartnerships that genuinely engage a wide varietyof community organizations and institutions.Public schools “belong” to all members of thecommunity. They are particularly well suited,therefore, to function as neighborhood “hubs” or“nodes” around which local partnerships can begenerated and formed. When they play that role,schools function as community institutions parexcellence; they then provide a decentralized,democratic, community-based response to signif-icant community problems and help develop thedemocratic, cosmopolitan, neighborly communi-ties Dewey envisioned.

The university-assisted community schoolreinvents and updates an old American idea,namely that the neighborhood school can effec-tively serve as the core neighborhood institution—the core institution that provides comprehensiveservices and galvanizes other community institu-tions and groups. That idea inspired the early set-tlement house workers; they recognized the cen-trality of the neighborhood school in communitylife and hailed its potential as the strategic site forcommunity stabilization and improvement. At theturn of the 20th century, it is worth noting, deeply-motivated, socially-concerned, brilliantly-creativesettlement house workers such as Jane Addamsand Lillian Wald pioneered the transfer of social,health, cultural, and recreational services to thepublic schools of major American cities.20 Ineffect, theoretically-guided, caring, sociallyengaged, feminist settlement leaders recognizedthat though there were very few settlement houses,there were very many public schools. Not sur-prisingly, Dewey’s ideas about “The School As

Social Centre” (1902) had been strongly, directlyshaped by his enlightening experiences and inspir-ing discussions with Jane Addams and others atHull House. In a highly influential, theoreticallycreative, address, Dewey explicitly paid homageto them:

I suppose, whenever we are framing ourideals of the school as a social Centre, what wethink of is particularly the better class of socialsettlement. What we want is to see the school,every public school, doing something of thesame sort of work that is now done by a settle-ment or two scattered at wide distances throughthe city. 21

Dewey failed to note, however, two criticallyimportant functions that community schools couldperform: (1) the school as the core communityinstitution actively engaged in the solution of basiccommunity problems; (2) the school as a com-munity institution that educates young children,both intellectually and morally, by engaging themin real-world, community problem-solving. He didrecognize that if the neighborhood school were tofunction as a genuine community center, it neededadditional human resources and support. But, toour knowledge, Dewey never identified universi-ties as a key source of broadly based, sustained,comprehensive support for community schools.

To suggest the contributions that university-assisted community schools can make to an effec-tive, compassionate, democratic devolution revo-lution capable of achieving Dewey’s utopian goalof democratic cosmopolitan neighborly commu-nities,22 we summarily cite some results of the“community school-creating” efforts presentlybeing undertaken by higher eds across the coun-try: Undergraduates, as well as dental, medical,social work, education, and nursing students, arelearning as they serve; public school students arealso connecting their education to real-world prob-lem solving and providing service to other stu-dents and community members; adults are partic-ipating in locally-based job training, skillenhancement, and ongoing education; effectiveintegration (as distinct from co-location) of serv-ices for school children and their families is nowsignificantly under way in many communities.

It is critical to emphasize, however, that theuniversity-assisted community schools now beingdeveloped have a very long way to go before theycan effectively help mobilize the potentially pow-

erful, untapped resources of their communitiesand thereby enable individuals and families tofunction both as deliverers and as recipients ofcaring, compassionate local services. To make thepoint concretely, we briefly recite the ”narrativehistory” of our experience at Penn; it suggests howfar we have come and how far we have to go.

4. Penn and West Philadelphia Public Schools: Learning By Reflective Doing

Following the brilliant lead provided byGardner, we believe that, as is true of all Americanuniversities, Penn’s highest—most basic, mostenduring—responsibility is to help Americaimplement in practice the democratic promise ofthe Declaration of Independence; to become anoptimally democratic society, a pathbreakingdemocratic society in an increasingly interde-pendent world, an exemplary democratic “City onthe Hill.” Granted that proposition. The hard oper-ational question then becomes: How can Penn bestfulfill its democratic responsibility? For reasonssketched below, we believe it can best do that byeffectively integrating and radically improving theentire West Philadelphia schooling system, begin-ning with Penn but comprehending all schoolswithin its local geographic community, WestPhiladelphia, i.e., all schools, including itself,within the complex urban ecological system inwhich it functions as the strategic component.Stated more generally, and at the risk of soundingsanctimonious; true democratic responsibility,like true patriotism, begins at home.

The history of Penn’s work with WestPhiladelphia public schools has been a process ofpainful organizational learning; we cannotoveremphasize that our understanding and activ-ities have continually changed over time.23 Forexample Penn has recently embarked on two new,highly ambitious, ventures: (1) leading a coalitionof higher educational institutions, medical andother nonprofit institutions, for-profit firms, andcommunity groups, to improve 25 WestPhiladelphia public schools; (2) developing a uni-versity-assisted public school adjacent to campus,in partnership with the School District ofPhiladelphia and the Philadelphia Federation ofTeachers.

Reaching that level of activity has been nei-ther an easy nor a straight path. Moreover, Pennis only now beginning to tap its extraordinary

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resources in ways which eventually will mutuallybenefit Penn and its neighbors and result in sub-stantial school, community, and university change.Significantly, we have come to see our work as aconcrete example of a general theory of demo-cratic, action-oriented, integrated, real-world prob-lem-solving teaching, learning, research, andservice. Our real-world strategic problem, we havecome to see, has been, and continues to be, radi-cally improving the quality of the entire WestPhiladelphia schooling system, beginning withPenn. Coming to see our work in terms of whatwe now conceive as the strategic schooling com-ponent of a remarkably complex urban ecologicalsystem, we are convinced, constituted a major con-ceptual and theoretical advance for us.

Ironically, and instructively, when we firstbegan working to change university-communityrelationships in 1985, we did not envision it interms of schools, problem-solving teaching andlearning, or universities as highly strategic com-ponents of urban ecological systems. What imme-diately concerned us and gave us some reason tothink that Penn’s traditionally indifferent (hostile?)attitude towards its local community might changefor the better, was that West Philadelphia was rap-idly and visibly deteriorating, with devastatingconsequences for the University. WestPhiladelphia’s deterioration, therefore, might beused to spur Penn to creative action to overcomeit. But what specifically could Penn do and howcould it be induced to do it? (Necessity sometimesis the mother of invention.)

Committed to undergraduate teaching, con-vinced by our experiences during the 1960s thatundergraduates might function as catalytic agentsto help bring about university change, we designedan Honors Seminar which aimed to stimulateundergraduates to think critically about what Pennshould do to remedy its “environmental situation”(broadly conceived). For a variety of reasons, thepresident of the university, Sheldon Hackney, him-self a former professor of American historydeeply interested in and strongly moved by the1960s, agreed to join us in giving that seminar inthe spring 1985 semester. The seminar’s title sug-gests its general concerns: “Urban University-Community Relationships: Penn-WestPhiladelphia, Past, Present, and Future, As a CaseStudy.”

When the seminar began, we didn’t know any-thing about Dewey’s community school ideas. We

literally knew nothing about the history of com-munity school experiments and had not given anythought to Penn working with public schools inWest Philadelphia. For present purposes, we neednot recite the complex, painful processes of trial,error, and failure which led us, President Hackney,and our students to see that Penn’s best strategyto remedy its rapidly deteriorating “environmen-tal situation” was to use its enormous internal andexternal resources to help radically improve WestPhiladelphia public schools and the neighbor-hoods in which they are located. Most unwittingly,during the course of the seminar’s work, we rein-vented the community school idea!

Public schools, we came to realize (more orless accidentally), could effectively function ascore community centers for the organization, edu-cation, and transformation of entire neighbor-hoods. They could do that by functioning as neigh-borhood sites for a West PhiladelphiaImprovement Corps (WEPIC) consisting of schoolpersonnel and neighborhood residents who wouldreceive strategic assistance from Penn students,faculty, and staff. Put another way, the seminarhelped invent WEPIC to help transform the tradi-tional West Philadelphia public school system intoa “revolutionary” new system of university-assisted, community-developing, community-cen-tered, community resource-mobilizing, commu-nity problem-solving, schools.

5. Translating the University-AssistedCommunity School Idea into PracticalAction

Given Penn’s long, deep-rooted, institutionalresistance to serious involvement with WestPhiladelphia’s problems, the limited resourcesavailable to us, and the intrinsic difficulty of trans-forming conventional, inner-city public schoolsinto community schools, we decided that our beststrategy was to try to achieve a visible, dramaticsuccess in one school rather than marginal, incre-mental changes in a number of schools. Whilecontinuing the WEPIC program at other schools,therefore, we decided to concentrate initially onthe John P. Turner Middle School, largely becauseof the interest and leadership of its principal.

Previous experiments in community schoolsand community education throughout the countryhad depended primarily on a single university unit,namely, the School of Education, one major rea-son for the failure, or at best limited success, of

those experiments. The WEPIC concept of uni-versity assistance was far more comprehensive.From the start of the Turner experiment, we under-stood the concept to mean both assistance from,and mutually beneficial collaboration with, theentire range of Penn’s schools, departments, andadministrative offices. For a variety of reasons,however, it soon became apparent that the bestway to develop and sustain the Turner projectwould be to initiate a school-based communityhealth program.

Given the development of a community healthprogram at Turner in the summer of 1990,Professor Francis Johnston, Chair of theAnthropology Department, and a world leader innutritional anthropology, decided to participate inthe project. To do that effectively, for the Fall 1990semester, he revised Anthropology 210 to make itwhat we have come to call a strategic, academi-cally-based, community service seminar.24

Anthropology 210 has a long history at Penn andfocuses on the relationship between anthropologyand biomedical science. An undergraduate course,it was developed to link pre-medical training atPenn with the Department of Anthropology’smajor program in medical anthropology. Premedstudents are highly important in Penn undergrad-uate education and the Department’s program inmedical anthropology is world-renowned.Professor Johnston’s decision to convert Anthro210 into a strategic, academically-based commu-nity service seminar, therefore, constituted amajor milestone in the development of the Turnercommunity school project, in Penn’s relation to theTurner School, and in our overall work with WestPhiladelphia public schools.

Since 1990, students in Anthro 210 have car-ried out a variety of activities at Turner focusedon the interactive relationships among diet, nutri-tion, growth, and health. Designed to contributeto the moral as well as the intellectual develop-ment of undergraduates, the seminar is explicitly,and increasingly, organized around strategic, aca-demically-based community service. AfterProfessor Johnston began to focus his ownresearch and publications on his work with Turnerstudents and community residents, he increasinglycame to function as a noteworthy example forother anthropology professors and graduate stu-dents; they are now integrating their teaching andresearch with the Turner program, or with otherWEPIC programs in West Philadelphia public

schools. Even more significantly, Anthro 210 notonly affected the anthropology department (whichhas recently developed an academic track inPublic Interest Anthropology);25 its success hasradiated out to other departments and schools.Undoubtedly, it—and Professor Johnston—haveplayed major roles in the increasingly successfulcampaign to expand strategic, academically-based,community service at Penn.26

At present, 100 such courses, working withschools and community organizations, have beendeveloped and are “on the books” at Penn, with43 being offered during the 1999-2000 academicyear. Moreover, an increasing number of facultymembers, from an increasingly wide range ofPenn schools and departments, are now seriouslyconsidering how they might revise existingcourses, or develop new courses, which wouldenable their students to benefit from innovativecurricular opportunities to become active learners,creative real-world problem solvers, and produc-ers, not simply consumers, of knowledge.

6. The Center for CommunityPartnerships and Presidential andFaculty Leadership

Encouraged by the success of the university’sincreasing engagement with West Philadelphia, inJuly 1992, President Hackney created the Centerfor Community Partnerships. To highlight theimportance he attached to the Center, he locatedit in the Office of the President and appointed oneof us (Ira Harkavy) to be its director (while con-tinuing to serve as director of the Penn Programfor Public Service created in 1988).

Symbolically and practically, creation of theCenter constituted a major change in Penn’s rela-tionship to West Philadelphia/Philadelphia. Theuniversity as a corporate entity now formally com-mitted itself to finding ways to use its truly enor-mous resources (broadly conceived) to helpimprove the quality of life in its local commu-nity—not only in respect to public schools but toeconomic and community development in general.

Very broadly conceived, the Center is basedon the assumption that one efficient way for Pennto carry out its academic missions of advancinguniversal knowledge and effectively educatingstudents is to function as a “cosmopolitan com-munity school of higher education.” Stated some-what more specifically, Penn’s research and teach-ing would focus on universal problems, e.g.,

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schooling, health care, economic development, asthose universal problems manifest themselveslocally in West Philadelphia/Philadelphia. Byefficiently integrating general theory and concretepractice, Penn would symbiotically improve boththe quality of life in its local ecological communityand the quality of its academic research and teach-ing. Put another way, the Center assumes that whenPenn is creatively conceived as a “cosmopolitancommunity school,” it constitutes in the best sense both a universal and a local institution of higher education.

The emphasis on partnerships in the Center’sname was deliberate; it acknowledged, in effect,that Penn could not try to go it alone, as it had longbeen (arrogantly) accustomed to do. The creationof the Center was also significantly internally. Itmeant that, at least in principle, the president ofthe University would now strongly encourage allcomponents of the University to seriously con-sider the roles they could appropriately play inPenn’s efforts to improve the quality of its off-campus environment. Implementation of thatstrategy accelerated after Judith Rodin becamepresident of Penn in 1994. A native WestPhiladelphian and Penn graduate, Rodin wasappointed in part because of her deeply felt com-mitment to improving Penn’s local environmentand to transforming Penn into the leadingAmerican urban university.

Rodin made radical reform of undergraduateeducation her first priority. To achieve that far-reaching goal, she established the Provost’sCouncil on Undergraduate Education and chargedit with designing a model for Penn’s undergradu-ate experience in the 21st century. Following thelead of Penn’s patron saint, Benjamin Franklin, theProvost’s Council emphasized the action-orientedunion of theory and practice and “engagementwith the material, ethical, and moral concerns ofsociety and community defined broadly, globally,and also locally within Philadelphia.” TheProvost’s Council defined the 21st century under-graduate experience as:

. . .provid[ing] opportunities for students tounderstand what it means to be active learnersand active citizens. It will be an experience oflearning, knowing, and doing that will lead tothe active involvement of students in the processof their education.27

To apply this Franklinian-inspired orientationin practice, the Provost’s Council designated aca-demically-based community service as a corecomponent of Penn undergraduate education dur-ing the next century.

Building upon themes identified by theProvost’s Council, Penn’s 1994-95 annual reportwas entitled, The Unity of Theory and Practice:Penn’s Distinctive Character. Describing the uni-versity’s efforts to integrate theory and practice,President Rodin observed that:

…there are ways in which the complexinterrelationships between theory and practicetranscend any effort at neat conceptualization.One of those is the application of theory in serv-ice to our community and the use of commu-nity service as an academic research activity forstudents. Nowhere else is the interactive dimen-sion of theory and practice so clearly captured[emphasis added].

For more than 250 years, Philadelphia hasrooted Penn in a sense of the “practical,”reminded us that service to humanity, to ourcommunity is, as [Benjamin] Franklin put it,”the great aim and end of all learning.” Today,thousands of Penn faculty and students realizethe unity of theory and practice by engagingWest Philadelphia elementary and secondaryschool students as part of their own academiccourse work in disciplines as diverse as history,anthropology, classical studies, education, andmathematics.

For example, anthropology professor FrankJohnston and his undergraduate students edu-cate students at West Philadelphia’s TurnerMiddle School about nutrition. Classical stud-ies professor Ralph Rosen uses modernPhiladelphia and fifth century Athens to explorethe interrelations between community, neigh-borhood, and family. And history professorMichael Zuckerman’s students engage WestPhiladelphia elementary and secondary schoolstudents to help them understand together thenature—and discontinuities—of Americannational identity and national character.28

The 1994-95 annual report illustrated andadvanced a fundamental, far-reaching culturalshift that had begun to take place across the uni-versity. By the end of her first year in office,Penn’s president had significantly increased theprominence of undergraduate education, definedthe integration of theory and practice (includingtheory and practice derived from and applied

within the local community) as the hallmark ofBen Franklin’s University, and identified aca-demically-based community service focused onWest Philadelphia and its public schools as a pow-erfully-integrative strategy to advance university-wide research, teaching, and service.

Presidents can provide leadership. But it is fac-ulty members who develop and sustain the coursesand research projects which durably link a univer-sity to its local schools and community. Morespecifically, it is through faculty teaching andresearch that the connection to local schools andcommunities is ultimately—and durably—made.We gave high priority, therefore, to increasing thenumber and variety of academically-based com-munity service courses. Thanks in large measure toPresident Rodin’s strong support, the number ofacademically-based community service courses hasgrown exponentially; from 11 when the Center wasfounded in 1992 to 100 in the Fall of 2000.

As a result of the highly positive reaction tothose courses, the long term process of radicallychanging Penn’s undergraduate curriculum hasgained accelerating momentum. In addition to thedevelopment of the Public Interest Anthropologytrack cited above, after years of complex negoti-ations, a new interdisciplinary minor in UrbanEducation has recently been created and hailed byundergraduates. A joint program of the School ofArts and Science (SAS) and the Graduate Schoolof Education (GSE), the new minor includes fac-ulty advisors from Anthropology, ClassicalStudies, Earth and Environmental Science,Education, English, History, Linguistics,Mathematics, Sociology and Urban Studies.Appropriately enough, in the Fall 1998 issue of theSchool of Arts and Sciences alumni publicationwhich focused on the urban crisis, Dean SamuelPreston voiced his strong support for the UrbanEd minor, as well as for increasing the number ofacademically-based community service courses:

Together with the Graduate School ofEducation, SAS is offering a new interdiscipli-nary minor in Urban Education. The minorexplores the crisis in public education in coursework, in field research, and in hands-on studythat uses the network of neighborhood schoolsthe University has developed. SAS has beenclosely involved with the West Philadelphiacommunity through Penn’s Center forCommunity Partnerships. A number of our fac-ulty focus their research on Philadelphia com-munities and regularly teach courses that put our

students in touch with students at local schools.Penn students join with the students from sur-rounding neighborhoods to gather data, conductinterviews, and explore community problemssuch as inadequate nutrition or the presence oflead and other toxins in homes. These servicelearning courses are one way that Penn mobi-lizes its academic resources in mutually bene-ficial partnerships with its neighbors. Surveyshave shown that students are enthusiastic abouthow community service experiences enrich theirPenn undergraduate education. Arts andSciences aims to develop more of these servicelearning approaches to education because oftheir value to students and their benefits to thecommunity [emphasis added].29

The Dean of the College, Richard Beeman,enthusiastically echoes Dean Preston’s support.Until recently, Beeman, an early American histo-rian and a long-time friend and colleague of ours,had been openly skeptical of the value of aca-demically-based community service at a majorresearch university. But in a Spring 1998 speechto faculty and students, “Academically-BasedCommunity Service: From Skeptic to Convert,” hepublicly “confessed” (sic) that he had undergonesomething like a mind-and-spirit “conversion”experience. Translating his “personal conversion”into “institutional action,” Dean Beeman is nowleading the development of an experimental col-lege within the College of Arts and Sciences inwhich problem-solving learning and academi-cally-based community service will function ascentral components. To quote his statement in theSAS alumni publication cited above:

I really cannot tell you how much I believein the value of what is being done in thosecourses. They give our students a problem-ori-ented experience in learning, and all theresearch literature shows that the best learningtakes place, not in studying theories and abstractforms, but in solving concrete problems. I amcommitted to getting first rate faculty involvedin that effort as an important definition of theircontribution to undergraduate education atPenn [emphasis added].30

The School of Arts and Sciences is one of sev-eral Penn schools which, in recent years, havestrengthened their connection with WestPhiladelphia public schools. Penn’s institutionalcommitment has also dramatically increased.Increasingly, President Rodin has made the UrbanAgenda a centerpiece of her administration and

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emphasized five major areas of activity for Penn’swork in West Philadelphia: physically attractive,safe, socially and culturally diverse and excitingneighborhoods; retail improvement; improvedhousing; enhanced economic development; and,most centrally, excellent public schools.

Practicing what she preached, in June 1998,President Rodin announced that Penn wouldaccept the leadership of two Cluster Resourceboards which serve the public schools in WestPhiladelphia and had also entered into an innova-tive partnership with the School District ofPhiladelphia and the Philadelphia Federation ofTeachers to establish a new preK-8, university-assisted, public school in West Philadelphia.Leadership of the Cluster Resource boardsinvolves Penn working closely with the SchoolDistrict, nonprofit institutions, for-profit firms,and community groups, to coordinate, leverage,and advocate for needed services and supports forchildren and their families from 25 WestPhiladelphia public schools. Each cluster includesone comprehensive high school and its “feeder”elementary and middle schools.

7. Democratic Partnerships andCommunal Participatory ActionResearch

The significant development of academically-based community service learning and researchcourses at Penn in and of itself does not neces-sarily denote an ongoing democratic partnershipwith West Philadelphia schools and communities.The WEPIC project, however, has provided theintegrative, community-focused organizationalvehicle that helps these courses make a practicaldifference in West Philadelphia schools and theircommunities. The courses, therefore, are a keycomponent (probably the key component) of awider university-school-community partnershipthat has as its primary focus providing neighborlyassistance and, in the process, improving under-graduate and graduate education.

Over time, we have come to conceptualize theCenter for Community Partnerships work throughand with WEPIC as an ongoing communal par-ticipatory action research project designed to con-tribute simultaneously to the improvement of WestPhiladelphia and Penn and the advancement ofknowledge. As an institutional strategy, commu-nal participatory action research differs signifi-cantly from traditional participatory action

research. Both research processes are directedtoward problems in the real world, are concernedwith application, and are participatory. They dif-fer in the degree to which they are continuous,comprehensive, and beneficial to the organizationor community studied and to the university.

For example, traditional participatory actionresearch is exemplified in the efforts of WilliamFoote Whyte and his associates at CornellUniversity in Ithaca, New York, to advance indus-trial democracy in the worker cooperative ofModragón, Spain.31 Its considerable utility andtheoretical significance notwithstanding, theresearch at Mondragón is not an institutionalnecessity for Cornell. By contrast, the Universityof Pennsylvania’s enlightened self-interest isdirectly tied to the success of its research effortsin West Philadelphia; hence its emphasis on, andcontinuing support for, communal participatoryaction research. In short, geographic proximityand a focus on community problems that are insti-tutionally significant to the university encouragesustained, continuous research involvement. Putanother way, community problem-focusedresearch tends strongly to develop sustained, con-tinuous research partnerships between the univer-sity and its local community.

Given its fundamentally democratic orienta-tion, the Center’s participatory action researchproject has worked toward increasingly higher lev-els of participation by community members inproblem identification and planning as well asimplementation. To put it mildly, this has not beeneasy to do. Decades of community distrust ofPenn, based on decades of community-destructiveactions and inactions on the part of Penn, take sig-nificant effort and time to reduce.32 The Center’swork with WEPIC has focused on health andnutrition, the environment, conflict resolution/peermediation, community performance and visualarts, school/community publications, technology,school-to-career programs, and reading improve-ment. Each of these projects varies in the extentto which they engage public school students,teachers, parents, and other community membersin each stage of the research process. The Center’soverall effort, however, has been consciouslydemocratic and participatory.

As WEPIC and related projects have grownand developed, and as concrete, positive outcomesfor schools and neighborhoods have occurred andhave continued to occur, community trust and

participation have increased. Nonetheless, differ-ent kinds of projects, involving different disci-plines, skills, and material, and led by differentfaculty members with different students, neces-sarily involve different levels and kinds of partic-ipation. Two very different faculty-led researchprojects (one in health and nutrition, the other insociolinguistics) exemplify how the Center hasconnected the university with the community, totheir mutual benefit. Although these projectsinitially focused on different public schools and neighborhoods in West Philadelphia, theyboth have now developed a major concentrationin the Drew School, a K-8 school bordering theuniversity.33

7.1. Anthropology 210

Francis Johnston’s health nutrition project thatemerged from Anthropology 210 has already beenbriefly described. It is the Center’s most developedand comprehensive example of communal partic-ipatory action research. Because it began at theTurner Middle School (it is now in three otherWest Philadelphia public schools), it is known asthe Turner Nutritional Awareness Project (TNAP).Given its nine-year history at Turner, we willdescribe the program at that location.

TNAP attempts to bridge the gap that sepa-rates the three major components of the missionof a research university: (1) teaching, (2) research,and (3) service. The project is based firmly on theprinciple that each of these components can becarried out more effectively when integrated withthe other two: the result is a holistic experiencewhich engages students, faculty, and staff, bring-ing them to a common and unified focus on theproblems of the university’s local community.

The project has three major purposes: (1) toinstruct students in the relationship between food,nutrition, and health in urban America, using ananthropological perspective; (2) to describe andanalyze the nutritional status of the middle school-age population of West Philadelphia, and to mon-itor changes in that status over time; (3) to helpalleviate nutrition problems by providing Turnerstudents with informed choices about their foodand nutritional habits. Although three servicelearning courses in the Penn AnthropologyDepartment focus on TNAP, the primary mecha-nism for carrying out the program is the courseentitled “Anthropology and Biomedical Science”(Anthropology 210). This course is offered to

undergraduates typically in the third and fourthyears of their four-year course of study, and itlargely draws students whose majors are in thesocial and biological sciences, as well as thoseinterested in community service. The enrollmentfor the class is kept to about 25, which is optimalfor the range of activities to be conducted.

The academic/theoretical component of thecourse takes place during two weekly seminar ses-sions. Students discuss their reading of materialsdealing with health, nutrition and nutritional sta-tus; with issues related to urban life; and withaction research strategies for solving problems.All their work is conducted within the context ofthe analysis of complex biosocial systems. Thereadings are chosen to present a mixture of the-ory and case studies and provide the major stim-ulus for class discussions.

Early in the course, the Penn students areintroduced to the Turner Nutritional AwarenessProject, its purpose and design, and to the researchcarried out by earlier classes. They are made awareof the serious nature of the project and of their roleas part of a continuing effort. They visit the schooland receive a brief on-site orientation by Turnerstaff and students.

For their work at Turner, the Penn students aredivided into four groups. One group—about halfthe class—is responsible for teaching nutrition toTurner students on a weekly basis throughout thesemester. Under the guidance of a graduate teach-ing assistant, lesson plans are discussed and for-mulated. This group of Penn students uses the les-son plans to teach about nutrition, food, and thehealth outcomes of the Turner students’ dietarychoices. A second group of Penn students ischarged with carrying out the collection andanalysis of dietary data at Turner; in this activitythey interview individual students, collect 24hour-recalls of food intake, and enter the data intocomputers for analysis using appropriate software.A third group carries out an anthropometric deter-mination of nutritional status, focusing on physi-cal growth, body fatness, and the prevalence ofobesity, which is a major problem among theurban poor. The fourth group (the smallest)involves students in related research on a range oftopics, including observational studies of the localschool lunchroom, type and distribution of restau-rants and grocery stores in the area, children’s atti-tudes about food, and other issues important in anutritional ecosystem. Data collection and

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analysis are presented as an ongoing research proj-ect subject to the principles of research design,reliability and validity, and both quantitative andqualitative analysis.

Rather than being separated from the activi-ties of the Penn students, Turner students areincorporated as fully as is practicable into thoseactivities. A basic proposition of the TNAP holdsthat participant involvement in a program is essen-tial to changing behavior. The traditional quasi-experimental model of research—“experts” usingexperimental and control groups—is replaced bya participatory model in which the researchprocess itself is a “democratic” intervention.Turner students are brought into close contact withPenn researchers and learn that the daily problemsthey face can be better understood by the meth-ods of formal analysis rather than anecdotal obser-vation and discussion.

The interaction of theory and easily accessibleon-site empirical research is developed throughoutthe semester. Penn students regularly report to theseminar on their group projects; results are writtenup and presented at the end of the semester. ThePenn students also present their findings to Turnerstaff and students.

The course has thus far succeeded in its goals.From the standpoint of faculty-directed, collabora-tive research, it has produced basic descriptive datapresented at university seminars and scholarlymeetings, and published in the scientific litera-ture.34 The data focus on aspects of the quality ofthe diets of the Turner students, and the high preva-lence of obesity—among the highest yet reportedfor American youth of any ethnic group. The datahave also stimulated at least one doctoral disserta-tion which seeks to identify and disentangle otherdietary and cultural correlates of obesity.

From an instructional standpoint, the coursenow plays a significant role in the undergraduateAnthropology major: it is increasingly over-sub-scribed as students respond to its unique approachto learning. Moreover, it has provided a spring-board for two additional courses; one focuses onenhancing nutritional behavior, the other involvesthe longitudinal evaluation of the TNAP.

From a service standpoint, the TNAP involvesall three grades of the Turner School (grades 6-8). A nutrition center is being established at theschool which will enable the students to learnprinciples of nutrition at their own pace and tomonitor their own dietary intake and nutritional

status. Increased participation of Turner studentsas research assistants will help them makeinformed choices about their diets and the healthconsequences of their diets; it will also increasetheir sense of efficacy as they learn to bring ideasand principles of participatory action research tobear on problems they confront in their daily lives.

7.2. Linguistics 161

Functioning in quite a different way than theTNAP is a collaborative action research projectled by Bill Labov, a Professor of Linguistics andDirector of the Linguistics Laboratory at Penn.Professor Labov is intensely troubled by the lowreading achievement of African-American youthin poor urban school districts. To help solve thatproblem, he has worked to develop a comprehen-sive research program which analyzes readingdeficiencies and then designs interventions toovercome those deficiencies.

A highly distinguished sociolinguist,Professor Labov, has long had a theoretical andempirical interest in African-American linguisticpatterns. His decision to focus on solving “thereading problem” of West Philadelphia teachersand school children was spurred by two Pennundergraduates who were members of our semi-nars. They proposed to Professor Labov that heoffer an academically-based community servicecourse that would go beyond the Ebonics contro-versy and make positive use of African-Americancultural and linguistic patterns to improve read-ing performance. Impressed by the students’ideas, interest, and passionate engagement withthe problem, Labov hired one of them as an under-graduate teaching assistant (with support providedby the Center for Community Partnerships) andoffered the course in the spring of 1998.

One main goal of Linguistics 161, “The Socio-Linguistics of Reading,” is to make an action-ori-ented, detailed study of reading difficulties amongAfrican-American children in a nearby publicschool, the Wilson Elementary School.Undergraduates in the course meet with childrenexperiencing reading problems and try to diagnosethe source of their difficulties. Using sophisticatedmeasurement techniques, the Penn students obtainsamples of reading errors committed by the chil-dren; this enables them to compare their perform-ance against other children having fewer readingproblems. Having analyzed his students’ findings,Professor Labov is now developing a reading

program to overcome the difficulties observed inthe Wilson school children.

Encouraged by the work of the of the Spring1998 semester, Professor Labov decided to expandthe project considerably during the 1998-1999academic year. To do that, he taught (and contin-ues to teach) four linguistic courses (undergradu-ate and graduate) around the reading improvementprogram and extended it to another public schoolin West Philadelphia, the Charles Drew School.One course focuses on Penn undergraduatesdeveloping linguistically and culturally appropri-ate narrative texts and illustrations to teach read-ing to inner-city African-American children.Another course trains Penn students to work astutors in the Wilson and Drew schools. To helpdevelop linguistically and culturally appropriatematerials, an innovative goal of Linguistics 161 isto understand the role that Hip-Hop music playsas a socializing influence on African-Americanyouth. In current and future seminars, undergrad-uates will study in detail how elementary schoolchildren actually acquire and use Hip-Hop lan-guage. The undergraduates and Professor Labovwill then try to design a more effective programto teach standard English by developing new cur-ricula which use Hip-Hop materials as a cultur-ally valuable learning tool.

Professor Labov’s courses are connected toafter-school programs at both the Wilson andDrew schools. Initially, undergraduates haddesigned the after-school program at Wilson inone of our seminars as a peer-tutoring program.Among other things, it involved Penn undergrad-uates who supervised students from WestPhiladelphia High School, who, in turn, tutoredWilson students. Begun in the spring of 1996, thepotentially promising program was, according toteachers and Penn students, at best only a modestsuccess. In January 1997, however, with the addi-tion of a graduate student coordinator, BettinaBaker, whose field of academic interest is EarlyEducation, the program significantly improved.Moreover, Baker introduced Labov to the Wilsonafter-school program as a possible empirical sitefor his theoretical work. As a result, the theoreti-cally derived reading techniques Labov had beendeveloping came to be used with an initial groupof 40 students. Baker also recruited a number ofPenn undergraduates supported by PresidentClinton’s America Reads program to work with theWilson students from 3:00 to 4:30 p.m., four days

a week. The early results proved to be impressive.Baker has described the findings as follows:

The program assessed the pre-and post-intervention Jerry Jons Informal ReadingInventory (IRI) scores of 40 randomly selectedsubjects and a matched control group. Thesubjects were in grades 2 through 5, and wereone to two years behind in reading grade levelbefore participating in…[the] extended dayprogram…at Wilson…All of the 40 subjects’IRI scores increased by one grade level after 3.5month’s enrollment in the program, which met4 days per week for 1.5 hours per day. Thirty-three of the 40 subjects were caught up to theirclassroom reading grade level (approximately 2grade reading levels). Three of the seven sub-jects who were not caught up to their grade lev-els were recently from Ethiopia (ESL students)and one was in a learning support (IEP) pro-gram. There was a statistically significantincrease in average IRI reading scores of spe-cial education participants. The 4th grade par-ticipants had statistically significant gains inSAT-9 reading scores. The student’s averageSAT-9 achievement test scores increased from“below basic” to “basic” levels on the test.35

We hesitate to make too much of “earlyround” statistical successes—work of this kindcan only be carefully evaluated over the very longhaul. But the impressive results cited above helpexplain the program’s rapid expansion. As of1998-1999, the extended day program enrolled 40students at Wilson and 40 students at Drew.Staffing the programs (and illustrating theresources potentially available for such programs)are 76 Penn America Reads work-study students,13 Penn volunteers, and 9 elementary schoolteachers. Activities include literacy tutoring, helpwith homework, and literacy-based enrichment.

A school-day program has recently beenadded. Approximately 70 Penn students, sup-ported by the America Reads funds, are placedwith classroom teachers from grades pre-Kthrough 8 at both schools, at least one day a week.With America Reads tutors, high school students,and staff, as well as students from ProfessorLabov’s seminar, the program has helped signifi-cantly to reduce class size during literacy instruc-tion and after-school activities. Not surprisingly,we have found in practice that reducing class sizeenables teachers to provide more attention to indi-vidual students and constitutes one of the mostsignificant benefits made possible by an effectiveuniversity/school partnership.

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We think it important to note that ProfessorLabov’s reading improvement project is extraor-dinarily comprehensive. It has effectively inte-grated a faculty-led, theoretically-based, majoraction research project, a series of Penn under-graduate and graduate seminars, and a volunteerprogram to develop a highly creative and innova-tive model. Combining the skill, expertise, andcutting-edge theoretical work of a senior facultymember and the intensive training of graduate andundergraduate students, the program exemplifiesin practice the valuable results that can beachieved when university academically-basedcommunity service projects work with local pub-lic schools. Given the importance of ending the“minority differential” in reading, the findingsfrom this project have major national significance.So much so, in fact, that the Oakland SchoolBoard—the focal point of the Ebonics contro-versy—California State University-Hayward, andPenn have been generously funded by the U.S.Department of Education’s Office of EducationalResearch Innovation (OERI) to further developand extend Professor Labov’s reading improve-ment project.

8. Three Higher Ed-Public SchoolPartnerships as Good EmpiricalIndicators of the AcceleratingUniversity Civic ResponsibilityMovement in the United States

We cannot overemphasize the point that theaccelerating changes in Penn’s relationship to itslocal schools are not atypical, not unique to Penn.More or less similar changes throughout the coun-try testify to the emergence of a “University CivicResponsibility Movement”—a national move-ment designed to construct an optimally demo-cratic schooling system as the strategic means toAmerican democracy. To illustrate the point, weturn to three examples of significant higher ed-public school partnerships.

Since we know it best, we begin with an exam-ple derived from our national effort to create uni-versity-assisted community schools in which pub-lic schools, with significant help from their localhigher eds, function as centers for communitybuilding, community learning and communityimprovement. Late in 1992, the DeWitt Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund awarded Penn a planninggrant to study the feasibility of other universitiesand colleges replicating its work with local

schools. The planning grant achieved its purpose;by 1994 more than 50 institutions expressed inter-est in the project and 17 submitted requests forfunds to replicate the Penn model, as appropriatelyadapted to their particular institution and geo-graphic community. Convinced of the project’sfeasibility, in November 1994, the Fund awardedthe Center for Community Partnerships a threeyear $1,000,000 grant to replicate its university-assisted community school model at three uni-versities: University of Kentucky-Lexington(UK), University of Alabama at Birmingham(UAB), and Miami University of Ohio (workingin Cincinnati). The grant was also to be used tostrengthen development of a national network ofacademic and public school personnel interestedin university-school partnerships.

The project succeeded so well that it receivedrenewed funding from the DeWitt Wallace Reader’sDigest Fund and additional support from theCorporation for National Service—Learn andServe America. In Spring 1998, two of the three ini-tial sites were selected to receive continued fund-ing (UK and UAB) and seven colleges and univer-sities were selected as new sites for adoption andadaptation of the WEPIC approach: Bates College,Clark Atlanta University, Community College ofAurora, University of Dayton, University ofDenver, University of New Mexico at Albuquerque,and University of Rhode Island. It is still early daysbut initial returns from this highly diverse group ofinstitutions (a small college, a historically blackuniversity, a community college, a Catholic uni-versity, a metropolitan university, and two landgrant institutions) are highly encouraging.Moreover, we continue to—indeed, increasingly—learn from the creative approaches to university-assisted community schools being developed by ourcolleagues at UK and UAB. Finally, additional sup-port has recently been provided by the CharlesStewart Mott Foundation to work each year witheight different universities and their school andcommunity partners to develop university-assistedcommunity schools.

Numerous other significant higher education-school partnerships developed during the 1990scould be cited. Given space restrictions, we canonly briefly describe Clark University’s partnershipwith University Park Campus School and theUniversity of Texas at El Paso’s work with the ElPaso Collaborative. We chose them for inclusionbecause they closely resemble Penn’s two most

recent initiatives, i.e., construction and develop-ment of a preK-8 university-assisted public schooland leadership of a coalition of institutions andcommunity organizations working with WestPhiladelphia public schools. We trust that ourchoice of examples which resonate with what weknow best, namely our own university, will not beperceived as self-centered and self-aggrandizing.On-the-ground knowledge of similar projects atPenn, we assume, helps us better understand anddelineate complex partnerships involving differentkinds of higher eds, in very different localities.

In 1997, Clark University and the Worcester,Massachusetts Public School system began col-laborating on efforts to develop an exemplarygrade 7-12 neighborhood school, the UniversityPark Campus School (UPCS) designed to functionas the centerpiece of Clark’s comprehensive effortto renew its deteriorating local community.Proceeding with “all deliberate speed,” UPCSopened with a seventh grade class. Each year anew class will be added until the full complementof about 200 secondary school students is reached.

Conceptualized by Clark’s President RichardTraina as a grade 7-16+ learning community,UPCS is closely integrated with the university.Students who graduate from UPCS will be eligi-ble for full tuition scholarships to Clark.Moreover, Clark faculty and approximately 100students work at the school, teaching, tutoring andvolunteering. For example, during the Spring 1999semester, Clark courses in sociology, Shakespeare,physics, and writing, as well as a GeographicInformation System [GIS] project, are beinglinked to the public school, and will provide activelearning opportunities for both UPCS and Clarkstudents. Not surprisingly, Clark’s partnershipwith UPCS has received significant nationalattention, including praise from President Clintonand U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley.36

Another program which has gained nationalattention is the El Paso Collaborative for academicexcellence; the Collaborative constitutes a coali-tion of university, school district officials, localbusiness leaders, and community organizations. Itworks with three local school districts, El Paso,Ysleta, and Sorocco, with a combined studentenrollment of 135,000. It is one of six similarpartnerships supported by the Pew CharitableTrusts “to bolster communitywide cooperation toimprove educational opportunity, especially forminority students.”37

Led by the President of the University ofTexas at El Paso, Diana Natalicio, theCollaborative functions as an impressively broad-gauged effort to improve teaching and learning,from elementary school through college. TheUniversity, El Paso Community College, and thepublic schools have worked together to align col-lege admission standards with high school grad-uation requirements, as well as improve teachertraining. Demonstrating the practical benefits ofcollaboration, student teachers enrolled in theUniversity of Texas at El Paso now spend signif-icantly more time in public school classrooms thanthey did before the Collaborative began. The uni-versity’s College of Education has also involvedarts and sciences faculty members in educatingcandidates for teaching degrees in academic sub-jects. The program’s success includes a decreasein the number of low performing schools in theCollaborative’s three districts from 15 to zero, andan increase from 2 in 1992-93 to 76 in 1997-1998in the number of El Paso schools recognized asexemplary by the Texas Education Agency.38 As aresult, the Collaborative has attracted attentionfrom higher educational leaders in other states. Itis highly significant and illuminating that DonaldN. Langenberg, chancellor of the UniversitySystem of Maryland, has emphasized this key les-son from the El Paso experience: Successfulreform requires collaboratively connecting theoverall schooling system from elementary tohigher education:

We have come to believe strongly, and ele-mentary and secondary schools have come tobelieve, that they cannot reform without us…

This is not telling them how to do it, butboth of us working together to fix what’s wrongwith our education systems [emphasisadded]…We prepare teachers for the publicschools, and we admit their students. So its ourproblem just as much as theirs [emphasisadded].39

9. Summing Up and Looking Forward

Chancellor Langenberg’s observation neatlyreturns us to the central component of the Harper,Dewey, Gardner, Bok vision sketched above: Toeducate young people so that they function ashighly-skilled, active, informed, intelligent, moralcitizens in an optimally democratic society,

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requires a highly interactive, collaborative, effec-tively integrated, optimally democratic schoolingsystem, from preschool through the university andbeyond. Alas, American society is a long way fromhaving realized the radically improved schoolingsystem which Harper, Dewey, Gardner, Bok, (andmany others) envisioned and, in different ways,worked to achieve. Times are changing, however;signs of progress can be found across the educa-tional landscape. Among other reasons for thechange, we suggest, is the emerging revolution inAmerican higher education and society now trans-forming the Big Science, Cold War University intothe Democratic Cosmopolitan Civic University—a “new type” of university dedicated to the con-struction of an optimally democratic schoolingsystem and the development of an optimally dem-ocratic society.40

To succeed, revolutions require Agents deter-mined enough, wise enough, powerful enough, toimplement radical plans for action. Inspired byHarper, Dewey, Gardner, and Bok (and many oth-ers), we propose that American universities playthat role. Our “revolutionary” proposal calls onresearch universities to take the lead in revolu-tionizing the overall American schooling system.Somewhat more specifically, the “schooling rev-olution” we propose calls on each higher ed tomake its highest priority the radical integrationand improvement of the overall schooling systemin its “home community,” i.e., the community inwhich is located, the schooling system and com-munity ecological system which it can mostdirectly, most powerfully, affect and whichdirectly, powerfully, now affects its own “health”and functioning.

In this paper, we have focused on the exam-ple we know best, Penn’s relationship to the WestPhiladelphia public schools and community. Wedid so to share some of the things we have done,still need to do, and (painfully) learned. Buildingmutually respectful, mutually beneficial, demo-cratic relationships among communities, highereducational institutions, and schools cannot beaccomplished by following a standard blueprint orroad map. There is no such blueprint or road mapto follow. But the Penn example, we trust, canserve as a useful case study from which otherinstitutions might learn as they carefully, painstak-ingly, work to develop their own appropriate prac-tice. Our fervent hope is that, working together,Penn and the Community Higher Education

Service Partnership (CHESP) will help both theUnited States and South Africa increase theircapacity to fulfill their democratic promise andfunction as fair, decent, and just societies for alltheir citizens.

Endnotes1 Robert A. Dahl, On Democracy (New Haven: Yale

University Press, 1998), p.1.

2 For the citation to Bacon and a discussion of his work, seeLee Benson, “Changing Social Science to Change theWorld: A Discussion Paper,” Social Science History 2(1978): 427-441. Accelerating worldwide concern withwhat we have termed Bacon’s Problem helps account forthe remarkable renaissance of Bacon studies in recentdecades. Among the studies from which we have consid-erably benefited, see Perez Zagorin, Francis Bacon(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998); and IanBox, The Social Thought of Francis Bacon (Lewiston, ME:Edward Mellen Press, 1989). For Professor Sullivan’s suc-cinct, perceptive analysis, see his Work and Integrity (NewYork: Harper Business, 1995).

3 John Dewey, The Public and its Problems (Denver, CO:Allan Swallow, 1927/1954). Particularly as historians con-scious of the critical need to view the present and (possi-ble) future in long term perspective, we think it importantto note that Dewey’s argument essentially reflected thelament for the “lost local community” increasingly domi-nant in European and America social thought after the emer-gence of the Communication Revolution in the late 19thcentury. Once that is recognized, Robert Putnam’s recentlament for lost communal “bowling leagues” and the emer-gence of “lonely bowlers” falls into place as essentially acontemporary variant of the theory first formally advancedin 1887 by Ferdinand Toennies in his Marxian-inspired,extraordinarily influential, book on Community and Society.For the widespread concern over the loss of community inmodern society, see the comprehensive study by Jean B.Quandt, From the Small Town to the Great Community(New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1970).

4 See Dewey’s The School and Society (1899), The Child andthe Curriculum (1902), and “The School as Social Centre”(1902), as reprinted in John Dewey: The Middle Works,1899-1924, vol. 1 and 2, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale,IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1976).

5 Steven M. Cahn, “Introduction,” in John Dewey: The LaterWorks, 1925-1953 vol. 13, 1938-1939 ed. Jo Ann Boydston(Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1981),pp. xvi-xviii.

6 Ibid. The quotation below summarizing what Dewey meantby “participatory democacy” is from the highly importantand illuminating biography by Robert Westbrook, JohnDewey and American Democracy (Ithaca and London:Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. XIV-XV.

7 For incisive discussion of the illuminating concept of dem-ocratic public work, see Harry C. Boyte and Nancy N. Kari,

Building America: The Democratic Promise of Public Work(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996).

8 Derek C. Bok, Universities and the Future of America(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990), p. 3.

9 The quotations are from William Rainey Harper’s 1899Charter Day Address at the University of California, “TheUniversity and Democracy,” reprinted in Harper, The Trendin Higher Education (Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1905), p. 25.

10 Charles W. Anderson, “Democracy and Inquiry,” The GoodSociety, 7, no. 2 (1997): 16.

11 Harry Judge, American Graduate Schools of Education: AView from Abroad (New York: Ford Foundation, 1992), p.6.

12 In our judgment, Campus Compact, a coalition of collegeand university presidents which has grown from a mem-bership of 3 founding members in 1985 to over 670 mem-bers in 2000, has been central to advancing the UniversityCivic Responsibility Movement.

13 Donald Kennedy, Academic Duty (Cambridge: HarvardUniversity Press, 1997), pp. 265-288, 299.

14 For a highly perceptive, devastatingly critical, analysis ofVannevar Bush’s report, Science and the Endless Frontier,see Donald E. Stokes, Pasteur’s Quadrant: Basic Scienceand Technological Innovation (Washington, DC: TheBrookings Institution Press, 1997).

15 For an illuminating discussion of the American university’sdemocratic mission, see Charles W. Anderson, Prescribingthe Life of the Mind (Madison, WI: University of WisconsinPress, 1993); and his essay, “Pragmatism, Idealism, and theAims of Liberal Education,” in Robert Orrill, ed., Educationand Democracy (New York: College Board Press, 1997),111-130. See also Ira Harkavy, “School-Community-University Partnerships: Effectively Integrating CommunityBuilding and Education Reform,” Universities andCommunity Schools, 6, no. 1-2 (1999): 7-24.

16 Discussion of the concept of a democratic devolution rev-olution is found in testimony by Ira Harkavy before theSubcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity ofthe Committee on Banking and Financial Services of theHouse of Representatives, 105 Cong. 1 sess. (Washington,DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1997).

17 John W. Gardner, “Remarks to the Campus CompactStrategic Planning Committee,” San Francisco, 10 February1998.

18 Ibid.

19 See Ernest L. Boyer, “Creating the New American College,”Chronicle of Higher Education, 9 March 1994, p. A48; Bok,Universities and the Future of America; Lee Schulman,“Professing the Liberal Arts,” in Education andDemocracy: Re-imagining Liberal Learning in America, ed.Robert Orrill (New York: College Entrance ExaminationBoard, 1997), 151-173; Alexander W. Astin, “LiberalEducation and Democracy: The Case for Pragmatism,” inEducation and Democracy, Orrill, ed., pp. 207-223.

20 For a fuller discussion, see Ira Harkavy and John L. Puckett,“Lessons from Hull House for the Contemporary UrbanUniversity,” Social Service Review, 68, no. 3 (1994): 299-321.

21 From John Dewey’s 1902 essay, “The School as SocialCentre,” as reprinted in John Dewey: The Middle Works,1899-1924, vol. 2, 1902-1903, Boydston, ed., pp. 90-91.

22 For a fuller discussion of Dewey’s utopian goal of cosmo-politan democratic communities and our proposal for uni-versity-assisted community schools, see Lee Benson andIra Harkavy “Progressing Beyond the Welfare State,”Universities and Community Schools, 2, no. 1-2 (1991): 2-28; and Benson and Harkavy, “School and Community inthe Global Society,” Universities and Community Schools,5, no. 1-2 (1997): 16-71. We created Universities andCommunity Schools in 1989 as a means to advance mutu-ally beneficial, innovative partnerships between universi-ties and local schools in general, and university-assistedcommunity schools in particular.

23 For an illuminating discussion of the concept of organiza-tional learning, see William F. Whyte, ed., ParticipatoryAction Research (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications,1991), pp. 237-241.

24 For more complete accounts of Professor Johnston’s work,see Lee Benson and Ira Harkavy, “Anthropology 210,Academically-Based Community Service and theAdvancement of Knowledge, Teaching, and Learning: AnExperiment in Progress,” Universities and CommunitySchools, 2, no. 1-2 (1994): 66-69; and Ira Harkavy, FrancisE. Johnston, and John L. Puckett, “The University ofPennsylvania’s Center for Community Partnerships as anOrganizational Innovation for Advancing Action Research,”Concepts and Transformations, 1, no. 1 (1996): 15-29.

25 A fuller definition of Public Interest Anthropology can befound in Peggy Reeves Sanday’s “Opening Statement:Defining Public Interest Anthropology,” presented atSymposium on Defining Public Interest Anthropology, 97thAnnual Meeting of the American AnthropologicalAssociation, Philadelphia, December 3, 1998. Sanday’sstatement is located at http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~psan-day/pia.99.html.

26 We define strategic academically-based community serv-ice as service rooted in and intrinsically tied to teaching andresearch. It aims to bring about structural communityimprovement (e.g., effective public schools, neighborhoodeconomic development, strong community organizations)rather than simply to alleviate individual misery (e.g., feed-ing the hungry, sheltering the homeless, tutoring the “slowlearner”).

27 Provost’s Council on Undergraduate Education, “The 21stCentury Penn Undergraduate Experience: Phase I,” inUniversity of Pennsylvania, Almanac (May 1995): S-1.

28 University of Pennsylvania, Annual Report, 1994-1995(President’s Report), Philadelphia, 1996.

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29 Samuel H. Preston, “Dean’s Column,” Penn Arts andSciences, Philadelphia, Fall 1998, p 2.

30 Penn Arts and Sciences, p. 9.

31 William F. Whyte and Kathleen K. Whyte, MakingModragón: The Growth and Dynamics of the WorkerCooperative Complex (Ithaca, NY: ILR, 1988); Davydd J.Greenwood and José Luis Gonzalez Santos, IndustrialDemocracy as Process: Participatory Action Research inthe Fagor Cooperative Group of Modragón(Assen/Maastricht: Van Gorcum, 1992).

32 Ira Harkavy and John L. Puckett, “The Role of MediatingStructures in University Community Revitalization: TheUniversity of Pennsylvania and West Philadelphia as a CaseStudy,” Journal of Research and Development in Education,25, no. 1 (1991): 10-25.

33 An article in the 22 October 1999 Philadelphia Inquirerentitled “Philadelphia Schools Awarded $3.5 Million forImprovements” reported: “Charles Drew School inPhiladelphia, showed more improvement on the state’s stan-dardized reading and math than any other school in the state,1999 results show.” Although there are many reasons forthis extraordinarily impressive performance, Penn’s con-centrated efforts at Drew, including the projects in healthand nutrition and sociolinguistics, would appear to be a sig-nificant contributing factor.

34 Francis E. Johnston, Robert J. Hallock, “Physical Growth,Nutritional Status, and Dietary Intake of African-AmericanMiddle School Children in Philadelphia,” American Journalof Human Biology, 16, no. 3 (1994): 299-321.

35 Bettina Baker, “Effects of a University-AssistedCommunity School Based Extended Day Program inLiteracy Acquisition Rates of Inner City Children,” (Ph.D.dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, in progress).

36 We are grateful to Jack Foley, Executive Assistant to thePresident of Clark University, for providing us with mate-rial on the University Park Campus School.

37 Meg Sumerfeld, “Alliance for Learning: El Paso: Crossing the Border,” Education Week, URLhttp:www.edweek.org/ew/1994/29aaeelp.h13.

38 Much of the discussion on the El Paso Collaborative isbased on a packet of material provided by Diane Natalicio,President of the University of Texas at El Paso. We are grate-ful for her assistance.

39 The Chronicle of Higher Education, 20 November 1998, p. A20.

40 For a passionate, robust, and stimulating discussion ofAmerica’s democratic promise, see Harry C. Boyte, “Offthe Playground of Civil Society,” The Good Society 9, no. 2 (1999): 1-7.

About the Authors

Lee Benson is professor emeritus of Historyat the University of Pennsylvania.

Ira Harkavy is associate vice president anddirector of the Center for Community Partnershipsat the University of Pennsylvania.

L I N K I N G I N T E L L E C T U A LR E S O U R C E S A N D C O M M U N I T Y

N E E D S A T T H E U N I V E R S I T YO F P E N N S Y L V A N I A

A N E V A L U A T I O N O F T H E K E L L O G G

P R O G R A M , 1 9 9 6 - 1 9 9 9

Francis E. Johnston

Amelia Rosenberg Weinreb

U N I V E R S I T Y O F P E N N S Y L V A N I A

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Introduction

Evaluation is an essential component of thedesign and implementation of any program. Anevaluation is a process that develops informationabout the program that allows those who have astake in it (the stakeholders) to make judgmentsabout its effectiveness in meeting its goals. Theprocedures by which the process is carried out willvary from one program to the next, but in all casesis guided by the intent of the stakeholders.

McNamara (1998) list three bases for programevaluations:

1. Goals-based (to that extent did the programachieve its goals?)

2. Process-based (how can the process bywhich the program worked to meet it goalsbe understood?)

3. Outcome-based (what results were achievedby the program?)

There is a growing consensus among profes-sional evaluators that both qualitative and quanti-tative methods have a place in the performance ofeffective evaluations. Such approaches are callmixed method evaluations because they involvethe integration of quantitative and qualitativemethods. For example, a mixed method modelmight involve the application of questionnaires,focus groups, and interviews, all aimed at under-standing how a program acted to bring about – orfail to bring about – a particular outcome(Frechtling and Westat, 1997).

This report presents the evaluation of a three-year initiative designed to enhance the relation-ships between the University of Pennsylvania andthose schools in the community of which it is apart, by deepening and expanding partnershipsthat have been developed since the late 1980’s.because of the nature of these partnerships, theevaluation, while focusing on that part funded bythe W. K. Kellogg Foundation, covered aspects ofthe relationships that extended beyond thosespecifically funded by the Foundation.

Background

The W. K. Kellogg Foundation Program toLink Intellectual Resources and CommunityNeeds was funded by a grant of $500,000 from theKellogg Foundation to the University ofPennsylvania for the three-year period from

September 1996 through August 1999. The“Kellogg Program,” as it came to be known,sought to address concerns of the Foundationregarding the academic experience of undergrad-uate students in larger, research-oriented institu-tions. In a letter dated August 29, 1996, to then-Provost of the University, Stanley Chodorow, JohnBurkhardt noted the Foundation’s “…concern forthe coherence of the curriculum, the poor inte-gration between classroom experiences and thesocial and community experiences of students,and the lack of any meaningful relationshipbetween faculty members and their students.”

These issues and concerns are not new onesand have been at the forefront of discussions overthe past two decades regarding the changingnature of higher education and in particular therole of the research university in enhancing itsmissions of education and service to the commu-nity. Any number of writers have spoken to thesematters. For example, Cuban (1999) has describedthe rise in the 20th century of the research-dom-inant university, in which teaching has lost muchof its value and a reward system has emerged thatis based on criteria external to the institution.Boyer (1990) redefined persuasively the conceptof scholarship, taking it beyond the relativelyrecent and restrictive notion of basic research andits publication to a more comprehensive set ofcomponents: discovery, integration, practice, andteaching. And still others, such as Nyden etal(1997), Checkoway (1997), Harkavy (1998),Silka (1999), have discussed the difficulties inbringing universities and communities togetherinto effective partnerships.

The University of Pennsylvania has been anational leader in this area for well over a decade,and its Center For Community Partnerships,founded in 1992, has as its mission building uni-versity/community partnerships in ways that aremutually beneficial to both. More specifically theCenter seeks to:

• Improve the internal coordination and col-laboration of all University-wide communityservice programs

• Create new and effective partnershipsbetween the University and the community

• Encourage new and creative initiatives link-ing Penn and the community

• Strengthen regional, national and interna-tional networks of higher education

institutions committed to engagement withtheir local communities

While not the only, the primary approach ofthe Center For Community Partnerships (CCP) tofulfilling its mission is through academicallybased community service (hereafter referred to asABCS): service intrinsically tied to teaching andresearch. With curriculum as the focal point, stu-dents, undergraduate and graduate, participate inproblem based learning in courses that emphasizethe generation of knowledge and theory throughactive learning and the provision of communityservice through participatory action research(Harkavy and Benson, 1998). The CCP has beenan active and visible entity on the Penn campussince its formation by then-President Hackney.

It is upon this base of activities that theKellogg Program was instituted in 1996. The pro-gram was built on three pre-existing ABCS ini-tiatives – or program areas – that were adminis-tered jointly by the School of Arts and Sciencesand the Center For Community Partnerships:

1. Culture and Community Studies2. Environment and Health3. Nutrition and Health

This report presents the evaluation of theKellogg Program. Given the range of activities ofthe CCP within the University in general – and theSchool of Arts & Sciences in particular – as wellas the interrelationships among the various pro-grams in which the Center is involved, it is impos-sible to restrict the evaluation to the three programareas. The Kellogg Program was not a stand-aloneproject independent of other Penn initiatives butinstead acted an infusion of ideas, energy and per-sonnel into an existing set of activities so as toaccomplish two broad goals:

1. to strengthen ABCS at Penn through threeexisting program areas;

2. to deepen and diversify ABCS and relatedactivities more broadly at Penn.

As a consequence, this evaluation will focuson efforts made possible by the grant from theKellogg Foundation. But it will also from time totime move into the broader and more complex areaof academically based community service at theUniversity of Pennsylvania.

Structure of the Evaluation

The StakeholdersIn an evaluation the stakeholders are “…peo-

ple who have a stake – a vested interest – in eval-uation findings” (Patton, 1997:41). It is the stake-holders for whom the evaluation is conducted, whowill judge the effectiveness of the program, andwho will make use of the findings, both positiveand negative. The list of potential stakeholdersmay be very short or it can be quite long, depend-ing on the scope of the program but ultimately itis the interests of those on the list that shape theevaluation.

Since the aims of the Kellogg Program werebroad ones, encompassing the mission of the uni-versity and the educational programs of the WestPhiladelphia schools, the list of potential stake-holders is long. For example parents both of uni-versity and school students have an interest in anyprogram that affects the education of their chil-dren. And since the program speaks to basic issuesin education and social change, the results are cer-tainly of interest to professionals in higher edu-cation, public policy, and social science. At thesame time, to speak to the interests of all who havea stake in education – and especially academicallybased community service – at the University ofPennsylvania would be beyond the scope of eval-uating specifically the Kellogg Program.Therefore the final list of groups to whom thisevaluation is directed consists of the following:

• University of Pennsylvania–Students–Faculty and Administration

• West Philadelphia Schools–Students–Faculty and staff

The Evaluation QuestionsThe most useful evaluation is the one that tells

the stakeholders three things about the program:

1. Did it work?2. Why did it work or why didn’t it work?3. How can it be modified for future applica-

tions?

Following the recommendations of theKellogg Foundation (1998), these broad questionswere framed more specifically as:

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• What has worked or not worked? • For whom and in what circumstances?• What was the process of development and

implementation?• What stumbling blocks were faced along the

way?• What do the experiences mean to the peo-

ple involved?• How do these meanings relate to intended

outcomes?• What lessons have we learned about devel-

oping and implementing this program?• How have contextual factors impacted the

development, implementation, success andstumbling blocks of the program?

• What are the hard-to-measure impacts ofthis program (ones that cannot be easilyquantified)? How can we begin to effectivelydocument these impacts?

MethodsThe evaluation utilized both quantitative and

qualitative methods so as to produce the best pic-ture possible of the way the Kellogg Program car-ried out its aims. Quantitative methods involvedsurveys of students that had and had not partici-pated in ABCS courses. Qualitative methodsincluded both interviews and focus groups. Thesurveys were designed, administered, and analyzedas part of an undergraduate seminar inAnthropology: Monitoring and Evaluating SocialPrograms. Two participants in this seminar alsoconducted a small number of focus groups withPenn students designed to clarify the results of thesurveys. The interviews and the focus groups withschool teachers and students and with Penn fac-ulty and administrators were conducted by anadvanced doctoral student in anthropology, trainedand experienced in the range of qualitative meth-ods.

Description of the Kellogg Program

Historical Overview of Penn’s Kellogg Program:University and Community Context

The foundation upon which the KelloggProgram to Link Intellectual Resources andCommunity Needs is typified by the followingstatement:

Building upon the principles of BenjaminFranklin, the University of Pennsylvania hasmade a serious commitment to integrate theory

and practice in academic coursework andresearch by working to solve real-world prob-lems in West Philadelphia. This effort islargely being achieved through service learningcourses that actively engage our local commu-nities. These academically based communityservice courses, part of ongoing participatoryaction research projects, bring University ofPennsylvania students and faculty together withlocal public school teachers and students towork in partnerships to solve genuine dilemmassuch as environmental lead hazards, childhoodobesity, and educational challenges faced byurban public schools.

This statement typifies the program as con-ceptualized by the university. It also served as thetemplate for the design and operationalization ofits specific components. However, Kellogg wasnot only a curricular initiative, it also aimedspecifically at contributing to the solution of theproblems of the West Philadelphia communitythrough a process of mutual engagement and par-ticipation. For this reason not only is the commu-nity context important, it is vital to understandingthe implementation of the program as well as eval-uating its success. This is not just a description.The community context becomes more compli-cated and subjective as time progresses, as morehours are spent in community settings and asdeeper relationships are developed with commu-nity members.

Community Context: Overview of theEconomic, Social and Political Environment ofthe Community and Program Setting

In purely geographic terms, the border sepa-rating Penn from the rest of West Philadelphia isambiguous. Nominally, “University City” hasbecome the way to identify the area immediatelysurrounding the campus, demarcating it on maps,street signs, and informal conversation. Sociallyand politically, however, the boundary betweenPenn and the West Philadelphia community isclearer. The stereotype has been that the Penncommunity considers West Philadelphia poor,black, dangerous, and disadvantaged, whether ornot Penn students, faculty, and staff actually spentany time there or had personal contact with any-one from the community. On the other hand, toWest Philadelphia public school students, Pennhas been perceived either as an elite fortress, ormore often remained an unknown entity. Eventhough it may be less than a mile away from theirschools, some West Philadelphia students are

unaware of where Penn is, or exactly what hap-pens there. Those adult community members whowere familiar with Penn sometimes had hostilefeelings about it as an institution. In particular thiswas because of the way it had disrupted theirneighborhood and displaced families during Penn-funded “urban renewal” and development projectsin the 1960s and early 1970s, when Penn boughtup and cleared land in what is considered an effortto create a “buffer zone” between the Universityand community.

With this often-tense history serving as afoundation, successfully designing and imple-menting projects that rely on community engage-ment and involvement were seen as dubious, atbest. Nevertheless, over time, Penn has worked toreduce tensions. Often these efforts involvedindividuals or small groups acting unofficially orin a volunteer capacity. However in the past 10-15 years there have been more formal, large scalepartnerships with the community, e.g., The WestPhiladelphia Partnership, the Penn Program forPublic Service, Volunteers in Public Service, theWest Philadelphia Improvement Corps, and theCenter for Community Partnerships. This chrono-logical, admittedly partial, list provides an impor-tant context for the evaluation that follows,because one of the most frequently mentioned rea-sons for Kellogg’s success on Penn’s campus wasthat there was already a solid underpinning onwhich to build a program linking “intellectualresources and community needs” as the Kelloggprogram was named to do.

The Structure of the Kellogg Program The Kellogg Program utilized academically

based community service to improve the qualityof the undergraduate (and graduate) experience atPenn, and to enhance the effectiveness of the uni-versity’s engagement with the local community tothe benefit of all. While a more complete descrip-tion of activities may be seen in the annual reports(Appendix 1), the program may be summarizedbriefly through the following initiatives:

• The development of new ABCS courses thatcombined collaborative community projectswith academic courses. These courses werepart of the regular university curriculum,located within appropriate academicdepartments, and with few exceptions taughtby members of the standing faculty. Coursedevelopment was stimulated by small (up to

$5,000) grants to assist faculty in planningcourses, organizing community projects,and in presenting the course itself. In themajority of cases, funds were used to sup-port graduate students doing backgroundlibrary research and in developing syllabi.

• The establishment of Kellogg Fellows,undergraduates selected on the basis of theirstanding in the university and their commit-ment to learning through service. Fellowsworked within the three program areas andwere engaged in various activities, e.g.,working on community projects, acting asundergraduate Teaching Assistants in ABCScourses.

• Summer Institutes, held at local schools, inwhich undergraduates, funded by theKellogg grant, joined with interns funded byother sources in a summer-long programbuilt around an intensive seminar on therelationship of the urban university and thelocal community and various kinds of cur-ricular and planning activities with the staffsof local schools.

• An annual university-wide KelloggConference that focused on a relevant topic,with presentations by student teams. Theconferences were held in local schools andinvolved the participation of middle and sen-ior high students and faculty.

Program areasAs noted above there were three program

areas around which the Kellogg Program wasbuilt. While many of the ABCS courses developedduring this time fell outside of these areas, andwhile a range of community projects were carriedout, these three represented the major thrust inlinking Penn’s resources to community needs.

Environment and Health; The Environmentand Health program area seeks to enhance theunderstanding of the urban environment and itsinteraction with the humans who inhabit it. Onecomponent of this area deals with the risks tohealth and behavior associated with the ingestionof environmental lead, and the design and imple-mentation of measures to reduce lead exposure.The second component deals with the local his-tory of a neighborhood located within the WestPhiladelphia community located along what wasMill Creek, a stream that was diverted to an

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underground storm sewer in the 19th century.These courses were taught jointly on the Penncampus and at local middle schools and involvedthe participation of university and middle schoolstudents. Also involved in this area were coursesranging in areas such as the development of anoutdoor art project and a study of Brownfields inaging, once-industrialized areas of Philadelphia.

Culture and Community Studies; This pro-gram area was begun with Teaching AmericanStudies a course given in the English departmentthat combines the study of American culture withhigh school teaching. It has since grown throughbringing together faculty from a variety of disci-plines, all with the common interest of increasingthe access of local school students to the human-ities and humanistic concerns so as to includecourses taught by faculty in history, anthropology,linguistics, social work, and classics. One signif-icant research project that developed within thisprogram has grown out of a course taught byProfessor William Labov of the Linguisticsdepartment on African-American vernacularEnglish. Penn and local school students worktogether to understand the relationships betweenthis particular vernacular and reading achieve-ment.

Nutrition and Health; The program area inNutrition and Health is linked to courses in nutri-tion, health, and disease taught primarily in theDepartment of Anthropology. The research com-ponent of this area began as the Turner NutritionalAwareness Project. Since renamed the UrbanNutrition Initiative, UNI has been expanded toinclude two additional schools. The core course isAnthropology 310, Nutrition, Health, andCommunity Schools, that involves a service com-ponent that seeks to enhance diet and nutritionalstatus of elementary, middle, and secondaryschool children through the development of urbangardening, school stores, child and adult exerciseprograms, and nutritional knowledge.

Results of the Evaluation

The CurriculumThe effects of the Kellogg Program on the cur-

riculum of the university may be assessed throughABCS initiatives as seen in courses, departments,and faculty. Figure 1 presents the number of newABCS courses, undergraduate and graduate, alongwith the total number of ABCS courses offeredeach academic year from 1991-92 through 2000-01. The asterisks illustrate the data for the yearsthat reflect the impact of the Kellogg grant. (Sincethe development of new courses resulting fromenhanced activities associated with the newlyavailable funds lagged by one year, course devel-opment monies available for the 1996-97 aca-demic year funded courses offered during the1997-98 academic years.)

The impact of the Kellogg Program on ABCScourses is readily apparent in the figure. In thethree years attributable to Kellogg funding, 61 newcourses were developed, while in the six prioryears the total was 47. For the 10 years presentedhere, 51% of the ABCS courses at Penn (61 of120) were developed during the years attributedto Kellogg

Another measure of the impact of the KelloggProgram on the ABCS component of the curricu-lum may be seen in the number of faculty thathave opted to teach such courses. These data aregiven in Figure 2, which shows the number of newfaculty, as well as the cumulative numbers, teach-ing ABCS courses each year. As before, the yearsattributable to Kellogg funding are starred. Aswith the number of courses, the number of facultyinvolved in service learning courses increased sig-nificantly during these years. From 1991-96, 80faculty taught ABCS courses, while in academicyears 1997, 1998, and 1999, 152 did so.

A final measure of the impact of the KelloggProgram on the curriculum is the number ofSchools and Departments of the University thatoffer ABCS courses. In particular, if academicallybased community service is to become entrenchedwithin the core mission of the university, then itis imperative that courses be located in as manydepartments as possible, and especially thosewhose mission is not so closely identified withsocial issues.

Figure 3 presents the number of new depart-ments in which ABCS courses were taught eachacademic year as well as the cumulative number.Prior to the period attributed to the KelloggProgram, 22 departments across the universityoffered ABCS. During the Kellogg period 15 newdepartments were added.

Clearly the three-year period covered by theKellogg Program was one which saw a significantaddition to the number of courses along withincreases in the number of faculty teaching them,and the number of departments in which they wereoffered. As of the 2000-01 academic year, 100members of the standing and adjunct faculties

have taught 120 different academically basedcommunity service courses in 37 different depart-ments. Because of the structure of the Penn cur-riculum the majority of these courses are offeredin the 24 departments of the School of Arts andin the Sciences. However courses are also offeredin the Schools or Graduate Schools of Engineeringand Applied Sciences, Nursing, Communications,Fine Arts, Social Work, Dental Medicine,Medicine, Law, and Education.

The impact of the Kellogg Program on thethree curriculum indicators may also be seen inFigure 4. The cumulative values of each indicatorwere regressed on the academic year and based onthe overall relationships, a predicted – or expected– value generated. The straight, or trend, linesindicate the expected values and the squares, theactual for that year. The arrows point to the threeyears attributable to the Kellogg Program.

The graph for the number of ABCS coursesshows the impact of Kellogg Funding on the num-ber of courses. Relative to the overall trend, thereis a clear upswing in courses in the three yearsattributable to Kellogg. The same trend is apparent

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for the number of faculty involved in ABCScourses, though the effect due to the KelloggProgram is less. Insofar as academic departmentsare concerned, no inflection in departments due toKellogg is apparent. While there is a steadyupward trend in the number of departmentsinvolved from 1991-92 through 2000-01, effortsassociated with the Kellogg Program are less clear.

Summarizing the impact of the KelloggProgram on ABCS courses at Penn, the followingconclusions may be drawn:

1. The number of Academically BasedCommunity Service Courses increasedthroughout the 10-year period surveyed.For the three-year period where an impactof Kellogg-funded programming would beexpected, there was a significant increasein the number of courses. The number ofnew courses offered in the year followingKellogg funding dropped markedly fromAY 1999-00 to 2000-01.

2. The number of faculty teaching ABCScourses increased throughout the 10-yearperiod, with an inflection associated withKellogg funding. While this inflection wasnot as marked as the inflection associatedwith courses, it was nonetheless significantand indicates that, while new faculty havebeen drawn steadily to service-learningcourses at Penn, the Kellogg Programaccelerated this trend. As with courses, thenumber of new faculty dropped between1999-00 and 2000-01.

3. ABCS courses continue to be offered inmore and more departments of the univer-sity, from 4 in 1992-93 to a total of 37 in2000-01. This trend is steady and indicatesa continued broadening and deepening ofABCS across the curriculum as courses aretaught in increasingly more departmentsand more courses are taught in individualdepartments. In the case of departments,there was neither an acceleration nor adrop-off in the trend associated with theKellogg Program.

The Curriculum and the Three Program AreasThe discussion on the curriculum has been

centered on courses and departments. However, asnoted above, the Kellogg Program was built upon

three cross-disciplinary and cross-departmentalinitiatives: Culture and Community Studies,Environment, Nutrition and Health. As describedabove, these areas provided for topical continuitythat extended beyond individual ABCS coursesand deepened the involvement of students and fac-ulty. In some instances existing projects or studygroups associated with each area could beenlarged and in others, new projects developed.Over the 3 years of the Kellogg Progam, 41 one-year internships were awarded to undergraduateand 14 to graduate students.

There were some particularly noteworthydevelopments in these areas. Within the Culturaland Community Studies area, the KelloggProgram funded a semester-long faculty/graduatestudent seminar on anthropology and the publicinterest. This seminar provided the stimulus for acourse—Anthropology 216, Public InterestAnthropology—that developed a core of inter-ested graduate and undergraduate students and hasled to the addition, effective in the Spring, 2001,semester, of Public Interest Anthropology as a for-mal area of concentration for the PhD inAnthropology at Penn.

Another example of how the Kellogg Programled to significant strengthening of ABCS activi-ties is in the Nutrition and Health area. Since itsformation in 1991, this area had based its activi-ties at the Turner Middle School in WestPhiladelphia. The Turner Nutritional AwarenessProgram (TNAP) became a project that involveda number of ABCS courses, independent studyprojects, undergraduate theses, and one PhD dis-sertation. The Kellogg Program provided theresources for a significant expansion of TNAPinto other schools and courses. There was amarked increased in the number of studentsinvolved, both in the local community and at Penn.And the increased scope of TNAP made possibleby Kellogg helped it move to the next level and tosecure external funding—public and private—tosupport the wider range of activities. Renamed theUrban Nutrition Initiative, UNI has now devel-oped a long range plan, based on secure funding,that will expand its programs to 11 new schoolsand 9,000 more students as well as to create ademonstration site for national and internationalvisitors seeking to replicate UNI in their schoolsand communities.

Curriculum Quality An increase in the number of ABCS courses

associated with the Kellogg Program is an indi-cator of its impact, an impact consistent with theuniversity’s goal of expanding and deepening theservice-learning experiences of its students. Butalong with quantity goes quality. Are ABCScourses equal in quality to non-ABCS ones? Howdo education experiences of students in the twokinds of courses compare?

One of the most uniformly positive responsesof interviewees regarding the Kellogg Programhas been its impact on undergraduate education atPenn as perceived by Penn students, professorsand public school teachers. Most intervieweescited Kellogg-funded courses as excellent exam-ples of holistic, experiential learning, as lifechanging to the students who attend them, and asprofoundly impacting the decisions student makeabout their careers. For many students, the per-sonal experience permeating the boundarybetween Penn and the community is eye openingand gives them priceless insight into connectionsand commonalities between themselves and thestudents who they assumed would be so differentfrom them. For example, as one Penn students ina focus group described:

I went in with the impression that theselow-income kids would be skinny and wearingtorn t-shirts. I was surprised to see that theywere kids not unlike the one’s I’d grown up with. . . A positive thing about the project is the indi-vidual connections formed with the kids andbreaking down barriers between Penn and thecommunity. Kids are interested in Penn and askabout college.

Elaborated a public high school teacher:

I know this has changed the lives of Pennstudents, many of whom, after this experience,have wanted to become urban teachers . . .although there is still a great divide betweenPenn and the high school 100% [sic] AfricanAmerican population, many barriers have beenbroken down through this project, especiallymyths and stereotypes.

Figure 5 shows the responses of 59 studentsto the following question: “To what extent haveyour ABCS classes or, if you have not taken any,your Penn courses increased your ability to…”The figure gives the percentage of students whoresponded either Very Much or Extremely for eachability Clear differences between ABCS and non-ABCS courses are seen. ABCS courses were seenby students more often as increasing their abili-ties to:

• Act morally• Be a community leader• Develop a philosophy of life• Develop a concern about urban areas• Be a volunteer in the community• Develop research skills

Non-ABCS courses were judged more effec-tive only in obtaining job skills. There were no dif-ferences between the courses in helping studentsbe competitive in their careers or learn how to actin their lives.

These patterns are not necessarily surprisingsince one of the characteristics of ABCS coursesis a focus on the local community and its prob-lems. Hence one measure of their success wouldbe increasing civic and moral awareness.

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However, two responses are significant to thisevaluation. First is the observation that non-ABCScourses were more likely to increase job skills thanwere ABCS courses (50% to 34%). Schools suchas the University of Pennsylvania are highly disci-pline-centered, emphasizing a course of study thatwill lead to a degree in a tightly defined area ofscholarship (see Cuban, 1999, for a discussion ofthe emergence of this emphasis in American highereducation). ABCS courses, on the other hand, whilethey are located within departments and while theymay count toward the major, are by their natureproblem-centered and cross-disciplinary.

For example, History 443, American NationalCharacter, is an ABCS course that was taught 5times between 1995 and 2000. The course examinesthe concept of national character in the USA and ifsuch knowledge can help solve the problems ofPhiladelphia. Students serve as mentors forUniversity City High School students in the devel-opment of recreation programs. Such a course mightnot be seen by History majors as increasing their jobskills as historians. Though certainly a debatablepoint, the response to the questionnaire points to theproblems of integrating traditional courses of studywith those taught as ABCS courses.

Responses of students to the question of thedevelopment of research skills are also significant.ABCS courses were seen as increasing such skillsby 47% of students, and in the case of non-ABCScourses, only 36%. The difference is not as greatas in other questions but nonetheless indicates thatthe structure of ABCS courses, which consciouslylink learning with the production of knowledge,are seen as positive in areas beyond civic con-sciousness.

It needs to be emphasized that these are thesubjective responses of students and are notbased on objective measures of skills or otherattributes. But they do point to fundamental dif-ferences in the ways that courses are perceived bythe students that take them.

Still, some Penn students find the Kellogg pro-gram flawed because they see it as presenting over-simplified and exaggerated expectations of socialchange. As one student in a nutritional class put it:

The project seems too idealistic. It does notaddress widespread problems. Giving kids fruiteveryday isn’t going to save the world, solveproblems or help people live long lives.

Furthermore, some students questioned thelevel of sustainability of some programs as socialinterventions and were critical of the design andvalidity of the data collected. Professors see theirprograms as extending beyond a single semester.They perceive this as sustainability and as a drawfor students because it “alleviates ethical pangsPenn students experience about temporary inter-vention and the rich-getting-richer while the localstudents get nothing. That the program continuesover time mitigates this.” Clearly there is a needfor a better communication to students of howABCS-based programs extend through time evenwithin the constraints of an academic semester.The lack of effective communication is responsi-ble for the uncertainty voiced by some Penn stu-dents have about their role in an ongoing program.This can lead to questioning the results of workcarried out in ABCS courses:

A semester’s time feels half-assed. Theproject isn’t really a longitudinal study, but aseries of qualitative studies strung together. I amnot so sure how valid or great the data will be.Time constraints of the sole semester createproblems. For example, the survey based on atti-tudes couldn’t be that accurate because youcan’t measure significant change in that time.

The rebuttal to this lack long-term perspectiveas explained by an administrator committed toKellogg from its inception is:

Student’s only see a slice of what is goingon—it looks imperfect, they want to see thingswork, but they can’t be there for the long view,so they don’t really know how projects develop.

The interviews and focus groups conductedindicate that Penn students see perhaps the majorproblem of academically based community service:integrating service, learning, and research. Thoughnot always the case, the contemporary research uni-versity avoids facing this issue by segregating itscomponents. This segregation is seen in the struc-ture of courses, the conduct of research, and the pro-vision of community service. If ABCS is to succeedthen initiatives such as the Kellogg Program mustdo a better job of helping students to see the bene-fits of integration rather than segregation. While thistask starts with the faculty and administration,ABCS can be a powerful learning tool for students,rooted in the theory and concepts of the problem

based learning that is becoming increasingly com-mon in professional schools.

Graduate student teaching assistants describeABCS courses in the following way:

Compared to other [traditional] classes,ABCS classes provide practical experience andcontextualized reading. Applied projects thathappen in these courses are the equivalent to anengineering student building a car. Graduatingseniors have published articles. They change theundergraduate education experience by com-bining academic rigor, the intellectual, thepractical, the theoretical. These courses are asrigorous as any others. Knowledge gain is easy,but these courses force students to consider theirown behavior.

A classics professor, whose course involvedPenn students teaching material in the high schoolclassroom which they have first been taught in theUniversity classroom, described how this processreinforces learning:

I think that students learn more and have abetter command of the material even though wecover less volume. They get more out of half theclasses in a situation where they are forced toarticulate the material. When they rearticulate,their memory will be stronger. At a cocktailparty speaking with other people who have stud-ied the same material, they would be moreengaged.

Another professor explained:

The students in this class have been writ-ing brilliant things; they are going through atransformational experience. They will continueto be involved in community service. White kidsfrom Scarsdale [upper-class suburb in NewYork] say for the first time, “ I can see myselfin these kids.” It’s stunning.

What kinds of students take ABCS courses?Generally, University stakeholders agree that

the growing number of ABCS courses, sustainedand developed through Kellogg’s support, haveattracted students to Penn who are interested incommunity service. Furthermore, they haveincreased the number and depth of graduate andundergraduate research projects, and have createdan ABCS “community” which some believe is serv-ing as a prototype for other institutions as well ascontributing to changing academic culture at large.

Figure 6 shows the responses of the studentssurveyed to a question about the importance tothem of selected activities. The graph indicates thepercentage ranking each activity among their topthree, by whether or not they had had one or moreABCS courses. The basic patterns are similar inboth groups. The students surveyed ranked aca-demic issues at the top of their priorities, andmembership in organizations, working for pay, andknowing current events at the bottom. Except fortwo activities, differences by ABCS experiencewere generally small. The two activities where adifference could be seen are in volunteering andsocializing with friends. Students taking ABCScourses were three times more likely to see vol-unteering as important, while students not takingsuch courses were almost 50% more likely to iden-tify socializing with friends as important.Interpretations are always difficult but this sug-gests that students who take ABCS courses aremore likely to use their spare time volunteeringwhile those who don’t use their spare time in moresocial settings.

Further information as to the differencesbetween ABCS and non-ABCS students is seen inFigure 7. Survey participants were asked to indi-cate how concerned they were about the 11 social

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problems indicated along a 5-category scale:extremely, very much, somewhat, a little bit, notat all. The figure shows those students who rankedtheir concern about a particular problem as eitherextremely, very much, or somewhat.

There are clear differences between the ABCSand non-ABCS groups. The four problems aboutwhich ABCS students are most concerned were:

• quality of public educations 72%• poverty in the urban environment 66%• income disparity 56%• race relations 56%

For non-ABCS students, the top four were:• race relations 64%• crime and violence 59%• quality of public education 59%• poverty in the urban environment 55%

Of greater interest is to compare the responsesof the two groups relative to particular problems.Relative to non-ABCS students, those takingABCS classes were more concerned about:

• homelessness• income disparity• teen pregnancy• universal health care• urban poverty• quality of public education• quality of public health

Non-ABCS students were more concernedabout:

• crime and violence• race relations• uncontrollable diseases• drug use

In short, students taking ABCS courses weremore concerned about problems which impact onsociety as a whole (e.g., income disparity, urbanpoverty, homelessness), while non-ABCS studentsshow greater concern about public safety issuesthat impact more on them as individuals (e.g.,crime, violence, race relations). It is tempting toconclude that students taking ABCS coursesexhibit a greater social awareness while those nottaking such courses exhibit the fears of most per-sons living in an urban area characterized by highrates of crime and poverty.

The Public Schools—Students And TeachersThe impact of the Kellogg Program on the pub-

lic schools was investigated by means of interviews,focus groups, and participant observation in schoolsettings. In addition, questionnaires were distrib-uted to 26 middle school and 30 high school stu-dents as a basis for focus groups and interviews.

In general public school students reportedenjoying the presence of Penn students in theirclassrooms and in their lives and felt the programshelped them advance their skills. They get a lotout of working with Penn students, and their pres-ence allows teachers to give more individualizedattention to their students. Several students saidthat they considered Penn students to be theirfriends. However one teacher stressed that Pennstudents must work a minimum of 3 hours perweek in the schools to make a positive impact onboth school and Penn students.

The reason most cited by public school stu-dents for enjoying Kellogg programs was that itgave them the opportunity to engage in experien-tial education in a way they did not in their day-to-day classrooms and provided them with prac-tical skills. For example, students involved in thefruit and vegetable stand through the nutrition pro-gram enjoyed the entrepreneurial elements of theproject: selling produce and making profits andbeing in a position where they can give directionsand be in charge. They also enjoyed the opportu-nity to work with other people and use other skillsthat they did not feel were always part of their nor-mal classroom experience: being helpful, andcommunicating and sharing ideas while they areworking. During a focus group sixth-gradersexplained:

It’s like skipping class! TNAP is duringclassroom time, but it doesn’t happen in theclassroom. It’s not like class because you don’tuse a pencil or a pen and it’s fun.

High school student’s described their experi-ence in the greenhouse in the following way:

I enjoy working with agriculture, watchingstuff grow, learning about plants and edibleflowers, planning and seeing a garden grownform patches in the earth and getting rid ofrodents and bugs. It gives me an opportunity towork with other students. I’m learning reallyuseful skills now.

Another student reflected upon how she feelsworking in the greenhouse and an upcomingcommunity plant sale:

Being in the greenhouse makes me feelrelaxed and peaceful. I am not too worried aboutthe money made during the sale. I like that thesale gives back to the community.

However the involvement of Penn students inthe local schools is not problem-free. One teachercommented that Penn students are not always pre-pared to teach the classes and that they do muchbetter when they work with students individually.

Teaching school is a challenging task underthe best of circumstances. Most University ofPennsylvania students lack formal training in thetheory and method of classroom instruction andconsequently are not always ready to deal withmiddle and high school students in such a setting,let alone in an inner-city classroom where thesocial and ethnic differences may be marked.

Penn students are an elite group, chosen fromthe best applicants across the USA and frequentlywith little exposure to children and youth fromless-advantaged settings. Some of them have madehasty judgments about the school and teacherswithout having been there long enough to under-stand the complex nature of the social problemsthat are attacked by ABCS. Some school facultyare suspicious of Penn’s motives, accusing its fac-ulty of using West Philadelphia to further theirown research without caring about the school orthe students. However other teachers point out thatthose who complain about Penn’s involvementdon’t have Penn students working in their class-rooms and at least one teacher stated that “nega-tivity comes from a sense of jealousy.”

Both critics and supporters of the KelloggProgram question the degree to which Kelloggprograms impact either the long-term educationalachievement or behavior of Philadelphia publicschool students. Even the children themselves arenot sure if the program affects their actions.Nevertheless, there is a general consensus that theparticipatory structures of Kellogg-sponsoredprojects in the classroom engage students andmake them feel more positive about learning andabout school in general.

This uncertainty concerning the impact ofprograms does highlight a weakness Penn’s imple-mentation of Kellogg. Although there have been

scattered attempts at measuring and evaluatingprogram impacts, mainly in the form of smallstudies conducted by Penn undergrads as finalprojects in their Kellogg courses in which they areenrolled, there has been a lack of cohesive, sys-tematic, unified data collection on things likeschool profiles, graduation rates or long-termbehavioral change of public school studentsinvolved, making it difficult for Penn to boast it’sservice or partnerships in any quantitative terms.Some people would argue that this is not the point,and instead of pouring energy into measurement,spending quality time with children and develop-ing lasting relationships in the community shouldremain the focus. Even so, finding a balancebetween spending time on assessing outcomes inorder to insure social change and working on com-munity partnerships, could potentially be astrength of this program.

Teachers are crucial institutional stakeholders,primarily because University of Pennsylvania ini-tiatives in the public schools are, for the most part,implemented through them. The majorityexpressed positive feelings concerning KelloggPrograms. In a focus group with teachers whoseclassrooms are involved in a Kellogg-funded gar-dening group through the Nutrition and Healthcluster described:

We see improvement in our students’ coop-eration skills because they are motivated to goout to the garden, thus more willing to worktogether as a group. One boy, who has a ten-dency to act up in class, became really involvedand excited about the gardening project and howmuch he has accomplished with it.

Communicating the impact of a KelloggProgram a high school teacher stated:

The course adds extra work, but it is atremendous support to teachers and offers thekids a window into another world and role mod-els. They become more interested in college, incomputers…

While teachers’ views are critical to under-standing how Kellogg’s implementation has func-tioned in the schools, public school administratorsalso play an important role because of their polit-ical power and potential hold on public relations.Among public school administrators, there hasgenerally been a positive response Kellogg’s

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effort. One Middle School administrator, who hadbeen collaborating with Penn on for nearly tenyears, described the process of implementation:

It was a totally new concept, not driving aparticular political agenda, but borne of the ideathat the university would work with the publicschool, outside of the ivory tower, giving back,instead of continually taking. The project waspresented as something that was going to workwith you, for you not on you, educating com-munity children and parents working with step-ping-stone issues of prevention.

Furthermore, the projects are seen as a per-manent fixture of schools:

The sustainability is because teachers real-ized there was a different way of teaching [expe-riential, hands-on participatory] and that kidslearned. The kids had to demonstrate what theylearned.

In many ways this statement represents theessence of Penn’s hope that the use of Kelloggfunds would inspire: collaboration, participationand creating change through tangibly linking“intellectual resources to community needs.” Asa high school teacher described a Penn professorwith whom she worked over time “he treats urbanteachers as intellectuals. He respects and engagesthem,” also highlighting mutual respect and reci-procity.

However, not all those working in the publicschools have the same “success story” attitudesconcerning Penn’s involvement, and not all proj-ects have benefited from long-term collaborators.Here are some other comments from those whohave experience with the public schools. As onePenn Program administrator who believes thatshort-term grants help but are limited without con-tinual support explained:

The projects in schools have not comearound as fast as we would like. The volume ofresources—human, intellectual, monetary—is thesingle best way of bringing about change in K-12.

A Penn professor who has had long-terminvolvement in an academically based communityservice course working with a public high schoolknows that:

Some public school teachers are deeplysupportive, the “usual suspects,” but there arestill a lot of burnt-out totally done teachers whowill never innovate

Most stakeholders realize that change is slowto happen and recognize that long-term involve-ment is crucial for creating substantive change.Liaisons and links are crucial for working effec-tively with public schools. Described one Pennprofessor about his course:

The classroom teacher [in the PublicSchool] didn’t have the necessary degree ofownership in order for the project to be suc-cessful, and it was the essential that we had aliaison that knew the politics and mechanics ofschools. I’ve spent my whole life in the acad-emy, the Ivy League at that, and I’m not a goodresource in that way.

Said another professor who has been involvedin the same English literature academically-basedcommunity service course for ten years:

What I have learned from this experienceis that everyone needs someone who is familiarwith the system, who can do it without takingon the word, “liaison,” who has contacts, whodoes an enormous amount of setting-up. Thismakes it so much easier for students to waltzinto an ongoing program.

There lies a tension, however, between thebenefits of having involved, informed peopleworking on projects for an extended period of timeon the one hand, and becoming reliant upon themas individuals rather than focusing on institutionalchange on the other. While liaisons have provento be important in general, depending too heavilyon specific liaisons whose presence is not per-manent (as it is the case when a professor orteacher leaves the institution or retires, or a stu-dent graduates), as this can compromise the over-all sustainability of the program. As a general rule,Kellogg courses are not considered foundationalin their departments, for example. As one profes-sor warned:

Kellogg courses have not become founda-tional. If the Shakespeare professor died, some-one would be hired immediately to replace him.If a Kellogg instructor died, the Kellogg coursewould also wither away. The responsibility stilllies too heavily on faculty. Is this about institu-tional transformation? No.

Reiterated a professor when discussing hisKellogg class while highlighting the academic cli-mate of “publish-or-perish” at Penn, which is com-mon to most elite institutions:

This class is not considered fundamental oressential to the department. With the downsiz-ing of course-loads in order for professors topublish more, if I am not determined to keep it,it will go by the wayside.

The University of Pennsylvania—Faculty andAdministrators

Some who have had experience with commu-nity interventions see Kellogg as different than theprogram that preceded it. One professor, who hasconducted extensive archival work on University-community history, explained that compared toother efforts, immersion in the community, theconsciousness it raised, and participation of com-munity members themselves in program planningmade the Kellogg program stand out:

Kellogg has created change where therehas been a lack of moral and civic awareness inthe University at large. It used to be white peo-ple sitting around talking about poor black folks,but they touched nothing. The disadvantagedthemselves were not involved.

An administrator who has strong faith in thePenn’s Kellogg Program explained Kellogg’s suc-cession in a lineage of projects in positive terms:

We are building on the precious Universityculture of the early Wharton School and ourFranklinian heritage of making theory appliedand useful, developing theory to apply it, andfocusing on real problems. Kellogg, althoughfollowing a tradition we already had, had a pro-found impact on advancing teaching, researchand service…What Kellogg’s has done is makesustainability institutionalized … There has tobe a whole change in the nature of Penn-com-munity relationships. There have to be long-term relationships and Kellogg has helped.

On the other hand, it is clear that others con-sider Penn’s efforts through Kellogg less success-ful. Another administrator, for example, whoseKellogg-funded program existed successfullyprior to Kellogg, but who has been and involvedwith Kellogg since its start-up, is particularlyskeptical of its real impact and sees its efforts asineffectual, redundant, and not creating anynotable change. He also believes that the programsactually cost very little to run, so does not seeKellogg as necessary:

The bottom line is that the [Kellogg] grantdid not raise questions or solve problems cate-gorically or qualitatively. The University hadalready been addressing the questions in orderto initiate or support such projects. Kellogg didn’t change the nature of the conversation…Kellogg provided nothing and didn’t solve anything.

Reconciling these conflicting views of mem-bers of the university community renders difficultthe task of making a cohesive assessment. In sum-mary, while University stakeholders that had aninterest in continuing to develop relationships withthe community, and were thankful for funds thatwould allow them to do that, the majority do notsee Kellogg’s presence as providing a markedinnovation in the area of community relations.Rather, Kellogg’s contribution was an importantsupplement that helped sustain continuing efforts,perhaps with modest growth.

Communicating the Kellogg ProgramExplained a project administrator who sees

Kellogg programs’ ability to thrive withoutexplicit institutional direction as a positive attrib-ute:

Kellogg has helped create faculty studentresearch with legs of its own UNI, TNAP hasbecome its own animal. There are examples ofsustainable projects that you don’t know if youshould say “Kellogg,” but the street tree and gar-den project are definitely Kellogg spinoffs.There is a cascading effect—something isKellogg-inspired but runs on its own.

Not all stakeholders feel that such “cascadingeffects” and “spinoffs” are beneficial. For exam-ple, some interviewees were not entirely sure thatKellogg was even supporting them, and only knewthat their money was dispensed through theCenter for Community Partnerships. Other peopleinvolved in ABCS projects have been supportedover the years by grants, and have trouble keep-ing track of where money is coming from. This isespecially the case when funds from differentsources are administered by the Center ForCommunity Partnerships and not by the recipientshome department.

Even explicit attempts to increase communi-cation have been unsuccessful. A professordepicted these attempts:

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One weakness of Kellogg has been someof the “star-gazing” conferences that happen onCampus. There is generally a lack of commu-nication between parties involved. I still don’tknow all who are involved or really what theyare doing.

Another professor also expressed her disap-pointment that communication is a weak point andoffered a basic suggestion to resolve this:

The coordination between Center and thedepartments has not always been adequate. I amdisappointed that there is no web page coordi-nating or publicizing Kellogg Programs nor isthere an updated web page for things the centerdoes or offers. I think Kellogg should recom-mend to their grant recipients to that they puton the web the way funds are being used andmaintain it throughout the semester as a way ofpublicizing philanthropy.

Parenthetically it is important to note thatthere are web pages for the CCP, the KelloggProgram, and many of the projects and coursesthat have been supported by it. The disappoint-ment expressed reflects a failure of informationflow rather than a lack of information itself.

Penn students involved with Kellogg as under-graduates who then sub-matriculated into gradu-ate programs on the management and distributionof funds explained that:

It has been unclear and inconsistent whatmoney has been available, and what has beenspent where. Kellogg has been spread too thin.It would be better if stakeholders would helpplan the budget, and if more people wereinvolved in designing the budget... Teachersshould have more input into the spending ofgrant money. Teachers have more insight intowhat is needed in terms of books, supplies andtools for their projects… There should be anadvisory board that represents stakeholders.Funds should be focused, like on four classes,not as broad in scope.

Comments of this sort reflect a structural issuein graduate education generally. Students identifywith their advisors, their committees, and theirdepartments, which become the source of knowl-edge and training about their discipline and ulti-mately their profession. The Center ForCommunity Partnerships is not an educational ini-tiative but rather an entity that, through its pro-grams and the grants that support them, provides

resources to departments and to their students.This problem is not unique to the CCP or to Penn,but reflects the interactions between departments,focusing on disciplines, and centers, focusing ontopical problems.

Discussion

The Kellogg Program was a joint initiative ofthe University of Pennsylvania and the W.K.Kellogg Foundation. The university’s agenda wasto improve the quality of education, to deepen theextent of its engagement with the surroundingcommunity, and to bring the scholarly itsresources to bear on the problems of the commu-nity. This was to be accomplished by the integra-tion of these three aims into, if not a new, then amore highly refined academic endeavor titledAcademically Based Community Service. TheFoundation aim was to develop ways to help uni-versities improve the coherence of their curricu-lum, integration better classroom and communityexperiences of students, and enhance relationshipsbetween faculty and students. These two sets ofaims were highly congruent and led to theFoundation’s funding the Kellogg Program to LinkIntellectual Resources and Community Needs.

The Kellogg Program was never seen as a newinitiative, a stand-alone project with a specificbeginning and end. Rather the program repre-sented an addition to a set of activities varyingconsiderably in structure and coherence that hadbeen in operation for up to 10 years. Kellogg wasto provide resources to develop new programsbased on the university’s developing commitmentto ABCS, to expand and rejuvenate existing pro-grams, and to disseminate the results to appropri-ate groups. As a result, and as noted above, anyevaluation must of necessity assess the successABCS activities prior to the implementation of theKellogg Program.

Impact of the Kellogg ProgramThe impact of the Kellogg Program is clear, sig-

nificant, and likely to be sustained into the fore-seeable future. Of these, the most striking are theeffects on the curriculum. From its inception in1990, and the first ABCS course offered in 1991,service learning programs consciously affiliatedwith ABCS has grown such that 139 separate ABCScourses have been offered a total of 304 times.

Also impressive is the involvement of facultyand the departments in which their appointments

rest. One hundred five faculty members from 37academic departments have taught ABCS coursesand the numbers have increased throughout the 10years of ABCS at Penn.

What proportion of these changes in curricu-lum can be attributed to the Kellogg Program andwhat proportion to the enhancement of activitiesthat is likely to have continued in the absence ofKellogg? This is difficult to judge since there hasbeen a steady increase in the commitment to theideals and practice of academically based com-munity service through the 1990’s. However theanalyses presented above provide evidence for sig-nificant impact on the number of courses and thenumber of faculty teaching them.

Case studies such as the development of theUrban Nutrition Initiative and the PhD focus inPublic Interest Anthropology also provide evi-dence of significant enhancements to academicprogramming and to community partnerships thatcertainly wouldn’t have occurred as expeditiously– if at all – without the support given to ABCS byKellogg. Admittedly these are success stories butthey serve to demonstrate the impact that theProgram has made upon the university.

With regard to academic departments, theKellogg Program has helped significantly in con-tinuing to introduce ABCS into more departmentsof the university. In these efforts, the program’simpact has been seen in fostering a trend that hasexisted since the early 1990’s rather than in accel-erating the rate of increase of new departments.

Some departments have made a major com-mitment and offer a large number of courses. Forexample, in the School of Arts and Sciences,History: 15; Anthropology: 12; Urban Studies: 11.Others offer no courses, or perhaps only one.These latter instances tend to be associated withthe sciences and include Chemistry and Physics(none) and Biology and Psychology (one). Thereare many reasons why certain departments andtheir faculty opt not to take part in ABCS at Penn.Cuban (1999) has discussed the tension betweenthe loyalties of faculty to their university and itsbroader educational objectives, and their loyaltiesto their discipline, which involve narrower andmore focused objectives frequently external touniversity objectives. This tension is not neces-sarily automatic for any type of institution or anyparticular department though it is found mostoften in disciplines that emphasize focused train-ing of students in settings such as laboratories that

result in withdrawal from the surrounding com-munity. And it is found where the educationalprocess deals with theory and method as divorcedfrom particular societies and communities.

The Kellogg Program has also made animpact on the quality of the curriculum throughits role in accelerating the rate of increase in newABCS courses from year to year. ABCS coursesare seen as a asset by undergraduate and gradu-ate students, not only promoting the ideals of dem-ocratic education, but in their careers. WhileABCS courses do not necessarily help to “obtainjob skills,” they do equally well as non-ABCScourses in helping students “be competitive” intheir careers, and better in developing researchskills.

It is impossible to know from the availabledata whether ABCS changes students or if thereis self -selection among them in their choice ofcourses and majors. ABCS and on-ABCS studentsare different in the kinds of social problems aboutwhich they are most concerned and these differ-ences are likely to be reflected in the courses seenon their academic transcripts. There is likely to bean impact of academically based communityservice on all but the most intransigent student,but the effect is also likely to be small for any sin-gle course. The more probable effect on studentsof initiatives like the Kellogg Program is by help-ing to diffuse ABCS and its ideals throughout auniversity, by attracting a different kind of studentto the institution, and as a result of exposing thenon-involved students to an educational processwhich is committed to the ideals of ABCS with-out any compromise on intellectual and researchrigor. To the extent that it has been shown to havean impact on the curriculum, the Kellogg Projectmay be judged as successful.

The ProcessThe administration of the Kellogg Program

was logical and adequate. The Directors of theprogram were Dean of the College (the under-graduate arm of the School of Arts and Sciences)and the Director of the Center For CommunityPartnerships, who headed a Committee composedof the heads of the three program areas and a rep-resentative of the School’s Office of Development.The CCP reported to the faculty through itsFaculty Advisory Committee, which meets onceeach semester.

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Proposals for new ABCS were sought eachsemester through an RFP published in TheAlmanac, and funding decisions made by theKellogg Committee. Each year there was a one-day Kellogg Conference to which members of theuniversity and participating schools were invited,held on campus and in University City HighSchool. There was also a smaller meeting eachyear, less structured and largely student-run. Thefocus in both meetings was to report on the activ-ities of various projects. Reports were usually pre-sented by university students, and local schoolstudents frequently participated.

These conferences involved almost exclu-sively individuals who were part of the KelloggProgram and, while no formal records are avail-able, attendance by others was uncommon. Theformat – one of student presentations – wasselected consciously to involve them in the prepa-ration and presentation of reports. Arguably, amore formal agenda with presentations thatemphasized theory and method, might have drawnmore non-Kellogg persons. However the structureof the conferences was a conscious one, intendedto maximize student involvement as an integralpart of their educational experience at Penn.

A more formal presentation of ABCS and theKellogg Program is being actively planned. Inaddition to the University of Pennsylvania, theKellogg Foundation made a parallel grant to theUniversity of Michigan. While the overall purposeof this grant was the same, differences between thetwo educational institutions in existing structuresand initiatives meant different approaches to acommon problem: the improvement of under-graduate education through university/communitypartnerships. A joint Penn/Michigan conferencewill be held, one that will present jointly to abroader community the results of the Kellogg ini-tiatives at these two research universities. Thisconference should be a major watershed in thecontinued development and diffusion of academ-ically based service learning.

There were negative comments expressed byeach stakeholder groups. Essentially these com-ments could be grouped into two categories:knowledge about the program and its goals; con-cern about its effectiveness bringing about change.

Among Penn students and faculty, as well asamong schoolteachers, some interviewees partici-pating in it expressed ignorance about the program

or its components. In some instances this reflectedthe individual’s not being aware of the role of sup-port provided by the program in some achievement,e.g., a course development grant, funding for a par-ticular student, a piece of equipment. In otherinstances it reflected knowledge of the larger goalsof the program, while in still others it meant thatan individual didn’t really know about the programitself. While these gaps in knowledge and under-standing may be written off as being failure of indi-viduals to be current, they also suggest that admin-istrators of the program could have done a betterjob of publicizing it. Announcements were madeand stories were published in various university out-lets. But there was not a conscious effort to prom-ulgate the program as an integrated attempt tochange undergraduate education. For example aprofessionally done newsletter, aimed at the vari-ous communities that had an interest in the goals,could have helped, not just be making more personsaware of “the Kellogg Program,” but by makingthem aware of its goals and its accomplishments.

Respondents and interviewees, especially Pennfaculty, also expressed ambiguity about the pro-gram’s effectiveness. To some, ABCS courses werean inappropriate way to change the social and eco-nomic setting of West Philadelphia; to others, fam-ilies rather than schools were the best focus forABCS activities; and to others, ABCS was notworking because it was not yet embedded withinthe majors of departments. At least one respondentnoted that ABCS at Penn had not carried out ongo-ing and systematic self-evaluation of its activities,especially with respect to the community, so thattheir efficacy had not been established.

These comments represent the concerns ofindividuals who are committed to the principlesof service learning and community engagement,but who are less optimistic about how it is beingcarried out at Penn. These are issues beyond thescope of this evaluation for they call for a deeperdiscussion of the nature of higher education andthe best practices for university/communityengagement. Such discussions are being carriedout actively across the country as well as interna-tionally. Clearly there is a transition, if not a rev-olution, in higher education. Any debate over basicpremises of the Kellogg Program at Penn is amicrocosm of a much larger discussion.

What Makes the Kellogg Program Unique:Problems Particular To This Project

Despite some comments in the interviewsabout the similarities of the Kellogg initiatives toPenn’s other community service efforts, most fac-ulty and administrator stakeholders would agreethat Kellogg’s program at Penn does have indi-vidual qualities, distinct from the projects that pre-cede it and co-exist with it. It is those special char-acteristics that we will describe here in order forboth Penn and Kellogg to best understandKellogg’s special impacts.

Although Penn’s Kellogg Program repre-sented, and continues to represent the University’scommitment to expand existing academicallybased community service at the university in gen-eral, one of the key elements that made this proj-ect unique is that its core consisted of three sep-arate projects (Culture and Community Studies,Environment and Health, and Nutrition andHealth) that have blossomed and overflowed intomultiple, often interstitial pieces. The grant fromthe Kellogg Foundation was not to fund courses,departments, or majors but programs. As such itwas overtly cross-disciplinary, cutting acrossdepartments and schools of the university.Individuals whose professional loyalties are to dis-ciplines, departments, and other entities outside ofthe university tend to have seen the Kellogg pro-gram as a threat to the integrity of scholarship andthe depth of knowledge. Those whose loyalties aremore to the university in its particular setting, tothe development of knowledge that can be appliedto specific problems, and to the equal, if notgreater, importance of education for democracyhave seen the Kellogg program as an opportunityto renew higher education and the process ofknowledge production. This disagreement is basicto much of the discourse seen in higher educationabout the role of large research university and can-not be resolved by a single program.

Conclusion

The Kellogg Program represented a major ini-tiative at the University of Pennsylvania. It wasbuilt upon the existing initiatives of the School ofArts and Sciences and the Center for CommunityPartnerships and designed to enhance those ini-tiatives by accelerating their effects and by pro-viding a stimulus for new ones. The Program’simpacts can be seen as significant and sustainablein two areas:

1. the curriculum, by increasing the breadthand depth of academically based commu-nity service across the university;

2. university/community engagement, byincreasing the breadth and depth of exist-ing partnerships.

Acknowledgements

Many individuals have contributed to thisevaluation by providing information, by partici-pation in interviews and focus groups, and byoffering their advice and suggestions. In additionto recognizing them for their help, we would liketo acknowledge specifically the assistance of CoryBowman, Ira Harkavy, Winnie Smart-Mapp,Thomas Waldman, and the students ofAnthropology 318.

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ReferencesBoyer, E., 1990, Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities

of Professoriate. San Francisco: The Carnegie Foundation Forthe Advancement of Teaching.

Checkoway, B., Reinventing the research university forpublic service. Journal of Planning Literature, 11:307-319.

Cuban, L., 1999, How Scholars Trumped Teachers:Change Without Reform in University Curriculum, Teaching,and Research, 1990-1990. New York: Teachers College Press.

Frechtling J, Westat, L. S. (ed) 1997 User-FriendlyHandbook for Mixed Method Evaluations. Division ofResearch, Evaluation and Communication, National ScienceFoundation, http://www.ehr.nsf.gov/EHR/REC/pubs/NSF97-153/start.htm

Harkavy I., 1998, School-Community-UniversityPartnerships: Effectively Integrating Community Buildingand Education Reform. Paper presented to Conference onConnecting Community Building and Education Reform:Effective School, Community, University Partnerships, JointForum, U.S. Department of Education and U.S. Departmentof Housing and Urban Development, Washington, D.C.January 8, 1998.

Harkavy, I, and Benson, L., 1998, De-Platonization anddemocratizing of education as the bases of service learning.In: Rhoads, R.A. and Howard, J. (eds.), Service Learning:Pedagogy and Research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, pp.11-19.

McNamara C 1998 Basic Guide To Program Evaluation.Free Management Library, http://www.mapnp.org/library/

Nyden, P., Figert, A., Shilby, M., Burrows, D., 1997,Building a Community. Thousand Oaks CA: Pine Forge Press.

W.K. Kellogg Foundation, 1998, W.K. KelloggFoundation Evaluation Handbook. Battle Creek MI: W>K>Kellogg Foundation.

Patton, M. Q., 1997, Utilization-Focused Evaluation.Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Silka, L., 1999, Paradoxes of partnerships: Reflectionson university-community collaborations. Research in Politicsand Society, 7:335-359.

About the Authors

Francis Johnston, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritusof Anthropology at the University ofPennsylvania.

Amelia Rosenberg Weinreb is a Ph.D. candi-date in Cultural Anthropology at the University ofPennsylvania

M O T I V A T I O N D U R I N G T H EM I D D L E S C H O O L Y E A R S :

T H E C A S E O F C O M M U N I T Y S C H O O L S

Eric M. Anderman

T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F K E N T U C K Y

Abstract

Changes in achievement motivation were examined in a sample of early adolescentsattending a school that was involved in a school-university partnership. Specifically,the school was carrying out reform efforts in order to become a community school.Longitudinal analyses of data indicated that changes in students’ motivational ori-entations in this school often ran contrary to what is found in the general develop-mental literature. For example, whereas most early adolescents become more focusedon performance and grades during the middle school years, students in this sampleactually became less focused on performance and grades. Perceived school belong-ing increased over time. However, not all changes in motivation were atypical – forexample, perceived mastery goals declined over time.

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Many parents, teachers, and administratorshave noticed that during early adolescence, aca-demic motivation tends to decline. This shift in themotivational patterns of adolescents has becomea great concern in the United States (CarnegieCouncil on Adolescent Development, 1989). For many students, early adolescence is a criticallife stage, in which identities are formed, andinterests are pursued. However, for many students,negative shifts in academic motivation can havedeleterious effects on students’ future aspirationsand plans.

There is a large body of research that docu-ments the decline in motivation during the mid-dle grade years (e.g., Anderman & Maehr, 1994;Anderman & Midgley, 1997; Eccles & Midgley,1989; Midgley, Anderman, & Hicks, 1995;Simmons & Blyth, 1987). Whereas numerous pro-fessionals in the field of education had assumedfor many years that this decline in motivation wasassociated with the physiological changes associ-ated with puberty, these and other recent researchstudies have indicated that these shifts in motiva-tion are associated with changes in social contexts,rather than with the physiological changes asso-ciated with adolescence. Specifically, many of thenegative shifts in motivation have been linked tothe transition from elementary school to middleschool (Eccles et al., 1993a).

The present study examines longitudinal datafrom a school that was engaged in major reformpractices. Specifically, the school, which could becharacterized as a “traditional” middle school inmany respects, made significant movement towardbecoming a community school. The school trans-formed itself from a typical school in which stu-dents spent 7 hours per day (during the day), intoa community center, that was open into theevenings and during the summer, in order to pro-vide comprehensive educational experiences toearly adolescents and their families. Thesechanges were brought about because researchclearly has indicated the influences thatneighborhoods have on adolescents (Leventhal & Brooks-Gunn, 2000). The changes made by this school were brought about through a collab-oration with a local university. This school-university partnership was based on previous work that has indicated that universities and public schools can effectively work together tobring about effective changes in education (e.g.,Bogle & Harkavy, 1996).

It was hypothesized that the changes in schoolenvironment associated with this reform wouldlead to positive motivational outcomes for stu-dents. Indeed, it has been established that psy-chologoical variables are linked directly to theessential components of school reform (Tirozzi &Uro, 1997). When schools make meaningfulchanges, the results often are evident in psycho-logical characteristics of the students. The pres-ent article does not review the specifics of theactual structural changes that occurred within theschool. Rather, the article focuses on changes instudent-level variables related specifically to aca-demic motivation.

The Transition from Elementary Schoolto Middle School

During early adolescence, students attend avariety of different types of schools, with variousgrade configurations. Nevertheless, one of themost common grade configurations is a 6ththrough 8th grade or a 7th through 9th grade con-figuration. Data from the base year of the UnitedStates Department of Education’s NationalEducation Longitudinal Study (NELS) indicatedthat 58.6% of the NELS sample attended schoolswith grade configurations of 6 - 8, 7 - 8, 7 - 9, or8 – 9, whereas 22.7% attended schools with gradeconfigurations of either P, K, or 1-8 schools or P,K, or 1-12 schools. The remaining studentsattended schools with various other grade con-figurations (e.g., 6th through 12th grade)(National Center for Education Statistics, 1994).These data indicate that many students make atransition into middle school during the early ado-lescent years (e.g., at grades 6 or 7).

This is cause for concern, because researchindicates that academic motivation often declinesdramatically at the point of this educational tran-sition (Anderman & Maehr, 1994). Two parallellines of research conducted by motivationresearchers have linked this decline in motivationto the academic environments associated withmany middle schools. These lines of research haveemanated from two distinct perspectives on aca-demic motivation: expectancy X value theory, andgoal orientation theory.

The expectancy X value perspective on themiddle school transition. Eccles, Midgley, andtheir colleagues conducted a series of importantstudies during the 1980s and early 1990s, usingan expectancy X value framework. These studies

examined changes in motivation during early ado-lescence. The studies were particularly importantand influential because they all linked theobserved negative shifts in motivation to the tran-sition from elementary schools to middle schools.

Eccles and Midgley argued that there is a“developmental mismatch” between the develop-mental needs of early adolescents, and the typicalenvironments provided by most middle level (jun-ior high) schools (Eccles & Midgley, 1989).Typical middle school learning environments arecharacterized by homogeneous ability-groupingpractices, poor student-teacher relationships, fewopportunities for students to make choices andfeel autonomous, and an increased focus ongrades, test scores, and ability differences(Anderman & Maehr, 1994; Blyth, Simmons, &Bush, 1978; Eccles et al., 1993a; Eccles &Midgley, 1989). Nevertheless, developmentalresearch clearly indicates that during early ado-lescence, students need to be able to expresschoices, autonomy, self-determination, and tohave ample social interaction with peers and withcaring adults (Carnegie Council on AdolescentDevelopment, 1989; Eccles & Midgley, 1989;Simmons & Blyth, 1987). Consequently, the typ-ical environment provided by most middle schoolsis basically antithetical to the developmentalneeds of early adolescents.

Eccles’ expectancy X value model of motiva-tion (Eccles, 1983; Wigfield & Eccles, 1992) is awell-tested model of academic motivation. The“expectancy” component refers to students’expectations of success or failure on academictasks. The “value” component is actually brokendown into four aspects of achievement values:attainment value (how important is the task?),intrinsic value (how interesting is the task?), util-ity value (how useful is the task?), and cost (whatare the possible negative aspects of engaging inthe task?). Research studies generally indicate thatexpectancies predict actual academic performance(e.g., grades), whereas values predict choices(e.g., enrollment in courses in the future) (Eccles,1983; Meece, Wigfield, & Eccles, 1990; Wigfield& Eccles, 1992).

Eccles and Midgley (1989) demonstrated thatdifferences in the classroom environment beforeand after the transition from elementary to mid-dle school were related to changes in students’expectancies and values in mathematics (e.g.,Midgley, Feldlaufer, & Eccles, 1989). For exam-

ple, Midgley et al. (1989) found that students whomoved from elementary school teachers who wereperceived to be low in support to middle schoolteachers that were perceived to be high in supportexperienced an increase in intrinsic valuing ofmath. In contrast, students who moved fromhighly supportive elementary school teachers tomiddle school teachers who were lower in supportexperienced a decline in both the intrinsic valu-ing of math, the perceived usefulness of math, andthe perceived importance of math. This is a mat-ter of great concern, because other research (e.g.,Midgley, Feldlaufer, & Eccles, 1988) indicatesthat middle school teachers, compared to ele-mentary school teachers, trust students less, aremore concerned with discipline and control, andare less efficacious.

The goal orientation theory perspective on themiddle school transition. Goal orientation theoryis a social-cognitive theory of academic motiva-tion. Goal orientation theorists argue that studentsapproach academic tasks with several differenttypes of goals. These goals represent students’ rea-sons for doing academic tasks. A mastery goal(also referred to as a learning goal or a task-ori-entation in the literature) is evident when a stu-dent’s goal in doing an academic task is to trulylearn, and “master” the task at hand. A perform-ance goal (also referred to as an ability goal, a rel-ative ability goal, or an ego-orientation) is evidentwhen a student is primarily interested in demon-strating his or her ability. A performance-approachgoal is the goal of appearing more competent thanothers, whereas a performance-avoid goal is thegoal of avoiding appearing incompetent or“dumb” (Elliot & Harackiewicz, 1996; Middleton& Midgley, 1997).

There is general agreement that mastery goalsare predictive of adaptive outcomes (e.g., Ames &Archer, 1988; Anderman & Maehr, 1994).However, there has been debate regarding theeffects of performance goals. Part of this isbecause prior to the mid 1990s, researchers did notdistinguish between performance-approach andavoid goals. Therefore, some studies indicated thatperformance goals were helpful, whereas othersindicated that performance goals were harmful tothe learning process. Some recent research (e.g.,Elliot, McGregor, & Gable, 1999) suggests that insome situations, performance-approach goals maybe helpful to learning, whereas performance-avoidgoals may be harmful to learning. However, other

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research indicates that contexts that are perceivedas emphasizing performance goals may result inother types of problematic outcomes, such as aca-demic cheating (e.g., Anderman, Griesinger, &Westerfield, 1998), or a decline in achievementvalues over time (Anderman et al., in press).

Several studies have been conducted in recentyears, examining the transition from elementaryschool to middle school, using a goal orientationtheory perspective. In a cross-sectional study,Midgley, Anderman, & Hicks (1995) found thatmiddle school teachers and students perceived theoverall school culture as being more performanceoriented and less mastery oriented than did elementary school teachers and students. Theyalso found that elementary school teachers reported using instructional techniques thatemphasized mastery goals more than did middleschool teachers.

In a longitudinal study, Anderman andMidgley (1997) found that when students were inelementary school, they endorsed mastery goalsmore, reported a greater emphasis on masterygoals during academic instruction, and felt moreacademically competent than one year later, whenthey were in middle school. In addition, theyfound that students reported perceiving a greateremphasis on performance goals after the middleschool transition than before.

Using another longitudinal sample, Andermanand Anderman (1999) found that endorsement ofmastery goals declined over the middle schooltransition, whereas endorsement of performancegoals increased over the transition. One importantfinding from this study was that increases in per-formance goals across the transition were associ-ated positively with perceiving an emphasis onability and performance in middle school, whereasan increase in mastery goals across the transitionwas associated with a perceived emphasis on bothmastery and performance after the middle schooltransition. Results of this study also indicated thatsocial variables play an important role in deter-mining student motivation after the transition.Specifically, a high perceived sense of schoolbelonging and the endorsement of responsibilitygoals were associated with an increase in masterygoals after the transition, whereas a low perceivedsense of belonging and the endorsement of rela-tionship and status (popularity) goals were asso-ciated with an increase in performance orientationafter the transition.

Summarizing the Research on the MiddleSchool Transition

In summary, the results of studies from boththe expectancy X value perspective and from agoal orientation theory perspective converge onthe unavoidable fact that motivation declines asstudents move into middle grades schools. Afterthe middle school transition, student-teacher rela-tionships generally deteriorate, there is anincreased focus on ability and performance, andthe academic tasks that students encounter oftendo not meet early adolescents’ developmentalneeds. In addition, other research has demon-strated that these negative shifts in psychologicalvariables do not tend to occur in schools withkindergarten through grade 8 configurations (e.g.,Simmons & Blyth, 1987).

Although there have been many reform effortsaimed at middle schools in recent years, there islittle evidence that these reforms are working(Clark & Clark, 1993). In the present study, weinvestigated changes in a number of indices of stu-dent motivation in a community school that wascollaborating with a local university. Specifically,the teachers, parents, and students of this schoolwere working collaboratively with university per-sonnel to make organizational and substantivechanges in the school environment, with the ulti-mate goal of helping early adolescents to becomemore invested in schooling and the learningprocess.

We examined five overall questions in thisresearch, in order to see if the relations andchanges observed in this school were similar tothose observed for most early adolescents (e.g.,Eccles & Midgley, 1989). The questions that wereexamined included the following:

1. Is perceived school belonging related to participation in community schoolactivities?

2. Did general measures of motivation changebetween 1995 and 1997?

3. Did perceived school belonging changebetween 1995 and 1997?

4. Did motivation in the domain of sciencechange between 1995 and 1997?

5. Did motivation to engage in risky behaviorschange over time?

Method

In the following section, the methodologyused in the evaluation of this community school

is discussed. The evaluation occurred in multiplestages. The various samples and measures are dis-cussed below.

Overall Summary of Methodology andSubjects

The evaluation occurred between 1995 and1999. Various survey data were collected from stu-dents throughout this period. Specifically, longi-tudinal surveys were administered during the1995-1997 time period. Additional cross-sec-tional surveys were administered in 1998 and1999. Student record data (grades and attendancerecords) were collected between 1997 and 1999.Data on participation in community school activ-ities were collected in 1995 and 1996.

Measures

Various measures were collected using sur-veys. All surveys were administered in regularclassroom settings. Trained graduate studentsadministered all surveys, with the classroomteacher present in the room at the time of surveyadministration. Most measures assessed studentmotivation in three domains: (a) general motiva-tion, (b) motivation in science, and (c) antisocial-related motivations.

Several measures of personal goal orientationswere administered. Measures of personal goal ori-entations are indicative of how much studentsreport personally endorsing various goals. In thepresent studies, these included measures of stu-dents’ personal mastery goals, performance goals,and extrinsic goals. These measures have demon-strated excellent reliability and validity in numer-ous studies. For detailed information, see Midgleyet al., 1995, and Midgley et al., 1998. We alsoasked students to complete measures of perceivedschool belonging (e.g., whether or not the studentfeels respected and well-treated in the school envi-ronment (Anderman & Anderman, 1999:Goodenow, 1993).

Finally, several measures of motivation towardrisky behaviors were included in the present study.These measures assessed students’ anger towardschool, and students’ willingness to participate inantisocial activities in order to be “cool.” Both ofthese measures contained multiple items, and dis-played high internal consistency (Cronbach’salpha = .83 for anger, .95 for antisocial behaviorsto be “cool”).

Results

Results are presented in terms of specificresearch questions that were asked throughout theevaluation.

Question #1: Is perceived school belongingrelated to participation in community schoolactivities?

During the 1995 and 1996 school years, allstudents participating in the evaluation wereasked to indicate their levels of participation in allcommunity school activities. These included bothactivities that occurred during the school day, andactivities that occurred during the afternoon andevening hours. It was hypothesized that partici-pation in these activities would be related to agreater sense of school belonging.

Students indicated (a) whether or not they par-ticipated in each activity, and (b) the number oftimes that they participated in each activity. In1995, there was a weak positive correlationbetween participation and school belonging (r = .17), whereas in 1996, the correlation was abit stronger (r = .27). The correlation between per-ceived belonging in 1995 and activity participa-tion in 1996 was stronger (r = .32), suggesting thata stronger perceived sense of belonging may haveled to greater participation in the future; however,strong causal conclusions can’t be drawn fromthese data.

Question #2: Did general measures of motiva-tion change between 1995 and 1997?

Research has clearly indicated that as schoolsmake changes in instructional practices, motiva-tional variables often are affected in predictableways (e.g., Ames, 1990; Anderman, Maehr, &Midgley, 1999). In the present research, we exam-ine longitudinally changes in students’ endorse-ment of performance goals (doing their schoolwork to demonstrate their ability and to be com-petitive) and mastery goals (doing their schoolwork to truly master and learn the material). Muchresearch suggests that in traditional middle schoolenvironments, performance goals in particularincrease during the middle school years(Anderman & Midgley, 1997; Eccles et al., 1993a;Eccles & Midgley, 1989).

For performance goals, results indicated thatstudents’ endorsement of performance goalsremained stable between 1995 and 1996, anddecreased during 1997, F (1, 122) = 4.52, p<.05.These motivational shifts are displayed in figure

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1; means and standard deviations for all longitu-dinal analyses are presented in table 1. Thedecrease between 1996 and 1997 is an unusual andseemingly important change, since researchclearly indicates that for most early adolescents,performance goals increase during early adoles-cence (see Anderman & Maehr, 1994, for areview). The decrease exhibited by students in thisschool is quite atypical.

We also examined changes in mastery goals.A student who is mastery oriented is particularlyinterested in learning new material for intrinsicreasons. Much research suggests that studentsbecome less intrinsically interested in learningduring the middle school years (e.g., Eccles &Midgley, 1989).

In the present evaluation, endorsement ofmastery goals changed in ways that are predictablefor most adolescents. Specifically, there was anoverall decline in mastery goals, F (1, 122) =53.44, p<.001. Specifically, perceived masterygoals declined between 1995 and 1996, andremained at this level during 1997 (see table 1 fordescriptive statistics).

Question #3: Did perceived school belongingchange between 1995 and 1997?

A perceived sense of school belonging (con-nectedness) has been identified as an extremelyimportant variable during adolescence (Resnick etal., 1997). Indeed, during the adolescent years,many youth become disengaged and disconnectedwith schools, and feel that they have little in com-mon with the values of their schools.Consequently, as the school in the present evalu-ation made changes toward becoming more of acommunity school, we were interested to see ifstudents’ perceived sense of belonging changed.

Results indicated that students’ perceivedsense of belonging did increase over time, F (1,122) = 528.42, p<.001. Specifically, there was alarge increase in perceived belonging between1995 and 1996 (see figure 2 and table 1).

Question #4: Did motivation in the domain ofscience change?

Because research indicates that motivationvaries by subject domain (Eccles et al., 1993b;Stodolsky, Salk, & Glaessner, 1991), we alsoexamined motivation specifically within one aca-demic domain. For this evaluation, we chose thedomain of science, since some of our previousresearch has indicated that adolescents’ motivation

in science is sensitive to instructional practices ofteachers (Anderman & Young, 1994).

First, we examined whether extrinsic motiva-tion in science changed between 1995 and 1997.Results bordered on significance [F (1, 122) =3.25, p = .07]. Specifically extrinsic motivationdid not change between 1995 and 1996, but evi-denced a decline between 1996 and 1997.

Second, we examined personal mastery goalsin science. Overall, there was a decline in personalmastery goals in science over time, F (1, 122) =25.53, p<.001 (see table 1). Nevertheless, it isimportant to note that mean levels of masterygoals in science were high (above 3.0) at all times.

Question #5: Did motivation to engage in riskybehaviors change over time?

For the final question, we assessed severalmeasures of antisocial behavior. These measureswere assessed for the present samples in 1996 and1997. Paired-sample t-tests were run to examinechanges over time.

First, we assessed students’ self-reported feel-ings of anger (e.g., toward teachers). Results indi-cated a significant decline in school-related angerbetween 1996 and 1997, t (132) = 3.50, p<.001.One of the measures assessed students’ desire toparticipate in antisocial activities (e.g., smoking,fighting, etc.) to be “cool.” Although the data dis-played a declining trend, results were not statisti-cally significant, t (131) = 1.31, NS.

Discussion

School change is a complex, often slowprocess. Whereas researchers and policy-makerswould like for schools to change rapidly and effec-tively, the truth of the matter is that effectivechange takes time. Thus some of the change (andlack of change) observed in student motivation inthe present evaluation may become more salientas the school continues to engage in the reformprocess.

In the present research, we found that someof the variables that we measured exhibited rela-tions that were contrary to what is found in thegeneral adolescent motivation literature. Theseatypical patterns may be related to the reformefforts that were occurring at this school.However, it is important to note that not all vari-ables changed in unexpected ways.

First, we examined the relation between per-ceived school belonging, and participation in com-munity school activities. Results indicated a weak

positive correlation during the first year of theevaluation, and a slightly stronger correlation dur-ing the second year. In addition, perceived belong-ing during the first year was correlated positivelywith activity participation during the second year.

Whereas causal inferences are not warrantedfrom these data, the results do suggest that animportant relation exists between activity partic-ipation and perceived school belonging. Theimportant question that future research mustaddress is the causal direction of this relation.Indeed, it may be that participation in activitiesleads to a greater sense of belonging; however, italso may be the case that a heightened sense ofschool belonging fosters participation in schoolactivities. There probably is a somewhat recipro-cal relation, where these variables constantlyinfluence each other. Given recent research indi-cating that a perceived sense of school belongingserves as a buffer against many negative outcomesduring adolescence (Resnick et al., 1997), it isimportant to continue to examine variables that arerelated to an increased sense of connectednesswith the school.

Our second question addressed changes ingeneral measures of student motivation. Weassessed a number of different constructs, usinga goal orientation theory perspective on achieve-ment motivation (Ames & Archer, 1988; Dweck& Leggett, 1988; Nicholls, Cobb, Wood, Yackel,& Patashnick, 1990). We found that students’endorsement of performance goals (doing aca-demic work in order to demonstrate one’s ability)remained stable during the first two years of theevaluation, and declined between the second andthird year. These findings are extremely encour-aging, considering the fact that much research hasdocumented an increase in performance goals formost students after the middle school transition(Anderman & Anderman, 1999; Anderman &Midgley, 1997).

Students’ endorsement of mastery goals(doing academic work in order to truly learn andmaster the material) declined between 1995 and1996, and remained at this level during 1997. Thisis reflective of other research, which has demon-strated that early adolescents’ intrinsic motivationto learn often declines during the middle schoolyears (see Eccles & Midgley, 1989, for a review).Nevertheless, it is somewhat encouraging to seethat perceived mastery goals leveled-off during thethird year of the evaluation, and did not continue

to decline. Longitudinal studies that last longerthan three years may provide additional insightsinto how such variables continue to change overtime, as school implement reform efforts.

Our third question examined changes in per-ceived school belonging from 1995 through 1997.Results indicated that a perceived sense of belong-ing increased over time, particularly between 1995and 1996. This is a very encouraging finding,because a heightened sense of school belongingcan serve as a protective agent against many neg-ative outcomes during adolescence, such as vio-lence and suicidal ideation (Resnick et al., 1997).Although longitudinal studies of school belong-ing are lacking in the literature, reviews of the lit-erature in the field of achievement motivationstrongly suggest that early adolescents becomedisinterested in schooling, and perceive anincreasing lack of a connection with school, dur-ing the middle grade years (Anderman & Maehr,1994; Eccles et al., 1993; Eccles & Midgley,1989). Therefore, the observed increase in per-ceived belonging is contrary to what would nor-mally be expected. Nevertheless, it is importantto note that the increase mainly occurred between1995 and 1996. Again, additional research exam-ining the trajectory after 1997 is warranted.

Our fourth question examined changes inmotivation with the domain of science. Becauseresearch indicates that motivation varies by aca-demic subject (Eccles et al., 1993b), we believedthat it was very important to examine motivationwithin at least one specific academic domain.

Extrinsic motivation in science demonstratedan almost statistically significant decline, with themajor decline occurring between 1996 and 1997.Perceived mastery goals decreased over time,although students in this school generally reportedhigh levels of mastery goals at all three waves ofdata. The decline in mastery goals in science mir-rors the decline in generally mastery goals thatwas found in our examination of our first ques-tion.

Our final question examined changes in vari-ables related to n risky behaviors. In our sample,school-related anger declined between 1996 and1997. Our measure of students’ endorsement ofantisocial activities to “be cool” displayed adeclining trend between 1996 and 1997, althoughthis trend was not statistically significant.

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General Conclusions and Directions forFuture Research

It is important to note that the observedchanges and relations can not be linked directlyto the changes that were made by the school.Indeed, it is possible that the observed changeswere unrelated to the school’s partnership with theuniversity and the movement toward becoming acommunity school.

Nevertheless, it is extremely difficult to linksuch shifts in policies and practices to student out-comes in any program of research. Even whenresearchers can have “control” schools to serve ascomparisons, it is difficult if not impossible ineducational research to have a pure control. Thisis because teachers often implement new practicesand strategies throughout the school year, partic-ularly as they hear of innovations that are beingmade by other schools.

Whereas the observed changes can’t bedirectly linked to changes that were implementedby the school, we are confident that these changeswere at least somewhat related to the changes andrelations observed in our data. Specifically, anumber of the developmental shifts in motivationthat we observed ran contrary to what the litera-ture has found for most early adolescents (seeAnderman, Austin, & Johnson, in press, for areview).

The types of activities and learning environ-ments provided by middle schools have a dramaticimpact on student learning and motivation (Eccles& Midgley, 1989). In addition, in order to trulyunderstand how students are motivated and howthey learn, it is important to carefully examineclassroom and school contexts (Anderman &Anderman, 2000; Lee, 2000; Turner & Meyer,2000). In the present study, our research designand budget limited our evaluation to one site.Nevertheless, by only using one site, we are ableto interpret the observed changes in student moti-vation in terms of the context of this particularschool. Future research combining qualitative andquantitative methods surely will yield additionalinsights into the relations between school reformand student outcomes.

References

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Anderman, E.M., Austin, C., & Johnson, D. (in press).The development of goal orientation. In A. Wigfield & J.Eccles (Eds.), The development of achievement motivation. SanDiego: Academic Press.

Anderman, E.M., Griesinger, T., & Westerfield, G.(1998). Motivation and cheating during early adolescence.Journal of Educational Psychology, 90, 84-93.

Anderman, E.M., & Maehr, M.L. (1994). Motivation andschooling in the middle grades. Review of EducationalResearch, 64, 287-309.

Anderman, E.M., Maehr, M.L., & Midgley, C. (1999).Declining motivation after the transition to middle school:Schools can make a difference. Journal of Research andDevelopment in Education. 32, 131-147.

Anderman, E.M., & Midgley, C. (1997). Changes inachievement goal orientations, perceived academic compe-tence, and grades across the transition to middle level schools.Contemporary Educational Psychology, 22, 269-298.

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Anderman, L.H., & Anderman, E.M. (1999). Social pre-dictors of students’ achievement goal orientations.Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25, 21-37.

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Clark, S.N., & Clark, D.C. (1993). Middle level schoolreform: The rhetoric and the reality. Elementary SchoolJournal, 91, 447-460.

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Eccles, J.S., & Midgley, C. (1989). Stage-environment fit:Developmentally appropriate classrooms for young adoles-cents. In C. Ames & R. Ames (Eds.), Research on motivationin education (Vol. 3, pp. 139-186). San Diego: Academic Press.

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Eccles, J.S., Wigfield, A., Harold, R.D., & Blumenfeld, P.(1993b). Age and gender differences in children’s self- and taskperceptions during elementary school. Child Development, 64,830-847.

Eccles, J.S., Wigfield, A., Midgley, C., Reuman, D., MacIver, D., & Feldlaufer, H. (1993). Negative effects of traditionalmiddle schools on students’ motivation. Elementary SchoolJournal, 93, 553-574.

Elliot, A.J., & Harackiewicz, J.M. (1996). Approach andavoidance achievement goals and intrinsic motivation: A medi-ational analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,70, 968-980.

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Middleton, M., & Midgley, C. (1997). Avoiding thedemonstration of lack of ability: An underexplored aspect ofgoal theory. Journal of Educational Psychology, 89, 710-718.

Midgley, C., Anderman, E.M., & Hicks, L. (1995).Differences between elementary and middle school teachersand students: A goal theory approach. Journal of EarlyAdolescence, 15, 90-113.

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Midgley, C., Feldlaufer, H., & Eccles, J.S. (1989).Student/teacher relations and attitudes toward mathematicsbefore and after the transition to junior high school. ChildDevelopment, 60, 981-992.

Midgley, C., Kaplan, A., Middleton, M., Maehr, M. L.,Urdan, T., Anderman, L. H., Anderman, E., & Roeser, R.(1998). The development and validation of scales assessing stu-dents’ achievement goal orientations. ContemporaryEducational Psychology, 23, 113-131.

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Nicholls, J.G., Cobb, P., Wood, T., Yackel, E., &Patashnick, M. (1990). Assessing students’ theories of successin mathematics: Individual and classroom differences. Journalfor Research in Mathematics Education, 21, 109-122.

Resnick, M.D., Bearman, P.S., Blum, R.W., Bauman,K.E., Harris, K.M., Jones, J., Tabor, J., Beuhring, T., Sieving,R.E., Shew, M., Ireland, M., Bearinger, L.H., & Udry, J.R.(1997). Protecting adolescents from harm: Findings from theNational Longitudinal Study on Adolescent Health. Journal ofthe American Medical Association, 278, 823-832.

Simmons, R.G., & Blyth, D.A. (1987). Moving into ado-lescence. Hawthorne, NY: de Gruyter.

Stodolsky, S.S., Salk, S., & Glaessner, B. (1991). Studentviews about learning math and social studies. AmericanEducational Research Journal, 28, 89-116.

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Turner, J.C., & Meyer, D.K. (2000). Studying and under-standing the instructional contexts of classrooms: Using ourpast to forge our future. Educational Psychologist, 35, 69-85.

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Table 1. Descriptive Statistics for Longitudinal Analyses

Variable t/F, df 1995 1996 1997

General Performance Orientation 4.52* (1, 122) 3.08 (1.06) 3.10 (0.99) 2.86 (1.01)

General Mastery Orientation 53.44*** (1, 122) 3.76 (0.85) 3.24 (1.03) 3.16 (0.98)

Perceived School Belonging 528.42*** (1, 122) 1.55 (0.50) 3.56 (0.82) 3.40 (0.92)

Extrinsic Motivation in Science 3.25t (1, 122) 2.91 (1.00) 2.92 (0.91) 2.74 (0.89)

Personal Mastery Goals in Science 28.53*** (1, 122) 3.79 (.89) 3.47 (.91) 3.29 (.97)

Anger 3.50*** (132) — 2.22 (1.18) 1.84 (1.16)

Antisocial Behaviors to be “cool” 1.31 (131) — 2.83 (1.09) 2.69 (1.12)

Note: * p<.05 ** p<.01 *** p<.001 t p = .07

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About the Author

Eric M. Anderman, Ph.D., is Professor ofEducational and Counseling Psychology in theCollege of Education of the University ofKentucky, Lexington Campus.

The research in this article was supported bygrants from the University of PennsylvaniaWEPIC Replication Project, the Office of the VicePresident for Research and Graduate Studies at theUniversity of Kentucky, and the Department ofEducational & Counseling Psychology at theUniversity of Kentucky. Address all correspon-dence to Eric M. Anderman, The University ofKentucky, Department of Educational &Counseling Psychology, 249 Dickey Hall,Lexington, KY 40506-0017. E-mail:[email protected]

T O C H A N G E A U N I V E R S I T Y,S T A R T W I T H T H E C O M M U N I T Y

By Stephen L. Percy

Mary Jane Brukardt

U N I V E R S I T Y O F W I S C O N S I N - M I L W A U K E E

Changing the direction of an institution of higher education is, as a former Universityof Wisconsin Regent once wrote, a lot like trying to move a battleship with your bare hands.1

It takes strategic leadership … and a lot of people willing to help push.

This is the story of that push, the continuing tale of how the idea of community-university engagement has become an invigorating—and transforming—vision for an entireinstitution.

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Figure 1. Changes in General PerformanceOrientation

4.0

3.5

3.0

2.51 2 3

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eral

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form

ance

Orie

ntat

ion

Figure 2. Changes in Perceived SchoolBelonging

4.0

3.5

3.0

2.5

2.0

1.51 2 3

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Gen

eral

Sch

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Time for a Change

In 1998 the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee was ready to consider a change incourse. The Chancellor of the University ofWisconsin System’s largest urban public univer-sity was ending a seven-year term to return to theclassroom. Student enrollment was back to morethan 22,000 students for the first time in thedecade and faculty numbers were stabilizing afteryears of cutbacks. New student housing and ren-ovations to major buildings promised to highlightthe university’s enviable location near the shoresof Lake Michigan, just minutes from downtown.

As the university looked to the future it wasclear it needed a compelling vision, one that wouldhelp shape and define its mission as an urban,research university as well as its unique rolewithin the UW-System which also includes theinternationally recognized flagship campus inMadison and twelve other four-year comprehen-sive universities. Despite its ranking among theCarnegie’s doctoral/research universities andstrong undergraduate and graduate programs,UWM wanted to do better in attracting minoritystudents, outside dollars and innovative faculty.The Search and Screen Committee for the newChancellor, after many meetings with faculty,staff, alumni and students, determined that whatthe university needed was a visionary leader whocould help UWM become a more responsive,innovative urban university.

UWM found that leader in Nancy L. Zimpher,who came on board in the summer of 1998 fromthe Ohio State University where she had beendean of the College of Education and ExecutiveDean of the Professional Colleges. While at OhioState she had helped direct its CampusCollaborative, working with community groups totransform the university’s neighborhoods. Nostranger to the power of community-campus part-nerships, Zimpher recognized in UWM its stronghistory of outreach and service and the potentialfor finding new purpose and mission in the prin-ciples of engagement. Shortly after her arrival,she challenged faculty, staff and students to imag-ine a future as a new kind of university, one inex-tricably linked to its community: “It’s not just usserving the city. It’s not just the city serving us,”she said in her first campus speech. “It is thenotion of together building a city and universitythat are the heart of metropolitan Milwaukee. This

is the essence of [what we will call] TheMilwaukee Idea.”2

An Old Idea Made New

Of course the idea of community engagementas an animating mission for the academy is not anew one. As Seth Low, president of Columbiafrom 1890 to 1901 said in his inaugural address,“…there is no such thing as the world of lettersapart from the world of men.”3 This progressivetradition was the fertile soil in which Wisconsin’suniversity system was nurtured in the late nine-teenth century. It was at the University ofWisconsin-Madison, that the notion of “TheWisconsin Idea” was first expressed: “the bound-aries of the university are the boundaries of thestate.”4 From its earliest years to today, TheWisconsin Idea has embodied the university’s mis-sion of research and outreach—as well as teach-ing—to provide information, policy and service tothe state and community.

When the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukeewas founded in 1956, it continued this philosophy,with the expressed purpose that it be “Milwaukee’suniversity,” a “powerful partner” with the city.5

UWM faculty, staff and students have taken thatcharge seriously, engaging in literally hundreds ofprojects and partnerships with neighborhoodschools, small business, downtown developmentagencies, community activists and social serviceagencies.

In 1996, for example, UW-Milwaukeereceived a grant from the U.S. Department ofHousing and Urban Development to form aMilwaukee Community Outreach PartnershipCenter (MCOPC) to pursue broad-scale neigh-borhood revitalization. Administered by UWM’sCenter for Urban Initiatives and Research,MCOPC brought together an interdisciplinaryteam from across campus that included TheSchool of Architecture and Urban Planning, theCenters for Economic Development and UrbanCommunity Development, the Employment andTraining Institute, and the Department ofSociology.

Since MCOPC was formed, UWM faculty andstaff have joined with a community partnership ofeducators, parents, neighbors, community organ-izations and businesses to create full-servicecommunity centers at three area schools. MCOPCstaff and students from the School of Architectureand Urban Planning worked with residents of a

home for the chronically mentally ill to designsuitable housing. UWM’s Employment andTraining Institute conducted regular job openingsurveys to assist technical training organizationsin matching openings to workforce skills, and pro-duced school-to-work and career planning mate-rials for middle and high-school students.6 Non-profit leaders participated in a year-long seminarcalled Community Action Scholars and learned“the value and power of shared experience.”7 Fromcommunity nursing to on-site tutoring, researchfor business start-ups to studies of welfare reform,UWM continues to demonstrate the effectivenessof “powerful partnerships” to enhance learningand strengthen community.

Integrating Engagement Into theInstitutional Mission

But as the Kellogg Commission report on thefuture of state and land-grant universities notes,university engagement goes beyond conventionaloutreach and public service. Interdisciplinarycoalitions and large numbers of community part-nerships are important, but are only a prelude tothe next step: “integrating engagement into theinstitutional mission” and “infusing engagementinto curriculum and teaching.”8 Such a vision forthe “engaged institution” is, in the words ofChancellor Zimpher, “too ambitious to be theproperty of a single campus entity, like one depart-ment or one school.” Equally important, engage-ment at the institutional level must include thecommunity from the very beginning in its designand implementation.

And so, The Milwaukee Idea was born. Overthe course of the past three years, students, fac-ulty, staff, alumni and community members havemet to create and implement “Big Ideas”—“newways in which UWM can join hands with the peo-ple of metropolitan Milwaukee.” According toZimpher, the Milwaukee Idea of communityengagement will be “woven into the fabric of theuniversity and into the way in which we do ourwork, adding color and luster to our strong tradi-tion of teaching excellence, research and scholar-ship, service and engagement.”9 If, as Ira Harkavycontends, “the radical reform of higher educationis most likely to occur in the crucible of signifi-cant, serious, sustained, active engagement,”10

UWM is testing that hypothesis where it counts:in the academy and on the street.

Step One: Imagine

How do you mobilize an entire universityaround community engagement? At UWM, itbegan with 100 people and one word: imagine.Imagine the shared future of Milwaukee andUWM. A “Committee of 100”—invited students,faculty, staff and community—met for the first timein October, 1998, and were tasked with fleshing outThe Milwaukee Idea. What is it? What are the bigideas that will mobilize the university? How cancommunity engagement improve student learningand research? Most important, what concreteaction can be taken to make the ideas reality?

Over the course of only six months (a mereblink of an eye in traditional academic time!) theCommittee of 100 (which soon grew to 200 asmore people became excited about the process)organized into ten Affinity Groups to research anddebate ways in which UWM could create bold newinitiatives that would not only extend existingUWM strengths, but also encourage new partner-ships. Groups, led by self-selected convenors, meton campus and by e-mail, shared ideas over theWeb and came together to brainstorm conceptswith the committee as a whole.

Early on, the leadership team for TheMilwaukee Idea developed what came to becalled “connectors:” a set of guiding principlesthat helped the Affinity Groups assess the valid-ity of their proposals. First and foremost, the ideashad to be “big”—they had to result in significantand fundamental change to the campus and thecommunity. In addition, the connectors includeda commitment to fostering diversity and multi-culturalism, nurturing new partnerships andcollaborations, encouraging interdisciplinaryrelationships, enhancing student learning andcampus culture, and supporting more opencommunication.

Communication has become a watchword forThe Milwaukee Idea process. As James Carr, asenior vice president at the Fannie MaeFoundation reminds us, university efforts toengage the community must often first overcomewell-earned and long-held skepticism and mistrustof institutions of higher education.11 So ChancellorZimpher took The Milwaukee Idea on the road.She spoke to community and campus groups, atluncheons and breakfast meetings, and to businessand civic leaders about The Milwaukee Idea andUWM’s desire for change. In addition, more than

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a dozen meetings were held with communitygroups on campus and off, sharing details aboutthe proposed ideas before they were finalized.Groups included business leaders, alumni, neigh-bors, even the media. The goal was three-fold: toget public reaction back; to signal to the commu-nity that UWM valued its input and partnership;and to make UWM accountable for results. “We’reworking without a net,” said Zimpher. “What weare doing is public and must produce action.”

Moving to Action

At the end of six months, UWM’s AffinityGroups identified ten “First Ideas” that reflected thevalues of the connectors and offered visionary newdirections for the future of the university. At thesame time, a group of community foundationsjoined forces to begin their own “First IdeaPlanning Process,” and, working with UWM,developed an eleventh proposal for a Non-profitManagement Education center. The Ideas alsoincluded major initiatives in education, the econ-omy and the environment:

• a proposed alternative general educationrequirement celebrating the city’s multicul-tural assets and involving community mem-bers in the learning process;

• a consortium for economic opportunity, link-ing university expertise with the community’ssmall businesses and entrepreneurs;

• a global program for international education;

• new partnerships to study and implementprograms addressing urban health issues;

• a “healthy choices” program targeting issuesof substance use on campus and in the com-munity; and

• an international center for freshwaterresearch.

The ideas were announced by Zimpher at herinauguration as the sixth Chancellor of UWM andapplauded by the mayor, county executive and gov-ernor. The more important announcement, however,was not the ideas (they’d been publicly discussedfor months) but the next step. As Zimpher stated atthe very first Milwaukee Idea plenary session,“ideas without action are meaningless.” The realchallenge of change is implementation and soZimpher assembled Action Teams of faculty,

students, staff and community to create concreteaction plans—complete with detailed budgets andstaffing proposals—to implement the First Ideas.Eighteen months after the first Affinity group meet-ing, the first Idea was ready to launch.

Since that time, ten of the original eleven Ideashave been implemented and three more ideas havejoined the ranks. All are making significant con-tributions to the life of the university and ourregion. The Consortium for Economic Opportunityis based in the city core and has partnered withneighborhood development groups and small busi-ness. A campus-wide survey on student drinkinghabits has been completed and a new course onHealthy Choices developed. The MilwaukeePartnership Academy, a collaboration withMilwaukee’s Public Schools, has brought the schoolboard, administration, the union, business andhigher education to the table to improve teachertraining and retention. The Helen Bader Institute forNonprofit Management has opened its doors andCultures and Community, the curriculum compo-nent of The Milwaukee Idea, has sponsored facultyfellowships to create new courses that connect stu-dent learning to the urban community. More thanthirty have already been offered.

Taking Stock

It is, of course, too early to assess success ofThe Milwaukee Idea. By no means has engagementbeen embraced campus-wide, nor have the manyand varied opportunities for enhanced studentlearning, community participation and facultyresearch been fully realized. There are, however,signs that the “battleship” is changing direction.

Early on in the Milwaukee Idea process, theleadership team identified “Eight Steps toSuccess”12—measures to help assess accomplish-ments. They are:

1. Establish a sense of urgency2. Create a guiding coalition3. Empower people for broad-based action.4. Develop vision and strategy5. Communicate the change vision6. Generate short-term wins7. Consolidate gains and produce more

change8. Anchor changes in the culture

The sense of urgency for change at UWM wasreal. The “guiding coalition” included not only the

Chancellor and Milwaukee Idea director, but thehundreds of people involved during the past threeyears. The secret to the success of The MilwaukeeIdea, however, can be found in Step 3: “Empowerpeople for broad-based action.” ChancellorZimpher recalls the reactions she got as theprocess unfolded. “People would send me e-mailsand say, ‘We know you have all these people work-ing on ideas, but surely you have a plan, Nancy.’I had to tell them, the plan is not mine. It belongsto UWM and to the people who create it and thenmake it happen.” Thanks to the work of hundredsof people, the university has new goals and spe-cific strategies to reach them.

The process has brought together individualsfrom across campus and the community, creatingnew networks and relationships. Almost one hun-dred new faculty have been hired in the past year,with an additional seventy-five slated for 2002—many of them attracted to UWM because of theopportunities for engagement being offered. Thishas resulted in a cohort of enthusiastic students,faculty, staff and community people who are com-mitted to implementing the ideas and to sharingthe vision more broadly. As one participant said,“The most meaningful result of this process is thatit was so open.

It allowed anyone who wanted to join in. Thisenabled people from across disciplines to talk toeach other—it hasn’t happened before!”

Thanks to The Milwaukee Idea, UWM has anew profile in the neighborhood and new ways tocommunicate with the community. According toTimothy Sheehy, the president of the MetropolitanMilwaukee Association of Commerce, ChancellorZimpher and The Milwaukee Idea “opened thedoor to the university as a resource.” TheMilwaukee Idea office fields calls daily fromorganizations and individuals eager to explorepotential partnerships and projects. A newInstitute for Service Learning and a revived stu-dent volunteer center provide additional support.

The sixth step to success—“create short-termwins”—can be measured in the Milwaukee Ideabanners that dot the campus, the 100-fold increasein column inches generated in local media, andalso in dollars. Research funding has increased byalmost 50 percent over the past two years. And,for the first time in its history, the university wasawarded almost $20 million in addition dollarsfrom the state of Wisconsin in support of TheMilwaukee Idea.

Finally, is The Milwaukee Idea anchored in theculture of the university? That will take time, ofcourse, but three important administrative mech-anisms have been put in place to signal that com-munity-university partnerships are the inspirationand the driver behind UWM’s aspirations to be apremier urban research university. The MilwaukeeIdea office functions within the Chancellor’soffice, headed by the Chancellor’s Deputy.Chancellor Zimpher has also appointed anAssistant Chancellor for Partnerships andInnovation, selected from the community andcharged with directing community participationwith the university. And new governance struc-tures have evolved, as faculty and academic staffhave worked to create systems that support inter-disciplinary work. A Trustee Council—a brandnew entity—made up of faculty, staff, deans andMilwaukee Idea administration, work together tooversee implementation of The Milwaukee Idea.

So Far…

Chancellor Zimpher likes to tell the story ofan encounter she had with a student, early in hertenure at UWM. It was a beautiful fall day and asthe Chancellor walked across the plaza to theStudent Union, he stopped her, introduced himselfand told her how pleased he was with everythingshe was doing. Then he paused … and added: “Sofar!”

The challenge for change never ends.

About the Authors

Stephen L. Percy is Professor of PoliticalScience and Chancellor’s Deputy for TheMilwaukee Idea at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Mary Jane Brukardt is the former director ofCommunications for The Milwaukee Idea.

For more information

To learn more about The Milwaukee Idea, seethe website at www.uwm.edu/MilwaukeeIdea.Contact the office at 414-229-6913 or e-mail [email protected] for more details.

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Endnotes1 Laurence A. Weinstein, Moving a Battleship with Your

Bare Hands: Governing a University System (Madison,WI: Magna Publications, 1993).

2 Nancy L. Zimpher, The Milwaukee Idea, a speech givento the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Faculty SenatePlenary Session on September 17, 1998.

3 Edward Cary, “Seth Low: A Character Sketch,” Reviewof Reviews 16:40, 1897, quoted by Ira Harkavy in“School-Community University Partnerships” inUniversities and Community Schools, Vol. 6, No. 1-2.

4 Jack Stark, “The Wisconsin Idea: The University’sService to the State,” reprinted from the 1995-96Wisconsin Blue Book, Legislative Reference Bureau.

5 Frank Cassell, J. Martin Klotsche and Frederick Olson,with the assistance of Donald Shea and Bea Bourgeois,The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee: a historical pro-file, 1995-1992, (Milwaukee: UWM Foundation, 1992).

6 For more information on UWM’s Employment andTraining Institute and its on-line manual to assist citiesin conducting surveys of job vacancies in local labor mar-kets, visit the website at www.uwm.edu/Dept/ETI.

7 Information originally published in RevitalizingMilwaukee, the newsletter produced by the MilwaukeeCommunity Outreach Partnership Center, 1996-98, editedby Barbara Duffy.

8 Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land-grant Universities, Returning to Our Roots: The EngagedInstitution (Washington, D.C.: National Association ofState Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, 1999).Available on the web at www.nasulgc.org.

9 From the Inaugural Address of Chancellor Nancy L.Zimpher, A Time for Boldness, delivered March 26, 1999,University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

10 Ira Harkavy, “School-Community-UniversityPartnerships: Effectively Integrating CommunityBuilding and Education Reform,” in Universities andCommunity Schools, Vol. 6, No. 1-2.

11 James H. Carr, “It’s Not Just Academic: University-Community Partnerships Are Rebuilding Neighborhoods”in Housing Facts & Findings, Vol. 1, No. 1.

12 Thanks to Robert Gleason of The Revere Group, Chicago,for his strategic assistance to the Chancellor’s leadershipteam and for defining our success parameters.

O R G A N I Z I N G T H E C A M P U S T OB E I N P A R T N E R S H I P W I T H

S C H O O L S A N D T H EC O M M U N I T Y:

O H I O S T A T E ’ S C A M P U S C O L L A B O R A T I V E

Jilaine W. Fewell

Christine G. Overtoom

Oliver P. Jones

T H E O H I O S T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y

A dillar, a dollar,A ten o’clock scholar,

What makes you come so soon?You used to come at ten o’clock,

But now you come at noon.—Mother Goose

The quaint old nursery rhyme begs us to ask some questions about our communitiesand their schools. What are the characteristics of a school system that would produce a stu-dent so reluctant to arrive in a timely fashion? What are the characteristics of a family thatproduces such a student? Is the child working late into the evening to help provide the basicfamily necessities and, therefore, unable to get out of bed early enough to arrive at schoolon time? Is it a single parent household, and is our scholar assuming the responsibility ofgetting other siblings off to school so the parent can go to work? Does a family illness requirethe student to be home in the morning? Is there a total lack of parental supervision? Whatare the characteristics of the community in which our scholar attends school? Is it a poorurban community whose school suffers from the same battle fatigue as many of the homesand families within its boundaries? Is it an affluent middle-class community where every-one is so busy pursuing the American dream that schools and children go unnoticed?

While these questions are neither exhaustive nor relevant to every situation, they dodemonstrate the complexity of the world in which our ten o’clock scholar lives and grows.It can be argued that one of the most important issues facing our nation is the adequateeducation of our children. Lawson and Hooper-Briar1 suggest that only through collabora-tion among a variety of concerned partners can this issue and all of society’s complex prob-lems be adequately or successfully addressed. Benson, Harkavy, and Puckett2 challenge ourinstitutions of higher education by stating that collaboration with communities to solve

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society’s most complex issues is the university’scivic responsibility. Harkavy3 suggests that theuniversity should no longer be rewarded for thelofty rhetoric it produces; it should be rewardedfor its ability to collaborate in solving America’smost serious problems, especially those of the city.

The Campus Collaborative at The Ohio StateUniversity is built upon a foundation very muchin accord with the assertions of Lawson, Hooper-Briar, Benson, Harkavy, and Puckett. Simplystated, the foundation is this: The university has aresponsibility to support the community; it mustlearn from and build on community assets; it can-not support the community without supportingschools and families; and university support, if itis to be effective, must be collaborative.

This article highlights the work of the CampusCollaborative (Collaborative) especially as itrelates to the communities (University District)that surround the campus of The Ohio StateUniversity (OSU) in Columbus, Ohio. It beginswith a brief look at the birth of the Collaborativeand an overview of its activities. The remainderof the paper concentrates on three specific initia-tives of the Collaborative especially regarding theways in which these initiatives impact the univer-sity schools and neighborhoods, the ways theCollaborative strives to facilitate campus effortsto respond to school and neighborhood needs, andlessons learned. These three initiatives are theUniversity Neighborhood Faculty Seed GrantProgram, the Community Outreach PartnershipCenter, and the University District EducationCommittee.

The Collaborative grew out of the work of twoorganizations: The Interprofessional Commissionof Ohio (Commission) and Campus Partners forCommunity Urban Redevelopment, Inc. (CampusPartners). The Commission is a cooperative pro-gram of human service professions whose goal isto improve services through collaboration for thechildren, adults, and families of Ohio and ournation. Founded in 1973, the Commission servesas a bridge between the academic and professionalcommunities by facilitating interprofessional dia-logue and problem solving throughout the stateand nation. The Commission provides interpro-fessional opportunities for persons in the helpingprofessions to address complex social, ethical,clinical, and public policy issues.

Housed at Ohio State, the Commission pro-vides technical assistance in collaboration that

includes interprofessional planning and evalua-tion; training and education for communities andagencies; community collaboration; and staffdevelopment. It offers interprofessional creditcourses to graduate and professional students atOSU and three seminaries which comprise theTheological Consortium of Greater Columbus.Other activities of the Commission involve pub-lic policy analysis of emerging social issues thatimpact professional practice; continuing profes-sional education conferences, workshops, andstaff development programs; program develop-ment and research from an interprofessional per-spective; and publications on interprofessionalcollaboration. For more information visit theCommission’s web site at http://www.osu.edu/ico/.

In 1994, Dr. E. Gordon Gee, then president ofOSU, and Columbus mayor, Greg Lashutka4

announced that the university and the city hadentered into a joint commitment to work toward theimprovement of specific neighborhoods borderingOSU’s Columbus campus. The commitment’simpetus grew from a growing concern regarding thequality of life in these neighborhoods. A task forcerepresenting the Ohio State faculty, staff, and stu-dents; the City of Columbus; and communityorganizations was formed. Included in the taskforce’s recommendations was the suggested for-mation of a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization.Thus, Campus Partners was formed and chargedwith two priorities: “To develop a comprehensiveneighborhood Revitalization Plan…accompaniedby an Implementation Strategy; and to actively pro-mote projects and programs that can have an imme-diate, positive impact on the neighborhoods” (p E-1). For more information on Campus Partners visittheir web site at http://www.osu.edu/org/osucp/.

With extensive community input and theassistance of a team of consultants, CampusPartners published its University NeighborhoodsRevitalization Plan: Concept Document 5

Columbus City Council and the university’s Boardof Trustees formally adopted the plan in mid-1997. The document contained six “Core Values”around which Campus Partners’ projects would bedeveloped. Through the leadership of NancyZimpher, then Dean of the College of Education,the Commission was invited to take leadership indeveloping initiatives for addressing the humanservices issues of the revitalization plan. TheCampus Collaborative evolved from this invita-tion. The Collaborative is an interprofessional

group that now has over 40 university offices andseveral community organizations, including resi-dent and neighborhood collaboratives, religiousorganizations, and government and human serv-ices agencies.

The Collaborative developed recommenda-tions in five areas intended to foster the goal ofcreating a model for university/community rela-tionships characterized by educational excellence.The recommendations centered on three of the sixcore values articulated in the UniversityNeighborhoods Revitalization Plan: ConceptDocument 6.

Core Value: The university district shall be amodel for university/community relationships.The Collaborative suggested two initiatives toimplement its first recommendation: Faculty participation:

1. Establish Community-Based Courses inpartnership with existing neighborhoodagencies, schools, and families to preparestudents for human service and otherprofessions.

2. Establish the University NeighborhoodsFaculty Seed Grant Program to encourageteaching and inquiry by faculty and stu-dents in the university neighborhoodswhich will benefit the community, itsfamilies, and residents.

Core Value: The university district shall beculturally and socio-economically diverse. TheCollaborative suggested three initiatives designedto implement the second recommendation:Strengthen health and well-being in theuniversity district:

1. Establish a Collaborative NeighborhoodHealthy Community Initiative to provideresidents and university faculty and stu-dents community-based integratedapproach to education, employment, health,recreation, and human services.

2. Develop Housing for Student Mothers andChildren: A Co-Housing Model to providehousing, child-care, parenting education,and other support to single-mothers whilethey pursue higher education and to preparestudents and faculty to respond to this pop-ulation.

3. Create a Dialogue Bridge (This evolvedinto a Community Outreach PartnershipCenter.) to enhance and sustain partner-

ships between community residents, uni-versity faculty, students and staff, CampusPartners, and human service providers, andto develop a community-based mechanismfor goal setting and accountability.

Three Collaborative programs were designedto implement the third recommendation:Strengthen the economic environment in theuniversity neighborhoods:

1. In conjunction with OSU Extension, develop a Comprehensive EmploymentProgram, including job development andemployment readiness with special empha-sis on substance abuse prevention toenhance employment prospects for resi-dents and to equip university students andfaculty to comprehensively respond toemployment readiness issues.

2. Develop a network of campus area employ-ers, including Ohio State, for LocalEmployment Advocacy, which will givehiring preference to residents of the uni-versity neighborhood.

3. Establish a Business Incubator to assist inthe development of new businesses in thecommunity and to provide site-basedopportunities for student and faculty teach-ing, learning, and inquiry.

Student quality of life, the fourth recom-mendation, was accompanied by six suggested ini-tiatives:

1. Move the Off-Campus Student ServicesCenter into the university neighborhood toprovide an integrated approach to housingneeds, health education, counseling, andacademic learning assistance.

2. Develop Expanded Community ServiceOpportunities for all university students,faculty, and staff, including required com-munity service credit for graduation.

3. Develop additional Human Services avail-able to students in the university neighbor-hood as needs are identified.

4. Develop expanded on-campus StudentActivities to increase options available tostudents.

5. Implement the recommendations of theUniversity Alcohol and Drug AdvisoryCommittee.

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6. Develop a Resident Manager’s program foroff-campus housing.

Core Value: The university district shall be aneighborhood of choice. The Collaborative madeits fifth recommendation relating to this corevalue: Strengthen the schools in the universityneighborhood. This recommendation stresses theassertion that schools of choice foster neighbor-hoods of choice. The University DistrictEducation Committee (UDEC) was formed toimplement the following five initiatives:

1. Create additional Professional DevelopmentSchool Sites and Placements to better pre-pare teachers and other school professionalsto address the needs of urban students.

2. Provide Off-Campus Seminars for Teachersto benefit teachers in university area schoolsand university faculty and students in urbancurriculum development and instructionalstrategies.

3. Develop a Partnership for Technology inEducation to link the 13 university areaschools and the university, to provide accessto information systems for all residents andteachers, and to strengthen university facultyand students resources in the use of tech-nology in urban areas.

4. In cooperation with the Columbus PublicSchools’ 5-year Strategic Plan, supportFamily Focus Centers in developing andplanning to strengthen families in the com-munity and to prepare university faculty andstudents to work effectively with families.

5. Assist university area schools to becomeCenters for Community Learning, openevenings and weekends to offer life-longlearning opportunities to all area residentsand to equip university students and facultyto respond to individual life-long learninggoals.

The recommended projects briefly describedabove are intended to enable the UniversityDistrict to become a teaching community that canserve as a model for other urban college and uni-versity communities, as well as an opportunity forteaching, learning, and inquiry by residents, pro-fessionals, and university faculty, students, andstaff. The initiatives were developed through col-laboration with the community and are currentlyin various stages of planning and implementation.

Space limitations do not permit a review ofeach initiative and its current status. The remain-der of the paper offers a more in-depth look intothree of them: the University NeighborhoodFaculty Seed Grant Program, the CommunityOutreach Partnership Center, and the UniversityDistrict Education Committee. To learn moreabout the Collaborative and its other initiatives,visit our web site at http://www.osu.edu/campus-collab/.

University Neighborhood Faculty SeedGrant Program

Partners in the revitalization of the UniversityDistrict Neighborhoods developed six core valuesto guide their work. One of these core values forwhich the Collaborative offered recommendationssaid, “The university district shall be a model foruniversity/community relationships.” A vital stepin reaching this goal is the participation of uni-versity faculty. The idea of stimulating faculty par-ticipation through a seed grant program to encour-age teaching and research in the neighborhoodsfollows naturally. Through funding from OSU’sOffice of Academic Affairs, the UniversityNeighborhood Faculty Seed Grant Programbecame a reality, and the first grants were awardedin 1996. Funding began with $50,000 annuallyand has risen to a yearly investment of $80,000.Since 1996, forty grants of $2,500-$32,000 havebeen awarded. Funded projects are interdiscipli-nary whenever possible, must include significantcollaboration with community agencies, schools,organizations, and/or residents, and most includeneighborhood-based credit teaching. Facultymembers from all disciplines of the university areurged to apply via an RFP in the spring of eachyear. Projects from 12 of OSU’s 19 colleges havebeen funded to date. A list of the colleges and/orunits involved and the various community partnersoffers a glimpse of the increase in facultyparticipation and potential impact upon theUniversity District.

OSU Colleges/UnitsCollege of the ArtsCollege of DentistryCollege of EducationCollege of EngineeringCollege Food, Agricultural, and

Environmental SciencesCollege of Human EcologyCollege of the Humanities

College of LawCollege of MedicineCollege of NursingCollege of Social WorkCollege of Veterinary MedicineOffice of Academic AffairsUniversity College

Community PartnersAll 13 Columbus Public Schools ServingUniversity District residentsBalletMet ColumbusThe Columbus SymphonyThe Family CenterFamily Focus Center at Second Ave.

Elementary SchoolGodman GuildNeighborhood Services, Inc.Project OpenHand

The scope of the projects funded affirms theCollaborative’s dedication to its premise: The uni-versity has a responsibility to support the commu-nity; it must learn from and build on communityassets; it cannot support the community withoutsupporting schools and families; and university sup-port, if it is to be effective, must be collaborative.

Grants Focusing on CommunityA variety of seed grant projects focused on

one or more aspects of the University Districtcommunities.

• A geriatric dentistry clinic operates a half-day session each week and provides a rangeof dental services for under-served, home-bound, elderly patients.

• An assessment of animal-related contami-nation of public areas in the universityneighborhoods has senior veterinary stu-dents assess certain disease risks to neigh-borhood residents that arise from domestic,stray, and wild animal contamination in thedistrict.

• The service-learning cooperative has as itsgoal to develop an innovative, collaborativepartnership between the College ofEducation and three community nonprofitorganizations: Godman Guild,Neighborhood Services, and ProjectOpenHand.

• Community commitment introduces newstudents, faculty, and staff to thoughtful

community service in the UniversityDistrict.

• A project called Developing Community/University Partnerships: A Model forExemplary Theory and Practice engagedfaculty and students with a neighborhoodagency in the assessment of communitystrengths and needs. The project built astronger sense of community among the res-idents, provided data for the agency, taughtstudents techniques involved in such datacollection.

• A School of Natural Resources project pro-vides students with practical experience inevaluating trees in the University Districtneighborhoods for structural stability andother associated hazards.

• Urban public health action and education forthe university neighborhoods involves 10-12senior veterinary students in identifyingpublic health problems in the communityand devising and implementing solutions tothose problems.

• The use of the arts to engender a positivecommunity spirit takes OSU Arts personnelinto schools and other neighborhood settingsand encourages residents to attend artsevents on campus.

• Iuka Ravine: Resident and User Surveysconducted a study of the Iuka Ravine andprepared design and management proposalsfor the rehabilitation and long-term sustain-ability of this unique green space in theUniversity District.

• A home ownership survey analyzed deedtransfer data for the University District(1984-95) to provide a longitudinal look atproperty values in the area.

• A College of the Arts project is developinga portable graphic information display ofcommunity activities initiated by CampusCollaborative/Campus Partners including aninteractive component for presenting video-taped material and feedback from commu-nity and other viewers.

Grants Focusing on SchoolsA number of seed grants are directed at sup-

porting the University District schools.

• Cultural diversity as practice: introducingsomatic education facilitates communityunderstanding and appreciation of cultural

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diversity through cross-cultural movementexperiences for teachers and students at twoUniversity District schools.

• A College of Education project is develop-ing an interactive website for the 13 publicschools which serves the district and theirneighborhoods that will service civic andeducational purposes.

• The neighborhood literacy tutoringexchange brings together first-year OSUhonors students and public school studentsfrom the neighborhoods in a literacy tutor-ing exchange.

• The Department of Spanish and Portugueseis building a community of Hispanics andSpanish speakers in the University Districtthrough mentoring, tutoring, internships,activities on and off campus, partnershipswith public schools, and field research.

• Students at two University District schoolsare engaged in neighborhood studies andneeds assessments as the foundation forservice-learning.

• A project called Music and Dance created aunique partnership among OSU faculty andstudents, professional musicians in theColumbus Symphony and BalletMetColumbus, and three University Districtschools.

• University District public schools in contextconstructed a database profiling the area’spublic schools and their neighborhoods as a tool to promote teaching, inquiry, andservice.

• Honors at Indianola is a project matchingstudents from the University HonorsProgram to work with 8th grade students atIndianola Middle School.

• The College of Law designed Street Law inthe Public Schools that used 36 law studentsto teach basic legal concepts to students in10 of the University District schools.

• Two service-learning initiatives are funded.They will result in at least six new service-learning courses in the University District.

A team from the College of Education is cur-rently conducting two major school studies.

• The contexts of learning study is a compre-hensive analysis of the family, community,and school contexts affecting school

improvement efforts across the UniversityDistrict.

• The study of best practices across the coun-try in three areas: university/school partner-ships, successful school restructuring mod-els, and effective coordinated servicesmodels. The studies will result in recom-mendations for the partnership betweenOSU and the schools in the UniversityDistrict.

For further information on these College ofEducation projects see www.coe.ohiostate.edu/tlb/.

Grants Focusing on FamiliesA third group of funded initiatives emphasizes

families.

• A project out of the School of AlliedMedical Professions, Hands Across High,provides resident health screening and areferral network, collects health risk anddemographic data; and develops creditcourses for graduate and professional students.

• Strengthening Bridges that Link Schools,Families, and Communities developed anupper level undergraduate course and website on developmental issues faced by ado-lescents and families in the transition frommiddle to high school.

• Neighborhood Learning Circles provideadult learning opportunities for UniversityDistrict residents on topics chosen by them.A unified physical activity program pro-vided a weekly program at OSU (gymna-sium, pool, and playing field) for persons 3-21 years of age with or without disabilities.

• A project from the School of Nursing ana-lyzed the increased use of emergency foodservices in the University District and thecharacteristics of users of this service.

• The Senior Housing Outreach Programassisted older homeowners with referrals toappropriate service agencies and with vol-unteer student service projects.

• Determining the feasibility of providing amodel of transitional housing for college stu-dents who are single mothers at risk forhomelessness was a joint project with theCollege of Social Work and the School ofArchitecture.

• The Family/Community Literacy Partnershipconducted home and community visits tolearn about existing literacy events in threeschool communities and shared models forimproving reading with children and theirfamilies.

• A grant to the College of Human Ecology pro-vided software for students to study housingneeds in the university neighborhoods.

• A group representing several OSU collegesand units is gathering to begin a study on theimpact on low income housing in the neigh-borhoods brought on by the revitalizationproject.

As a result of the seed grant program, numer-ous faculty, staff, and students were, are, and willcontinue to be involved with the residents, fami-lies, schools, organizations, and agencies of thecommunities in the University District. Many ofthe projects seeded by the Collaborative are insecond stages with funding from other sources.The impact on the University District is onlybeginning to be understood. However, the impacton the university is evidenced by the continuinginterest in the seed grant program and in itsincreased funding. For further information on theseed grant program see http://www.osu.edu/cam-puscollab/seed.htm.

Lessons Learned

1. Focusing the basic academic mission of theuniversity in community-based teachingand inquiry is the most effective way toengage faculty in an on-going partnershipwith the community.

2. Seed grants promote this engagement andattract interest from across the university.

3. Sustainability of projects is critical andneeds more attention because offering thecommunity programs that are temporarydoes not build partnerships and may domore harm than good in terms of buildingtrust.

4. Interdisciplinary approaches are essentialfor success in community partnership butstill difficult to achieve given the depart-mental structure of the university.

Specific outcomes of individual seed grantsare available on the Collaborative web site athttp://www.osu.edu/campuscollab/.

Community Outreach Partnership Center

In the evolution of partnership developmentbetween The Ohio State University and its sur-rounding neighborhoods, a Community OutreachPartnership Center (COPC) was a logical out-growth of the Collaborative’s recommendation to“strengthen health and well-being in the univer-sity district.” A 1996 application for federal fund-ing from the U. S. Department of Housing andUrban Development was submitted to unite theresources of collaborative partners and create aninterprofessional program of outreach andresearch. The original and continuing goal ofCOPC is to strengthen and stabilize the citizensof Weinland Park, a University District neighbor-hood where 92% of the working families earn lessthan $10,000/year. Efforts are aimed at “wholefamily” stability as an essential underlayment ofsupport for the neighborhood schools. Four areasof most pressing concern were identified througha series of focus groups conducted by theCollaborative, the Godman Guild Association, along-time neighborhood social service agency,and the Weinland Park Community Collaborative,a neighborhood residents’ organization. They are

• communication,• job training, • entrepreneurship training, and • family housing/stability.

CommunicationConcerns of the residents in the Weinland

Park neighborhood are vital to the developmentand implementation of COPC programs. The lan-guage of the 1996 grant articulated quarterlymeetings of a Community Advisory Committee asa continuous improvement process for the neigh-borhood. Meaningful dialog and communicationincluding regular goal setting, feedback and eval-uation serve to encourage mid-course programadjustments that respond in a timely fashion tocommunity assessment of all COPC initiatives.Such interaction positively impacts neighborhoodresidents’ perception of their own efficacy in fur-thering the change process within the community.

To highlight the importance of communica-tion skills for youthful residents of the WeinlandPark Neighborhood, the idea of Read All AboutIt, a community newspaper written, published, anddistributed by middle school-age youth (ages 11to 13), was conceived in 1998. Adult advisorsfrom the Weinland Park Community

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Collaborative, OSU Extension, and the CampusCollaborative planned and met for two hoursweekly with the newspaper staff beginning in June1998. In subsequent months students explored allaspects of newspaper production including report-ing, photography, and desktop publishing. Fromthe beginning, the student group demonstratedownership of the newspaper by naming the pub-lication, deciding what the layout would look like,and making editorial decisions about what infor-mation their publication would contain. COPCprovided support in the form of a monthly stipendfor the newspaper staff, which they earned byattendance at weekly meetings and contributionsof articles to the monthly newspaper.

The young people took on the additionalresponsibility of advertising and marketing thepaper, contacting local business owners to ask ifthey would help with distribution by making thepublication available in their stores. Enthusiasmgrew as students’ communication skills improvedwith each venture into the community. They wrotescripts, practiced them during mock interviewingsessions, and honed their presentation skills aswell as their self-esteem in the process.

Adult advisors forged partnerships with localnewspapers such as The Columbus Dispatch,which provided a tour of their facility and sentreporters to Read All About It monthly meetingsto work with the students. A representative fromFifth Third Bank facilitated a workshop aboutmoney management, and agreed to set up savingsaccounts so students can watch their money grow.

The newspaper is printed free of charge by thestaff at the Ohio Youth Advocacy Program (OYAP)graphics facility, which is housed in the samebuilding as the weekly newspaper staff meetings.Additional experiences are being planned for thestudents in graphics, in cooperation with OYAP.The Department of Journalism at OSU hasexpressed interest in developing a mentorship pro-gram with university students and the newspaperstaff. OYAP envisions a comprehensive after-school program for youth in the neighborhood, ofwhich the newspaper and graphics connection willbe components. At this time, coordinators aremeeting with principals from the schools in thearea to receive their input and suggestions.

Job TrainingReversing the public assistance and high rates

of unemployment of Weinland Park residentsrequires job training. In February of 1998 the

COPC Job Training Advisory Committee,composed of partners from OSU, OSU Extension,and two community outreach centers, theWeinland Park Community Collaborative and theGodman Guild Association, hosted an open housefor residents titled “Want a Good Job? Help UsHelp You.” The results provided residents’ inputon their own needs related to employment. Twomajor initiatives are designed to increase the abil-ities of residents of the University District toobtain and retain employment, and to increase thecapacity of the neighborhood to support employ-ability through job training. They are (1) workmaturity and job search skills; and (2) compe-tency-based building construction skills inte-grated with employability skills.

Work Maturity and Job Search Skills: JobSuccess Course

Curriculum for a Job Success training pro-gram was developed and is shared by a team ofrepresentatives from the Center on Education andTraining for Employment at The Ohio StateUniversity, the Godman Guild Association, theOSU Cares Project, and the College of EducationSchool-to-Work Campus Partners Project. Builtaround an employability skill framework, itsobjective is to equip unemployed adults in theneighborhood with the necessary knowledge,skills and abilities (SCANS Competencies*) tosecure and successfully perform in temporary andpermanent jobs. Specific topics in the 55-hourcourse are:

• personal attitudes crucial to successful jobperformance

• self-knowledge in identifying realistic joboptions

• time management and goal-setting• personal short- and long-term goal-setting• job application process• resume building• successful job interviewing techniques and

role plays• employer expectations• teamwork and team behavior• computer basics

Since March 1998, five Job Success Courseshave been offered through the Godman GuildAssociation, serving more than 75 Weinland ParkNeighborhood residents. Merging course contentwith targeted counseling and the outreach support

of Godman Guild staff members has proven to bea winning combination. When participants com-plete the course and become employed, relation-ships with Godman Guild staff do not end.Ongoing support in the form of mentoring rela-tionships that continue as long as needed is a crit-ical element of successful employment experi-ences for Job Success graduates.

______________________*SCANS is an acronym for Secretary’s Commission on

Achieving Necessary Skills, representatives from education,business, labor, and government who identified “workplaceknow-how” – five competencies, skills and personal qualitiesneeded for solid job performance by entry-level workers.

Competency-based Building ConstructionSkills Integrated with EmployabilitySkills:

Project BuildPROJECT BUILD was envisioned as an

expanded, six-week, double-stranded Job Successcourse for neighborhood residents. Customized tothe construction industry, it focused on highlyintegrated training in employability skills andtechnical construction skills in seven areas of theindustry:

• landscaping• plumbing• electrical• masonry• carpentry• roofing• heavy highway and utility construction

The first PROJECT BUILD was held as apilot program in the spring of 1999. Training wasconducted at the Godman Guild SettlementHouse, in a number of local trade apprenticeshiptraining facilities, and in local Habitat forHumanity homes. Experts from the constructionindustry taught job-specific skills in basic homeand building maintenance, and heavy highway andutility construction. Two adult educators facili-tated the application of employability skills toeach area of the industry. Tools that were pur-chased have become part of a toolbank, which willbe run like a lending library for neighborhood res-idents as needed.

Ten residents graduated from the pilot pro-gram, and nine are employed in the constructionindustry at this time (one woman delivered a baby

after completing the course). The hands-onactivities, networking opportunities with peoplefrom the industry who were in a position to hirecourse participants, ongoing mentoring from theGodman Guild staff, and bonding support fromeach other created an empowering growth experi-ence for each participant. Additional funding hasbeen awarded the Godman Guild Association forthree more offerings of PROJECT BUILD.Continued collaboration of all the COPC partners– OSU, Weinland Park Community Collaborative,and Godman Guild – will enhance these futurecourses. In addition, COPC will assist GodmanGuild financially in phasing in a Job Developerposition.

Due to the demand for qualified workers thenext phase will add HVAC (heating, ventilation,and air conditioning) and lengthen the program toeight weeks. Curriculum is being enhanced toreflect specific industry competencies, and will becertified by the Building Industry Association asa competency-based curriculum. Phase II willinclude graduates of the pilot program in the plan-ning stages, and it is hoped that their employers,in allowing them released time to work in somecapacity with students during the second course,will become partners as well.

Entrepreneurship TrainingThe Weinland Park Business and

Entrepreneurship Center (BEC) began with a pro-gram for acquiring competence in entrepreneur-ship. The training was coordinated with accom-panying services to assist neighborhood residentsin small business with start-up and operation. TheBEC is designed to support the birth, growth, anddevelopment of small businesses in the WeinlandPark area.

A community garden was planted and microentrepreneurial activities for youth and adults wereheld. The BEC Team held three major communityservice events which brought together communityand university students.

The next phase of the entrepreneurship activ-ities was to identify programs and organizationalaspects of existing business incubators. Results ofthe research into business retention and expansionprograms and business incubators have been usedto develop a working plan for the center. This planwas developed through a BEC AdvisoryCommittee made up of representatives from citygovernment, the business community, theUniversity Community Business Association, and

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OSU faculty and students. The plan calls for BECto offer the following kinds of services:

• small business start-up and consultationservices (including assistance with market-ing plan development, limited access totechnological services, phone answeringservice, business mailing address);

• formation of a Weinland Park BusinessAssociation;

• a growers cooperative and farmers market;and

• seminars on How to Start Your OwnBusiness (e.g., child care, painting, land-scaping, construction, How to Contract withOSU and the City, and the Small BusinessExcel Program.

Family Housing StabilityThe purpose of the family/housing stability

outreach program is to increase family stabilityand to prevent eviction and homelessness. Amongthe barriers to stability are lack of family lifeskills, confidence in individual ability, and accessto resources needed to acquire skills. The programbuilds on and complements existing programs atGodman Guild and goals of the Weinland ParkCommunity Collaborative, and focuses on devel-opment of skills that enable families to increasethe probability of obtaining and maintaining asecure housing situation, and to reduce thechances of eviction or foreclosure. Emphasis isplaced on goal setting, planning and decision-making skills, within a train-the-trainer context ofbudgeting, tenant rights/responsibilities, conse-quences of non-payment of rent, community andconsumer skills and resources, home managementand care, nutrition and meal planning and aware-ness of community resources.

Counselors from Godman Guild assisted thestart-up of the first activity by recommendingcommunity residents for training as peer mentorsfor at-risk families in the Weinland Park neigh-borhood. They participated in five weeks of train-ing to learn how to teach family life skills, to learnmethods of mentoring, and to increase familiaritywith community resources. Upon completion ofthe training each peer mentor was matched witha family.

A Block Leader program was initiated insupport of the Eyes on Weinland Park community

program. Information binders were created anddistributed to all block leaders including topicssuch as telephone circles, block leader duties, andprocedures to follow for various code violationswithin the neighborhood. Each topic had beenidentified by neighbors as problems, and the pro-cedural steps for dealing with such problems equipthe block leaders to inform their neighbors aboutappropriate actions to take.

Two community residents were hired as com-munity liaisons to promote these programs withtheir neighbors and to keep the lines of commu-nication continually open between residents andCOPC. An Information Exchange was also con-ducted, involving residents and OSU students tak-ing information about community resources door-to-door and at the same time encouraging andrecruiting residents to become involved in com-munity building activities. Other communityempowering events have been held as part of aprogram called “Dare to Care about WeinlandPark, including neighborhood meetings withpolice and government officials to discuss neigh-borhood concerns, neighborhood clean up andbeautification projects, and several communityfestivals featuring arts and crafts, music, and food.

Lessons Learned

1. Community partnerships require long-termcommitment to build and maintain. Allpartners bring a history of previous rela-tionships that need to be understood andmay need time for healing and/or rebuild-ing working relationships. Flexibility and awillingness to listen and learn from all par-ties are essential for this type of work.

2. Cultural diversity and expectations must berespected. University representatives inparticular need to be sensitive to styles ofmanagement and organization in commu-nity groups, expectations for practicalresults from projects, and scheduling meet-ings and events when community partnerscan participate.

3. Taking as much time as necessary to com-municate effectively and achieve consensusfrom all partners before decisions are madeis essential and time well spent. Without thatprocess conflicts and misunderstandingsinterfere and make successful programsimpossible.

4. Adopting an asset-based approach, ratherthan over-emphasis on community needs, isa critical decision in building a genuinepartnership.7

University District Education Committee

The University District Education Committee(UDEC) is a collaboration of educators, parents,and citizens. It grew from the Collaborative’s rec-ommendation to “strengthen the schools in theUniversity Neighborhood” so that the universitydistrict becomes a neighborhood of choice. Thispartnership has been working since 1996 toimprove the education of children and youth in thesix elementary schools, two middle schools andfive high schools that serve families living in theneighborhoods around the Columbus campus ofThe Ohio State University. Formed under the aus-pices of the University District Organization andthe Campus Collaborative, UDEC is composed ofprincipals and teacher representatives from theabove 13 schools of the University District, andof representatives of Columbus Public Schools,the Columbus Education Association, Ohio State,and the University District neighborhoods.

In December 1997 four key principles andgoals for UDEC’s work emerged from the com-mittee’s discussions, two public forums, and aseries of neighborhood potluck dinner meetings:

• Educational excellence and success in stu-dent performance,

• Community-based involvement and collab-oration,

• Linking community resources through theschools, and

• Learning for a lifetime.

UDEC has become known as the LearningBridge, a place where the university, the commu-nity, and the schools can enjoy in-depth discussionof issues and share insights. It connects theschools of the University District with statewidesources of ideas and funding to develop programssuited to the needs of the students and teachers.

UDEC has focused its efforts on specificissues related to its goals, namely technology,English as a Second Language (ESL), and intern-ships – all areas identified by the UDEC schoolsas important to improving the quality of educationfor their students. UDEC and the CampusCollaborative have been able to identify resources

at OSU and in the larger community to fund acommunity computer center, to assist with assess-ment and tuition of ESL students, to recruit tutorsfrom OSU students, faculty, and staff for literacyinitiatives, and to attract funding for the two majorinitiatives described below. UDEC is currentlyexploring ways to publicize the assets of theUDEC schools to the community through thestudies of the UDEC schools described above (inthe section on Seed Grants). These studies willprovide recommendations for the directionUDEC’s work will take in the next five years.

Building a School-to-Work System: Walkingthe Walk

Addressing the concern of “communityinvolvement and collaboration,” Ohio school-to-work grant activities were carefully conceptual-ized for consistency within the Campus Partnersfor Community Urban Redevelopment initiative,and within the OSU College of Education’sSchool-to-Work Program. Grant activities broughttogether a diverse partnership of representativesfrom Columbus Public Schools, business andindustry, labor, community-based organizations,and Ohio State. They joined the 13 UniversityDistrict schools in 1997 to provide educators andstudents with experiences in businesses as learn-ing laboratory extensions of the classroom. Usingthe “common language” of employability skills -the SCANS competencies – a graduate-level pro-fessional development course offered by OSU’sCollege of Education helped teams of UniversityDistrict School teachers to facilitate the integra-tion of career awareness and job readiness into thecurriculum. Course participants earned threehours of graduate credit by attending a two-dayexternship in business and industry, by attendingthe course sessions housed in one of theUniversity District schools, and by developing andimplementing integrated action plans. Resourcesdeveloped during the course included:

• Student internship planning guide• Intern provider planning guide• SCANS teacher externship logbook• K-12 school-to-work thematic curriculum

units.

The following year, 1998-99, Continuing toWalk the Walk was funded to build upon the foun-dation by emphasizing work-based learning. The

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new superintendent of Columbus Public Schools,Dr. Rosa Smith, had determined that every grad-uating senior would experience 140 hours ofmeaningful internship – work-based learning –before graduation. OSU is a major employer in itsown neighborhood, and campus jobs encompassall six of the Columbus Public Schools CareerPathway clusters:

• mechanical and industrial technologies, • arts and communication, • healthcare services, • business and management, • construction and technical, and • services and retail marketing.

Because of this, the University was in a uniqueposition to assist the schools to reach Dr. Smith’svision. Continuing to Walk the Walk highlightedemployment opportunities within OSU, as well asthe many diverse educational programs availableon campus. Therefore, in addition to being sup-portive of the Columbus Public School students’goals, OSU was able to demonstrate its benefits,either as a prospective employer, a college desti-nation, or both.

One highlight of this effort occurred in thespring of 1999. Nineteen students from a middleschool visited the OSU campus on a weekly basisto complete a ten-hour mentorship with OSU fac-ulty/staff. Participating students worked alongsideOSU research staff and observed and participatedin current research in areas including plant biology,aquatic science, genetics, and architectural history.Many mentorships were so successful that studentsextended their visits beyond the required ten hours.

Another highlight provided high school stu-dents the opportunity to participate in the OSUDepartment of Neurosurgery “Neurosurgeon fora Day program” (NSFAD). The goal of NSFAD isnot to create doctors, but to motivate students tostay in school and encourage them to prepare forfuture careers. This dynamic program was con-ducted on four separate occasions for thirty-twostudents. Students worked alongside physiciansand used the same high-speed drills and tools usedby neurosurgeons in the operating room. Theyetched chicken eggshells, reconnected skull tissue,dissected cow brains, and sutured pigskin. Theyalso learned about the potential consequences ofrisky behaviors, and the cruel realities of brain orspinal chord injuries.

Finally, 160 sophomores were brought to cam-pus to visit with OSU faculty and staff to learnabout specific academic requirements of profes-sional careers in the arts and humanities. Studentstoured campus departments, attended undergrad-uate courses, met with OSU admissions and finan-cial aid representatives, and interacted withfaculty and staff members.8

Elementary teachers utilized the free CampusArea Bus Service to bring their students for careerexploration. The list below demonstrates theteachers’ enthusiasm for visiting campus:

Sites Visited

OSU Police Station

Ohio Union

Housing and Food Services

Bookstore

Lantern Newspaper

Reprographics/

Print Shop

As a result of these activities, from September30, 1998 through September 30, 1999:

• 645 K-12 students participated in careerexperiences on the OSU campus.

• 88 University District Columbus PublicSchool teachers and administrators workedto provide K-12 students with OSU careerexperiences.

• 103 OSU faculty/staff members agreed toserve as STW career hosts to UniversityDistrict students and schools.

• 7 STW teaching units were created andprinted. Each grade appropriate teachingunit is correlated with the Columbus PublicSchools teaching objectives. Additionally,each unit integrates STW, contextual teach-ing and the ITAC (Instructional Technology& Academic Computing) principles.

• 38 teachers and school administratorsattended a professional development STW

workshop on the OSU campus. This work-shop provided teachers and administratorswith STW information, teaching resources,and opportunities to involve their students infuture STW activities on campus.

Urban Schools InitiativeUnder the leadership of the College of

Education at Ohio State University, four urbanschool districts, Columbus, Mansfield, South-Western, and Springfield, have joined as partnerswith the Ohio Department of Education and theMartha Holden Jennings Foundation in a five–year project to study and improve urban educa-tion. Here in Columbus, OSU and the ColumbusPublic Schools agreed to work with the elemen-tary and middle schools serving the UniversityDistrict. With a grant from the Martha HoldenJennings Foundation, the OSU/Urban SchoolsInitiative aims to promote much-needed researchand develop training programs to support the workof teachers and educators in Central Ohio schools.

Local Needs, Statewide IssuesThe issues facing the thirteen schools serving

the University District are similar to those of otherurban schools across the state. Thus, the OSU/USIpartnership is an opportunity for UniversityDistrict schools in Columbus to join in a statewideeffort to reform urban education. OSU/USI inCentral Ohio builds on earlier work of the OhioDepartment of Education’s Urban SchoolsInitiative. Since 1996, ODE has met regularly withrepresentatives of Ohio’s twenty-one urban schooldistricts to study common issues such as literacy,mobility, and community collaboration.

These urban school districts face enormouschallenges to improve student performance: largestudent populations, higher concentrations ofminority and special needs students, and a historyof past economic and social barriers. In 1997, thestatewide Urban Schools Initiative, with fundingfrom the Jennings Foundation, produced a visionstatement, Through the Eyes of Children, callingfor systemic change in Ohio’s urban schools.While each of the University District schools mustcreate its own continuous improvement plan, toguide its work at the building level, the visionstatement in Through the Eyes of Children givesdepth and broader context to what each schooldefines as its agenda for change.

Tackling the IssuesIn December 1998, with direction from the

statewide USI project and Jennings, the OSU/USIstaff interviewed administrators and educators inthe four districts to identify areas of greatest need.Priorities with the strongest response included:student mobility, proficiency tests, curriculumalignment, teacher turnover, and the role of fam-ilies and mentors in student learning. In March,1999, OSU faculty in Columbus and Mansfieldwere encouraged to join the OSU/USI collabora-tive and to identify action research projects onthese and related issues. From the start, the pub-lic schools accepted responsibility for definingand developing projects in their districts. InAugust, 1999, they began making decisions aboutthe selection of proposals from OSU faculty andabout which schools within the four districts toinclude. Overall, there was little difficulty inreaching agreement about areas of greatest needor where to locate the projects.

In the first half year, the OSU/USI respondedto the critical need for literacy programs, both inthe short-term and the long-term. For instance, thefirst OSU/USI project, a workshop held inColumbus on May 22, 1999, was designed forteachers who were to work with third grade stu-dents in summer school. The program focused onreading and writing activities to help students pre-pare for the fourth grade proficiency test. A sec-ond project, addressing long-term needs, focusedon training literacy teams, through five sessionsheld during the 1999-2000 school year. Both theseprojects included teachers from schools inside theUniversity District. With a nationally recognizedfaculty in language and early childhood instruc-tion, OSU met the challenge of getting these proj-ects up quickly and effectively.

Context for ChangeSix months into the project, the OSU/USI staff

has begun to focus more sharply on the schoolswithin the University District. The greatest chal-lenge so far springs from the size of the Columbusschool system and The Ohio State University.Nevertheless, each has discovered how to makeinnovative changes to their usual way of doing busi-ness. For example, the OSU College of Educationdelegated decision making on faculty proposals toa steering committee with members from each ofthe four urban school districts. The ColumbusPublic Schools, for its part, was willing to focus

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Career Observed

law enforcement,criminal justice

hospitality, foodservices, businessadministration

food services,maintenance,housekeeping

purchasing,customer service

journalism, publish-ing, printing

computers, printing,customer service

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resources from USI on the University area schoolsas a subset within the larger CPS system. Sincemany of the schools in the University District hadsome of the lowest test scores citywide, concen-trating resources here made sense, and the lessonslearned here will benefit other urban schools inColumbus and elsewhere.

As the OSU/USI project moves into its sec-ond year, the Learning Bridge of UDEC offershope and vision for the work ahead, and a way totackle tough issues together.

Lessons Learned

1. There are resources available internal to theuniversity and external, e.g. the JenningsFund, to support serious education reforminitiatives.

2. Having existing, on-going partnerships inplace between universities, schools, andcommunities facilitates the process ofsecuring additional resources for extendingthose partnerships.

3. Research projects and other training pro-grams undertaken by university/schoolpartnerships work best when the urbanschool districts define their needs/interestsand when they are fully involved in thedecision making of the partnership.

Concluding Remarks

During its five-year history, the CampusCollaborative at The Ohio State University workedto support the core values of the Campus Partners’mission. We will continue in the work towardbuilding a model of university/community rela-tionships so that the University District will be aculturally and socio-economically diverse neigh-borhood of choice. Progress made and lessonslearned are continually analyzed and as a resultprogram, plans, and initiatives are adjusted andrevamped. Each step taken affirms theCollaborative foundational concept: The univer-sity has a responsibility to support the communityand learn from and build on community assets; itcannot support the community without supportingschools and families; and university support, if itis to be effective, must be collaborative.

Notes1 Hal A. Lawson and Katherine Hooper-Briar. Expanding

Partnerships: Involving Colleges and Universities inInterprofessional Collaboration and Service (TheDanforth Foundation and The Institute for EducationalRenewal at Miami University, 1994).

2 Lee Benson, Ira Harkavy, and John Puckett.“Introduction: Turning Points.” Universities andCommunity Schools, Volume 6, Number 1-2 Fall-Winter,1999, pp. 3-6.

3 Ira Harkavy. “School-Community-University Partnerships.”Universities and Community Schools, Volume 6, Number1-2 Fall-Winter, 1999, pp. 7-24.

4 EDAW. University Neighborhoods Revitalization Plan:Concept Document: Policies, Recommendations andPrograms (Columbus, OH: Campus Partners, 1996).

5 EDAW. University Neighborhoods Revitalization Plan:Concept Document: Policies, Recommendations andPrograms (Columbus, OH: Campus Partners, 1996).

6 EDAW. University Neighborhoods Revitalization Plan:Concept Document: Policies, Recommendations andPrograms (Columbus, OH: Campus Partners, 1996).

7 John P. Kretzmann and John L. McKnight. BuildingCommunities from the Inside Out: a Path Toward Findingand Mobilizing a Community’s Assets. (Evanston, IL:Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research,Neighborhood Innovations Network, NorthwesternUniversity, 1993).

8 Jeffery Byars, Continuing to Walk the Walk: a School-to-Work System Involving Campus Partners for CommunityUrban Redevelopment,” prepared as a final report, TheOhio State University College of Education, Sandra G.Pritz and Michael Casto, Co-Principal Investigators, 1999.

About the Authors

Jilaine W. Fewell is a Ph.D. candidate in theCollege of Education at the Ohio State University.

Oliver Jones, Ph.D., is co-director of The OhioState University/Urban Schools Initiative in theOSU College of Education, funded by the MarthaHolden Jennings Foundation.

B E Y O N D C O M M U N I T YI N V O L V E M E N T A N D S E R V I C E

L E A R N I N G T O E N G A G E DU N I V E R S I T I E S *

Hal A. Lawson

U N I V E R S I T Y A T A L B A N YS T A T E U N I V E R S I T Y O F N E W Y O R K

As a new century dawns, a growing number of universities are revisiting the land grantideal. This part of their planning takes them “back to the future.” All seek increasing com-munity involvement, often through service learning initiatives. A few universities, notablyones supported by the Kellogg Foundation , are not merely going back to the future by revis-iting the land grant ideal. They are pioneering new approaches to community engagement.Indeed, some call themselves “engaged universities.”

How does community involvement differ from engagement? Are engaged universitiesany different from those that are involved? Or, is engagement merely a new label for cus-tomary kinds of involvement? What kinds of involvement and engagement activities shoulduniversities prioritize? How might involvement pave the way for engagement? Questionslike these highlight needs for a working vocabulary, one that identifies alternatives and facil-itates strategic planning. This paper has been structured in response to these needs.

Community involvement and engagement are defined, and their differences are identi-fied. Planning alternatives are defined briefly. Their relationships and differences also areidentified. For example, some of these alternatives are associated with the arts and sci-ences disciplines. Others are associated with the professional schools and colleges. Someare associated with both. In other words, these alternatives are not mutually exclusive,and all analyses need to guard against dichotomous thinking. Planning alternatives shouldbe viewed on a continuum, which has involvement at one end and engagement at the other.“An involvement alternative” may pave the way for community engagement, and vice versa.

Three limitations must be acknowledged at the outset. First, all strategic planning frame-works and working vocabularies are normative. That is, they are value-committed, not value-neutral or free. Value frameworks need to be made explicit and then assessed against thecharacter, aspirations, and accountability structures of each university.

Second, planning frameworks and vocabularies are limited in two senses. It is impos-sible to envision every possibility for involvement and engagement. Moreover, there is grow-ing diversity among universities in the programs they offer and the faculty they support.State and local contexts also weigh heavily in strategic planning, suggesting that someinvolvement and engagement alternatives will be more appropriate for some universitiesthan for others. One size does not fit all.

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The third caution: All planning frameworksand working vocabularies are selective. Theyemphasize some priorities, external constituen-cies, societal needs, and internal university con-stituencies more than others. This selectivitybrings an obligation, an invitation, and an oppor-tunity. Analysts are obliged to identify their pref-erences and priorities.

For example, in the ensuing analysis academicadministrators and university faculty are the pri-mary audience. Selected professional schools,colleges, and departments are prioritized—namely, the helping fields of education, socialwork, health, juvenile justice, the individual,child, and family services fields (e.g., family andconsumer sciences, clinical psychology), andpublic administration and policy. This selectiv-ity serves as an invitation for other planningframeworks and vocabularies. Presented withthese alternatives, leaders have the opportunity tomake informed choices and good decisions, whichallow them to build on the strengths and aspira-tions of their university and respond to local con-texts, priorities, and needs.

Contrasting Involvement andEngagement

Although involvement and engagement arerelated, they offer different alternatives. A cleardistinction needs to be made, mindful that anysuch distinction reflects the values of the personoffering it. Because this distinction frames theensuing analysis, it needs to be introduced at theoutset so that readers to evaluate it.

Community involvement describes the volun-tary, extramural activities of academic adminis-trators, faculty, and students as individuals andgroups. The degree and kind of involvementvaries because the interests and commitments ofindividuals and groups also vary. In other words,involvement is optional. It entails adding newactivities and programs, and involvement activi-ties often occur at the margins. They are calledspecial projects, and they may depend on grantsand contracts. They may not be sustainable.Typically they lack “sticking power” and “stayingpower.”

To be sure, involvement activities may beinnovative. But they last only as long as individ-uals’ and groups’ interests and commitments aremaintained. For example, special courses andcommunity experiences are added, but little struc-

tural and cultural change occurs in departments,schools, and colleges. The university’s missiondoes not change. Nor does the dominant facultycareer pattern change. It remains individualistic,perhaps altruistic or entrepreneurial, in a laissezfaire university environment.

In brief, the “real university” does not change(Lawson, 1999b). That is, there are no visiblechanges in its missions, fundamental structures,cultures, accountabilities, reward systems, roles,and responsibilities. Simply stated, communityinvolvement activities and programs are thingsuniversities might do.

In contrast, community engagement is a socialresponsibility. It is something the university mustdo. Engagement is selective and strategic. Itfocuses strategic planning. It reaffirms andstrengthens the essential responsibilities of uni-versities for knowledge-related work and thepreparation of knowledge workers. Because uni-versities have finite resources and limited capac-ities, their engagement priorities must be selectedcarefully and strategically. Engaged universitiesseek to advantage themselves at the same time thatthey respond to important needs and challenges.

For example, the needs of vulnerable children,families, and their neighborhood communities arean important engagement priority. They are vul-nerable, in part, because they evidence multiple,co-occurring needs associated with poverty and itsclose companions (e.g., geographic isolation,social marginalization, learned hopelessness),along with racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity.They are vulnerable for another reason—namely,local universities may not have made firm com-mitments to their improvement.

New century, engaged universities will formfirm, sustainable partnerships with school com-munity demonstration sites in these vulnerablecommunities. Engaged universities are responsiveto local leadership, and they know the limits oftheir influence, power, and authority. In otherwords, these demonstration sites are not univer-sity colonies because leaders in vulnerable com-munities and engaged universities alike know thelimitations of colonialism. Enlightened self-inter-est on both sides propels the engagement agendaand engagement-related innovations. Engageduniversities benefit themselves at the same timethat they honor their social responsibilities byaddressing significant human and societal needs.

They bring their knowledge and knowledge work-ers to bear on important problems related withhuman well-being and social welfare. They willrenew, reform, and transform themselves in con-cert with practice innovations in local school com-munities.

Engagement changes the missions of the uni-versity (Holland, 1999; National Association ofState Universities and Land Grant Colleges,1999), along with some of its organizational struc-tures, faculty and student cultures, core programs,reward systems, roles, responsibilities, andaccountabilities. Engaged universities are thusunique in some fundamental ways.

However, engaged universities are not whollytransformed. They retain important traditions,especially ones associated with the arts, sciences,and humanities. For example, the “ivory tower”image, which depends on social distancing andacademic freedom, should not be lost as engageduniversities are created. Faculty and students mustbe free to inquire, criticize, and imagine apartfrom vocational requirements and practical neces-sity. Their freedom to choose, including the deci-sion as to whether they wish to contribute to theengagement agenda, remains paramount. In fact,engaged universities will succeed to the extent thatacademic administrators, faculty, and studentsmake firm, voluntary commitments to this part ofthe university’s strategic planning agenda. Onlythen will this agenda have sticking power and stay-ing power. Only then will the university’s strate-gic planning agenda be an inclusive one. The ten-sion between these two images—the engageduniversity and the university-as ivory tower—is ahealthy one. It animates dialogue and action plan-ning around the need to strike an appropriate andeffective balance.

Thus, engaged universities make strategic,selective changes. They provide new opportunitystructures, resources and pathways for faculty andstudents. Said another way, they develop an infra-structure for engagement-related priorities, pro-grams, organizational structures, and cultures(Walshok, 1999).

Community Involvement Alternatives

Some engaged universities have started withinvolvement activities, suggesting that this dis-cussion also should start with them. There arefour involvement alternatives, and each may leadto engagement. These are: Service learning; out-

reach research and scholarship; interprofessionaleducation and training programs; and, interdisci-plinary research and scholarship.

Service Learning Service learning is commonplace in public

secondary schools, community colleges, and four-year colleges and universities. The literature onservice learning is growing (e.g., Astin, 1999;Harkavy & Benson, 1999; Zlotkowski, 1999). Itprovides a comprehensive rationale and docu-ments the institutional and personal benefits thatmay accompany it.

Typically, service learning is described as aform of citizenship education. Its premise is thatstudents learn while serving and serve while learn-ing. Experience is both learning process and con-tent, and students learn how to reflect on it to gaineducational benefits. They reflect on its meaning,purpose, and value, considering how their identi-ties and commitments may change as a result oftheir experience. In higher education, servicelearning typically is an undergraduate experience,and it is organized in two ways.

1. Undergraduate students elect a specializedservice learning course and receive aca-demic credit for their volunteer work.Typically students work with a special pop-ulation (e.g., children and youth; the eld-erly; the mentally ill), or they work on aspecial project (e.g., addressing environ-mental problems, facilitating voter regis-tration and participation, promoting histor-ical preservation). Supervision may beprovided by a faculty member, or it may beprovided by a student affairs professionalwho is employed to develop and superviseservice learning experiences. A seminaroften accompanies the service learningexperience. There is no final examinationbecause the educational experience is self-justifying. Students must satisfy attendanceand involvement requirements, and theyusually are required to keep a personal jour-nal. They record their impressions, experi-ences, learning, and development. Theylearn how to reflect on their experience,often in concert with other students. Limitstend to be imposed on the number of serv-ice learning credits students may applytoward graduation requirements.

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2. Professors provide in their respective coursesopportunities for undergraduate students toreceive additional academic credit inexchange for community service. Typicallythe service learning experience affords stu-dents opportunities to apply and use thecourse content. In some cases, the professoris the service learning supervisor and mayaccompany groups of students as they com-plete their work. In other cases, service learn-ing supervisors assume responsibility forsupervision. In addition to its contribution tocitizenship education, this second kind ofservice learning opportunity may be viewedas powerful, experientially-based learningthat enables students to gain greater masteryover the course content. In other words, theprocess of providing service enhances studentlearning. For example, students in a mathe-matics course may tutor children and youth.Students in a psychology course apply theirknowledge to meet a personal, family, or com-munity need. In both cases, students acquiremore understanding of the subject matter(math, psychology) through service. Theyalso gain career-related experiences and jobreadiness competencies. Customarily stu-dents complete a special paper or keep a jour-nal. An examination is not required, nor doexams for the course address the servicelearning experience.

Both ways to organize service learning areeffective. They also can be combined. Ideally,service learning provides a timely and powerfulway to integrate academic affairs and studentaffairs, improving the quality and impact ofundergraduate education. On the other hand, serv-ice learning’s growth and success give rise to twoissues and an important need.

The first issue derives from the increasing useof service learning in public secondary schools.The first issue is, what is unique and appropriateabout service learning in higher education? Thesecond, related issue is, what are the limits togrowth and, in turn, to the allocation of limitedeconomic resources for service learning? Asresource challenges grow, these twin issues gainimportance, and they suggest an important need.

Unfortunately, service learning has become a“catch-all” descriptor for many different kinds ofcommunity involvement and engagement. There

is need for more precise descriptors for theseother, important kinds of engagement and involve-ment. Together these descriptors comprise thefoundation for an improved planning vocabulary.This vocabulary may guide decision-making,resource allocations, and evaluations of the ben-efits to students, faculty, the university, and soci-ety. Outreach research and scholarship is anessential component in this improved workingvocabulary.

Outreach Research and Scholarship Outreach research and scholarship, like the

idea of “outreach universities,” can be traced backto the land grant ideal for American universities.These concepts are regaining popularity, thanks tothe work of Richard Lerner and Lou Anna Simon(Lerner, 1995; Lerner & Simon, 1998).

Outreach research and scholarship is differentfrom basic research and applied research. Bothbasic and applied research are conducted in con-trolled, safe environments provided by universitylaboratories, libraries, and offices. With outreachresearch and scholarship researchers and scholarsmove from university environments to extramuralenvironments. These extramural environmentsdemonstrate high levels of individual, family, andsocietal need.2

Two popular examples are the needs of “atrisk” youth and the needs of vulnerable familiesmanifesting multiple, co-occurring needs (e.g.,Lawson, 1997; Lerner, 1995). In order for theseneeds to be met and accompanying problems tobe solved, new knowledge and understanding arerequired. Outreach research and scholarship isdesigned to provide this new knowledge andunderstanding. University faculty and studentslocate themselves strategically to gain it. Theythen make genuine contributions to meetingtoday’s needs and solving problems.

Like the original vision for agriculture in theoriginal land institutions, research, development,diffusion, and dissemination models help defineoutreach. The language of “applied research andtechnology development” is commonplace. Theidea is to bring the considerable talents of uni-versity faculty and students, as knowledge experts,to bear on the problems, needs, and issues of theday. The dominant view of outreach research andscholarship is that “knowledge” and “theories” arerestricted to the formal scholarly and scientificactivities of university faculty and students. Theydevelop knowledge that community users need, or

should need and want. The knowledge systemthus is essentially one-way; it flows fromresearchers to external audiences.

Such a one-way relationship includes the con-ventional status hierarchy in universities.Researchers and scholars are at the top rungbecause their methodological rigor allows them toknow what others cannot know in quite the sameway without help. So, outreach scholarship struc-tures a special kind of relationship between uni-versities and their faculty and leaders in their sur-rounding communities. Unfortunately, it may beassociated with “kiss and run scholarship,” i.e.,once the individual researchers get their data andwrite their publications, local community leadersand practitioners may never see them, or hear fromthem again.

When individuals and groups volunteer, or arecommissioned, outreach research and scholarshipis a form of involvement. When outreach schol-arship is embedded in a firm community partner-ship agenda, it is a form of engagement. Initialinvolvement can lead to permanent engagement;indeed the two can co-exist. Involvement in somesettings by faculty in one or more disciplines maybe accompanied by firm engagement in other set-tings by faculty and students in other disciplines

Interprofessional Education and TrainingInterprofessional education and training pro-

grams (IPET) are structured to prepare helpingprofessionals (e.g., social workers, educators,nurses) to collaborate effectively.3 Collaborationmay occur at several related levels: Among pro-fessionals (interprofessional collaboration);among professionals and families in need (fam-ily-centered, or family-led collaboration); and,among professionals and all residents of a localneighborhood community (community collabora-tion). IPET programs and courses are structuredto facilitate one or more kinds of collaboration.Typically, these programs and courses involveclinical instructors and field placements, place-ments where collaboration is being practiced.Expert practitioners may serve as faculty associ-ates. Where involvement is concerned, the rela-tionships between practitioners and faculty arevoluntary and consensual.

Although a growing number of academicadministrators, faculty, students, and practitionerssuggest that IPET programs are essential and helpdefine best practices, and as many as eighty col-leges and universities are involved in some form

of IPET, the fact remains that these programspresently tend to operate at the margins. Theyare voluntary. They tend to be grant-dependent.They often are called projects.4 And, they do notchange “real university.”

IPET programs are sometimes called inter-disciplinary programs. Upon closer inspection,however, the two kinds of programs are different,but complementary. Interdisciplinary programstypically involve bridge-building practices acrossthe arts and sciences disciplines; they involvefields known as “the ologies” (e.g., Klein, 1996).Basic knowledge and understanding gainedthrough boundary spanning and relationship-building is the goal.

By contrast, IPET programs are action-ori-ented. They are tailored specifically for peoplewho want to make a living by working with peo-ple and their communities, striving to improveindividual, family, organizational, and communitywell-being. IPET programs disseminate theoriesof action, which are grounded in both disciplinaryand interdisciplinary understanding.5

For example, interdisciplinary programs oftenprovide the liberal education base for both under-graduate and graduate education. Similarly, inter-disciplinary programs can provide the foundationfor IPET programs. The linkages developedbetween and among these programs provideimportant ways to unite liberal and professionallearning.

Figure 1 (next page) illustrates this relation-ship, along with accompanying needs for profes-sional development programs for experiencedpractitioners. Entry level competence andadvanced, interprofessional leadership can beplanned as part of the articulation betweenundergraduate and graduate programs.Specialization remains, but it is grounded in aninterdisciplinary and interprofessional foundation.Interprofessional core content refers to the knowl-edge, skills, sensitivities, and values, which com-prise this foundation. Cluster content refers towhat groups of professions need to know and doin order to collaborate effectively. Specialty refersto the content that defines the unique roles,responsibilities, and accountabilities of each pro-fession. Key planning questions for IPET pro-grams are presented in Table 1 (next page).

Interdisciplinary research and scholarship isthe umbrella concept that refers to all knowledge-generating activities that involve persons

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representing two or more disciplines and helpingprofessions. Where research teams are concerned,differences between the arts and sciences disci-plines (the “ologies”) and the professional schoolsand colleges are less significant that they are inrelation professional education and practice.

There is emerging consensus on the require-ments for critical mass and related infrastructurein support of IPET and interdisciplinary programs(after Klein, 1996, pp. 35-36):

• An adequate number of faculty who sharecommon interests

• Faculty determine how much of their load isdevoted to interprofessional education andinterdisciplinary work.

• Faculty and students enjoy the ability toform hybrid communities of practice whowork at the boundaries of existing disci-plines and professions, building knowledgebridges in some instances and reconstruct-ing disciplinary knowledge in others.

• Academic administrators support facultyengagement, and recommendations con-cerning merit, retention, tenure, and promo-tion weigh the quality and impacts of theirengagement (e.g., Lawson, 1998; Rice &Richlin, 1993; Schön, 1995).

• Sufficient financial resources are provided,along with some autonomy over them

• Adequate mechanisms for continuous, effec-tive communication are provided.

• Faculty and programs enjoy a secure, per-manent organizational location

• Leaders and key faculty have the ability todevelop courses, certification programs, anddegree programs.

From Involvement to Engagement

It is one thing to claim that communityengagement is a social responsibility. It is quiteanother to determine the parameters of socialresponsibility and their implications for engage-ment. The question is, How should plannersweigh their social responsibilities and determinetheir engagement priorities? Planning dialoguefocused on this question helps make the choicesexplicit. In turn, these choices embody differentpriorities, and they involve value conflicts.

Derek Bok, the former president of HarvardUniversity, provided a useful frame of reference.

He cautioned against rushing into engagementactivities absent a well-conceived agenda andappropriate supports and mobilization activities.He raised three important assessment questions,and implications for practice can be derived fromthem (e.g., Lawson, 1997).

1. How important is the social need and howlikely is it that the university will succeed in doingsomething about it?

Guideline: Avoid undertaking tasks that otherorganizations can perform equally well. Acceptresponsibilities for work that requires the specialfeatures that set universities apart—its inquiry-minded faculty (often without practical experi-ence) and its ambitious, idealist students.

2. Will the requested actions interfere with thefreedom of individual professors and students,especially with their freedom to form their ownbeliefs and express their own opinions?

Guideline: Ensure that every activity under-taken enhances the university’s teaching, researchand scholarship, and service functions.

3. What new burdens (e.g., resources, time,loss of autonomy) will the desired initiative haveon the institution as a whole?

Guideline: Do not embark upon a new proj-ect—even those with large sums of outside fund-ing—without first making certain that this projectcommands the enthusiasm and support of facultymembers because, without widespread facultyinvolvement, support, and ownership, theseinitiatives are destined to fail. (Bok, 1982, pp. 77-79).

Bok’s three questions, accompanying criteria,and overall perspective provide an importantframe for planning dialogue about engagementpriorities. Identifiable values and priorities for theuniversity are embedded in these questions andcriteria. The same values and priorities areimplicit in the discussion that follows.

First and Second Generation University-Community Partnerships

First and foremost, engagement is marked bytwo generations of permanent partnershipsbetween the university helping fields such as edu-cation, health, and social work and school-com-munity demonstration sites. This “generationalmetaphor” and accompanying language for

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Table 1. Key Planning Questions Related toInterprofessional Education and TrainingPrograms

Are interprofessional education and training (IPET) programsdeveloped in concert with permanent community practice demon-stration sites?

If so, are these university-community partnership initiatives viewedas central to the missions of the university?

Is there a central organizing center or institute that mediatespartnerships and helps mobilize and deploy faculty, practitioners inthe field, and students?

Are IPET programs special projects that depend on grants andcontracts? Or, are they viewed as best practices, which need to beinstitutionalized?

Are IPET programs, courses, and experiences offered in allpreservice professional education? If so, how are they organized—as modules, courses, field experiences? If not, why not?

Are IPET programs offered to undergraduate students? To graduate students? Where undergraduate students are concerned,have connections been made with the liberal or general educationprogram?

What is the balance between conventional professional special-ization and interprofessional competence in IPET programs? Arestudents prepared for entry level competence, leadership, or both?

How will department chairs, deans and directors, and the VicePresident account for faculty time in IPET programs? How are theirduties in home departments covered?

Who receives credit for the student credit hours that are generated?Why? Is this formula satisfactory to all relevant stakeholders?

When interdisciplinary teams of faculty secure grants and contracts,how are the indirect costs distributed?

Does faculty involvement in IPET programs and community part-nerships "pay off" in retention, promotion, tenure, and merit salaryreviews? If so, what accommodations were made in facultyevaluation systems? If not, what changes are needed?

How, and by whom, are IPET programs evaluated? How are thefindings fed back and forward in the planning process?

Liberal & Interdisciplinary

Education

Interprofessional Education

Professional Education

Interprofessional Education

Professional Education

Undergraduate

Core

Cluster

Specialty

Graduate

Core

Leadership Development

Cluster

Specialty

Entry Level

PracticeProfessional Development

Programs

Figure 1

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partnerships were first developed by KatharineBriar-Lawson and Hal Lawson (Hooper-Briar &Lawson, 1996; Lawson & Hooper-Briar, 1994).6

They have used them to promote new kinds of col-laboration in conjunction with permanent demon-stration sites. These school-community demon-stration sites integrate and promote knowledgedevelopment, education and training, practiceinnovations, and community development. Theyfacilitate mutually-beneficial learning and devel-opment.

First generation partnerships are field-spe-cific. For example, education departments, col-leges and schools form partnerships with selectedpublic schools (called professional developmentschools and partner schools). Or, schools, col-leges, and departments of social work form part-nerships with public sector child welfare agencies.Nursing units in universities form partnershipswith selected hospitals orcommunity health settings inwhich students learn to prac-tice. These first generationpartnerships are evident onvirtually every university cam-pus. Typically best practicesites are the ones selected forpartnership. Often the chal-lenge is framed as applyingand evaluating existing knowl-edge, technologies, and skill.Outreach research and schol-arship also may be harbored inthese partnerships.

Second generation part-nerships involve two interact-ing and related kinds of col-laboration: (1) Collaborationamong schools, health andsocial service agencies, neigh-borhood organizations,governments, and the privatesector in local communities;and, (2) Collaboration amongthe academic and helpingdisciplines in the university.Second generation partner-ships are, in other words,interprofessional and interdis-ciplinary development sites.Collaboration in the universitymirrors, responds to, and helps

guide collaboration in communities; and viceversa. University leaders create supportive infra-structures for mutual learning, knowledge devel-opment, and improvement.

Needs for second generation partnerships areespecially evident in high poverty communities.These communities and their residents manifestco-occurring needs and problems. Their socialgeography is somewhat unique, and a new, socialgeography of helping and support is needed (e.g.,Curtis & Jones, 1998; Sampson & Morenoff,1997). Figure 2 (below) presents a worst case sce-nario, unfortunately one that derives from studiesof neighborhood communities in the nation’scities. A superficial examination of this figureyields an obvious conclusion. No one professionor organization can address them alone, in isola-tion from others. For example, public schoolscannot succeed absent stronger families, commu-

nity agencies, helping professions, neighborhoodorganizations, and economic-occupational devel-opment structures. Schools depend on theseorganizations and structures, just as the othersdepend on schools. All depend on the university,just as the university’s interests and welfare hingeon their improvement.

In brief, engaged universities develop secondgeneration partnerships because of enlightenedself-interest. A rationale follows.7

Most universities already are involved in artic-ulation projects with community colleges, publicschools and pre-schools (e.g., P-16 access andopportunity initiatives). Universities have clearpolitical mandates for these projects. For exam-ple, as understanding of the workforce require-ments associated with the global economy grows,and as the social demography of the United Stateschanges, other clear mandates have developed.Universities are expected to contribute to thedevelopment of a (higher) educated workforce,and reflecting the changing demographic land-scape, to recruit and educate a culturally-diverseworkforce. This rationale accompanies the humancapital argument, which justifies economic invest-ments in education, health care, and family sup-ports. A related plank in this platform of man-dates is growing awareness of the social,economic, and political costs associated with lackof higher education access and opportunity path-ways for culturally diverse citizens challenged bypoverty.8 In short, these articulations among pub-lic schools, community colleges, and universitiesto improve educational access and opportunitywill not be wholly effective absent these secondgeneration partnerships.

Having sketched the rationale, questions thatimplicate values, priorities, and resources enter thepicture. Will university leaders care about thesevulnerable school communities? Even if theycare, will they mobilize engagement-relatedactions? Do they have faculty, students, and aca-demic administrators who are committed to thiswork, the people, and the challenges? What arethe consequences of not becoming engaged inthese vulnerable communities? Reminders ofBok’s (1982) perspective, these four questions arepivotal for leaders of universities that aspire tobecome engaged.

It is essential that all university stakeholdersrecognize that the challenges in high povertyschool communities, especially multi-cultural

communities. Alike in some ways and similar inothers, these communities nevertheless differfrom predominantly Caucasian, well-to-do com-munities. For example, many of today’s P-16articulation projects in these well-to-do commu-nities require only school first generation part-nerships between public schools and universityeducation units. By contrast, in vulnerable com-munities, public schools cannot begin to meet thechallenges of poverty alone.

In fact, many public schools in high poverty,vulnerable communities are in crisis because,absent concerted and coordinated efforts, they areforced to address children’s co-occurring needsalone. They also are in trouble because they con-tinue to be viewed--and may view themselves--asstand-alone institutions concerned only with aca-demic achievement. And, they are in troublebecause university leaders have selected for their“best practice sites” professional development, orpartner schools in well-to-do, predominantlyCaucasian communities (Lawson, 1996b).

Unfortunately, the net effect is that children,youth, and adults in these school communities aredenied educational access pathways and opportu-nity structures. By not addressing their needs andengaging in these school communities, universi-ties add to their sense of social and economic iso-lation and marginalization. No one benefits, leastof all children and youth (future university stu-dents and professors). Grand articulation plansdesigned to improve human capital, which are soimportant to public universities and to their con-stituencies, continue to fall short of their poten-tial. Social, political, and economic costs mount.

There is, then, a compelling rationale forengagement through second generation partner-ships. They allow vulnerable schools to succeed.As the first cohort of schools succeed, leadersfrom others imitate them and draw on their suc-cess formulas. As these schools-in-crisis arehelped to succeed, improved higher educationaccess and opportunities are provided for children,youth, and other residents. As culturally-diversestudents succeed, diversity increases in the uni-versity’s student body. The educational experi-ence of all students is enriched as a consequence.

In short, this engagement agenda promotesinterdependent relationships. Engaged universi-ties committed to equitable access, opportunity,and social justice depend on the development ofsuccess formulas in vulnerable school communi-

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Figure 2 High-MobilityRates

IsolationMarginalization

Housing Stress/Insecurities

School Attendance

Problems

Loss of Community Leadership

WeakSocial Ties

EmploymentStress/

Insecurities

Mental Health Needs

LimitedSocial

SupportsHealthNeeds

LearningBarriers

IncomeStress/

Insecurities

Declining Opportunities

for EmploymentLearning

Needs

SocialSupportNeeds

MentalHealthNeeds

Violenceand Crime

DomesticViolence

ChildAbuse/Neglect

PublicSafetyNeeds

SubstanceAbuse

ViolentBehavior

Deliquency

SubstanceAbuse

SocialSupportNeeds

CommunityAgency

Declines andShortfalls

EarlyPregnancy

Crime

Public HealthNeeds:

Lead Levels,Water

Quality, etc.

A Child’s NeedsParent/Family NeedsCommunity Needs

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ties. At the same time, the aspirations, hopes, anddreams of people in these communities depend onuniversity engagements. The university gainsmultiple benefits through the knowledge it gainsby virtue of its engagement. Benefits multiply assuccess stories spread. Through education andtraining, research and scholarship, and the place-ment of their graduates, engaged universities facil-itate social contagion effects, whereby good newstravels quickly to other sites through formal andinformal communication networks.

In contrast to first generation partnerships, inthese second generation sites the challenge is notjust to apply existing knowledge, technologies, andskill. Existing knowledge is limited. Best practicesneed to be invented and evaluated, and universityfaculty and students are on site to learn alongsideothers who work there. To revisit Bok’s (1982) per-spective: Engagement is warranted because the pri-orities are significant and because universityknowledge work and workers are essential.

Engaged universities create supportive infra-structures for this kind of work involving secondgeneration partnerships. For example, a specialuniversity center usually must be created to facil-itate these second generation university-commu-nity partnerships, IPET programs, and interdisci-plinary research and scholarship. The three mostcommon names are: The Center for Collaborationfor Children; the Center for School-Family-Community Partnerships; and, The Center forPrevention Research and Development (or simply,the Prevention Center).

Engaged universities may have both first andsecond generation partnerships. They may co-exist, just as specialized professional educationprograms co-exist with IPET programs. Bothkinds of partnerships are by cemented by aware-ness of university and school-community interde-pendence and enlightened self-interest.

For example, consider what happens whenuniversity preparation programs are changed, andschool-community practices remain the same.When novice professionals enter school-community practice settings their new knowledge,values, sensitivities, and skills will not beaccommodated. In fact, experience in these set-tings may “wash out” the effects of universitypreparation. Similarly, when school communitypractice settings change and university preparationprograms do not, every new graduate recruited towork in these settings must be re-trained.

This interdependence compels engagement.Knowledge must be developed at the same timethat education and training and practice proceed.Second generation partnerships thus are practiceinnovation centers.

Once this knowledge work is prioritized,other priorities emerge. For example, it becomesevident that both generations of partnershipsinvolve issues regarding how faculty spend theirtime, the expected products, and the meaning ofproductivity, especially the extent to which par-ticipation in these partnerships will facilitate pro-motion, tenure, and retention candidacies for fac-ulty. Both generations of partnerships thusnecessitate changes in “real university.” Theyrequire a supportive infrastructure.

Second generation partnerships also implicatethe missions, structures, and cultures of the uni-versity.9 They require firm resource commitmentson the parts of the Chancellor or President, theProvost, other Vice-Presidents, Deans, andDepartment Chairs. Because the Presidents’,Provosts’ and other top leaders’ terms of servicein the same university may be limited, strategicplanning for engaged universities must be partic-ipatory, eliciting commitments from a broaduniversity constituency and ensuring that, when a president or provost retires or leaves, theengagement university ideal is sustainable.Academically-based community scholarship andits forerunner, academically-based communityservice, are key concepts in the working vocabu-lary for these engaged universities.

Academically-based Community ServiceAcademically-based community service was

developed by Lee Benson and Ira Harkavy(Benson & Harkavy, 1994) at the University ofPennsylvania. It builds on service learning, but italso extends it. It is premised in John Dewey’sideas about powerful learning in, and through,experience; and about education for a democracy.Academically-based community service mayinvolve undergraduate as well as graduate students. The logic is as follows.

Professors move their courses and seminarsinto permanent community schools, which serveas demonstration sites and hubs of communitydevelopment. Professors adapt their roles, thecourse content, and the teaching-learning processto local characteristics and needs. In other words,professors join students in serving while learning

and learning while serving. Academically-basedcommunity service animates the idea of a com-munity school because it may benefit a diversegroup of community residents, especially childrenand youth in the school.

For example, a cultural anthropology classmay be offered in a local community school. Thiscourse may address the diverse cultures in thelocal community, and it also may address needsfor multi-cultural understanding. Students servelocal residents as well as children in the school.Service learning experiences may be “tacked on”to the course experience or they may be embed-ded in it.

Faculty learn and work alongside the students.Some faculty may complete research and schol-arship in the local setting. Indeed, for some fac-ulty, academically-based community service is avehicle for faculty development. It invites facultyfrom every discipline, especially arts and sciencesdisciplines, to respond to local needs while, at thesame time, enhancing student learning and devel-opment. It offers exciting opportunities for fac-ulty to integrate teaching-learning and communityservice, perhaps encouraging new directions andopportunities for their research and scholarship.For example, arts and sciences faculty maybecome interested in outreach research and schol-arship as a result of their academically-based com-munity service.

Academically-Based Community ScholarshipAcademically-based community scholarship

was developed by Hal Lawson (1997; 1998). Itbuilds on the rationale for academically-basedcommunity service. This rationale is enriched andapplied to the social responsibilities and engage-ment activities of the professional schools and col-leges. Like academically-based community serv-ice, it is offered to both undergraduate andgraduate students, and it involves moving faculty,students, courses and seminars into communitysettings. Academically-based community schol-arship’s distinguishing features may be summa-rized briefly as follows:

1. It is concept that is developed fields andprograms that prepare helping profession-als (e.g., education, social work, nursing,family studies, clinical psychology). It isapplicable to profession-specific educationand training as well as to interprofessionaleducation and training.

2. It is premised in both individual and sociallearning theories regarding how helpingprofessionals best learn how to practice,especially through apprenticeships in prac-tice settings and involving action learningand forms of action research. It accom-modates the action research of individuals;collaborative action research and partici-patory action research involving teams; andwithin- and cross-site lesson drawing formodel development and policy change(e.g., Rose, 1993; Lawson, 1999b).

3. It also is premised in a particular view ofthe relationship between knowledge andpractice, including the relationship betweenuniversity scientists and scholars and com-munity practitioners and residents. Inother words, it embodies and promotes anepistemology of practice. In this episte-mology, practitioners and students alsohave knowledge and theories (theories ofaction), and they are provided actionresearch, participatory action research, andcollaborative action research methods togain more knowledge.10

4. With academically-based communityscholarship, learning and development arefacilitated at the same time that knowledgeis generated and used. Above all, localpractice knowledge is weighed againstinstitutionalized, scientific and scholarly,professional knowledge. Academically-based community scholarship thusdescribes the relationship between localknowledge generated in, and through prac-tice, and institutionalized, scientific andscholarly, professional knowledge. Saidanother way, academically-based commu-nity scholarship describes a key knowledgeinterface, including how each informs andguides the other. Figure 3 (next page)depicts this interface.11

5. Academically-based community scholar-ship also unites and integrates teaching-learning, research and scholarship, and pro-fessional community service. Faculty andstudents move into these community set-tings. These settings provide learning anddevelopment laboratories for apprentice-ships, design experiments, and practiceinnovation development.

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UNIVERSITY

Academically based

Community Scholarship

SCHOOL-COMMUNITY PRACTICE SETTINGS

Basic Research and Scholarship

Applied Research

Outreach Scholarship

Dissemination Mechanisms

Diffusion Channels and Networks

Research and Scholarship in,

and Through Practice

Action Research

Collaborative Active Research

Participatory Active Research

Stories and Narratives for, and

about, Reflective and

Reflexive Practice

Lesson-drawing from

Practice Innovations

6. With academically-based communityscholarship, publications are expected.Collaborative action research and partici-patory action research involving students,faculty, and practitioners are common-place. Joint publications, involving vary-ing combinations of authors, result.Experienced practitioners join universityfaculty as professional educators and aspractice scholars. Knowledge for practiceand professional education derives imme-diately from practice. It is both global andlocal, responding to local contexts and cul-tural diversity.

7. Academically-based community scholarshipis a vehicle for both generations of partner-ships. These partnership demonstrate sitesare, for the helping professions, the equiva-lent of the research and development parksscientific disciplines enjoy in their partner-ship with business and industry.

When academically-based community schol-arship is completed in second generation partner-ship sites, the helping professions benefit, in turnbenefiting the university. For example, all of thesefields confront severe shortages in culturally-diverse professionals, especially professionals

who understand poverty and its correlates and whoare prepared to work in high poverty communi-ties. Academically-based community scholarship,completed in second generation sites, is an impor-tant recruitment and mobility mechanism. It pro-vides a way for the professional schools and col-leges to develop educational and occupationalladders for under-represented and culturally-diverse populations. In doing so, this kind ofengagement also improves access and opportunityto higher education for under-served and –repre-sented populations.

Furthermore, university faculty for the pro-fessional schools and colleges tend to be recruitedfrom the ranks of practicing professionals.Engagement that develops occupational and edu-cational ladders is, in this light, a long-term strat-egy for diversifying faculty in the professionalschools and colleges.

Thus, academically-based community schol-arship in second generation partnership sitesenables the helping professions and, in turn, theirengaged universities respond to local needs;improve research, scholarship, and professionaleducation; help diversify the helping fields; assistvulnerable people by improving practices in localsettings; and honor their social responsibilities.Engagement promotes their enlightened self inter-

est because of the new recruits it attracts and thetangible benefits it provides.

Toward Engaged Universities

Engaged universities honor their socialresponsibilities when they develop second gener-ation partnership sites that incorporate the entireinvolvement and engagement continuum. Faculty,students, and staff unite teaching-learning,research-scholarship,a nd service in these sites.Their knowledge missions and activities are cen-tral and essential. The application of existingknowledge and skills is essential, but by itselfinsufficient. New knowledge, skills, and tech-nologies are needed. Both theoretical and practi-cal challenges are evident. For example, multi-level collaboration is required. School reform,youth development, family support, communityeconomic and social development, articulationswith higher education institutions, and otherimprovement initiatives must be synchronized andintegrated. These second generation partnershipsembody, develop, and evaluate complex change.Symbiotic relationships develop between thesesecond generation partnership sites and universi-ties. Site-based leadership is essential, andempowerment strategies are commonplace. Localleaders, vulnerable children and families, and theirschool communities are not in a supplicant role,nor are these sites university colonies. Faculty andstudents perform academically-based communityservice and scholarship in these sites because theyprovide invaluable, incomparable, and uniqueopportunities for doing good work, promoting pol-icy and practice innovations, and gaining knowl-edge and understanding about them.

To summarize: Engagement is reserved foruniversities that meet the following requirements.

• These universities have formal missionsregarding engagement, their strategic planprovides implementation and evaluation path-ways, and their publications for external con-stituencies and prospective faculty and stu-dents emphasize their engagement agendas.

• They have created formal organizationalstructures (e.g., new centers, institutes,departments, schools and colleges, programs)for the expressed purpose of engagement incommunities.

• They have established permanent, sustainablecommunity partnership demonstration sites.

These sites serve harbor academically-basedcommunity service, academically-based com-munity scholarship, and other activities thatcombine and integrate teaching-learningactivities, research and scholarship, and thedevelopment of practice innovations. Thesecommunity sites serve the professionalschools and colleges in the same way thatresearch and development parks serve facultyand programs in the biological, natural, com-puter, and health sciences.

• These universities have encouraged, sup-ported, recruited, and rewarded faculty whodevelop these sites and whose work isfocused on them. Retention, tenure, and pro-motion systems have accommodated theircommunity work.

• They have encouraged, supported, andrewarded interdisciplinary research and edu-cation; and interprofessional education andtraining. Teamwork is valued as much asindividual achievements.

• They send clear, firm messages to leaders inlocal communities regarding how, and why,universities need to learn with, and from,them and their sites.

• They develop special recruitment systemsand admissions policies to ensure that resi-dents in partnership demonstration sitesenjoy special access to its degree programsand its financial assistance programs.

• Recruitment for university job vacancies andjob assistance programs prioritizes commu-nity residents.

• They have dedicated some of their ownfunds to their engagement agenda; identifiedfaculty leaders for it; and, they have grantedthese leaders some budgetary autonomy.

This list is a composite derived from severalengaged universities. Each feature contributes tothe “sticking power” and “staying power” of theengagement mission.

However, all engaged universities are stillevolving. All remain “works in progress.” Expectmore features that define engaged universities astheir work continues.

For example, it is possible to imagine new,flexible and adaptive academic networks in sub-stitution for the boundaries of departments anddisciplines. Ultimately, these networks may gainthe kind of power, authority, and resources now

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Figure 3

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granted only to departments. These new networksmay, in time, be able to recruit, promote, andtenure faculty at the same time they develop newprograms. In this fashion, engaged universitiesmay transform some of their operations andstructures. If university presidents and provostsare serious about the engagement agenda, and findonly resistance in conventional units, then one oftheir choices is to create alternative units, startingto transform their universities in the process.12

Universities aspiring to become engageduniversities will promote and support second gen-eration partnerships that harbor the entire involve-ment-engagement continuum: Academically-based community service and scholarship;interprofessional education and training; interdis-ciplinary education; interdisciplinary research;outreach research and scholarship; and, servicelearning. Many will start with involvement. Withtime, experience, and success, they then will useforms of involvement to become engaged univer-sities. The planning continuum and workingvocabulary provided here may help them achievetheir aspirations, focusing on enlightened self-interest.

Clearly, engaged universities advantage them-selves at the same time they serve others. Beyondthe specific benefits identified earlier, universitiesbenefit because their engagement initiatives serveas important social marketing and developmentefforts. Engaged universities, as defined in the pre-ceding analysis, send a clear, important message totheir diverse constituencies, a message thatresponds to external mandates, political realities,and social imperatives. Resources allocated to theuniversity are not resources taken away from someof the most important societal challenges of the day.

In other words, permanent partnerships withpublic schools, health and social service agencies,neighborhood organizations, and communitydevelopment institutions may change policy andresource-allocation frames. Absent the engageduniversity, politicians and policy analysts couldtreat the universities as just another competingfunding category, yet another priority among oth-ers. Engaged universities, which demonstratetheir interdependence with urgent political prior-ities and social needs, are an indispensable part ofthe solution.

With academically-based community serviceand scholarship, engaged universities also respondto the “profscam” imagery (Sykes, 1988). This

collection of myths and stereotypes continues toerode the public trust, stimulate external controlsof teaching loads, trigger other external account-ability requirements, and reduce public fundingsupports. Academically-based activities in secondgeneration partnership sites help counteract the“profscam” image. Faculty and student activitiesportray different, more accurate, and flatteringimages of university faculty as researchers, schol-ars, and teachers as a result of their face-to-faceinteractions with students and community resi-dents. Faculty and student work is public and vis-ible; it is open to inspection and evaluation. Theirexpertise is viewed as a significant communityasset, a public good.

This engagement also staves off ill-conceivedplans that substitute technology for faculty. Theirmerits notwithstanding, distance learning, com-puter-assisted technologies, and “canned” coursesand curriculum packages will not substitute for theintegrated, complex, powerful learning and devel-opment experiences that accompany academi-cally-based community service and scholarship.

Finally, engagement does not compete withtraditional ideas and criteria for a prestigious uni-versity. It enriches and extends them. In otherwords, since prestige, like beauty, often lies in theeyes of the beholder, engagement activities thatexpand the number and kind of “beholders” andthe criteria for “beauty” benefit the university. Infact, its prestige-enhancing and -expanding prop-erties make engagement an important evaluationcategory. Engagement indices can be added to theevaluative criteria for assessing faculty, program,and disciplinary quality, including their centralityto the university’s engagement mission, goals, andaspirations.

Engaged universities are new century institu-tions, which respond to the growing complexity,shifting priorities, and multiplying needs of theirtimes. Because engagement helps restore the pub-lic trust, and it responds to societal needs, it is agood thing for universities to do. Because it hon-ors their social and moral responsibilities, engage-ment also is the right thing to do. Thus, commu-nity engagement, which incorporates, builds on,and changes involvement, is a strategic planningconcept whose time has come. Institutions canbuild on their involvement activities such as serv-ice learning and become engaged universities.

Note

*I appreciate the suggestions and criticismprovided by Emma Gross, Shirley Jones, IonaThraen, Michael Lawson, and Carenlee Barkdull.

ReferencesAstin, A. (1999). Promoting leadership, service, and

democracy: What higher education can do. In R. Bringle, R.Games, & E. Malloy (Eds.), Colleges and universities as cit-izens (pp. 31-47). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Barnett, R. (1997). Higher education: A critical busi-ness. London: The Society for Research into HigherEducation and the Open University Press.

Benson, L., & Harkavy, I. (1994). 1994 as turning point:The university-assisted community school idea becomes amovement. Universities and Community Schools, 4 (1-2), 5-8.

Bok, D. (1982). Beyond the ivory tower: Social respon-sibilities of the modern university. Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press.

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Casto, M., & Julia, M. (1994). Interprofessional careand collaborative practice. Pacific Grove, CA.: Brooks-ColePublishing Company.

Curtis, S., & Jones, I. (1998). Is there a place for geog-raphy in the analysis of health inequality? Sociology of Healthand Illness, 20, 645-672.

Harkavy, I., & Benson, L. (1999). De-Platonizing anddemocratizing education as the bases of service learning. InR. Rhoads & J. Howard (Eds.), Service learning: Pedagogyand research (pp. 11-20). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Klein, J. (1996). Crossing boundaries: Knowledge, dis-ciplinarities, and interdisciplinarities. Charlottesville &London: University of Virginia Press.

Knapp, M., & Associates (Eds.), (1998). Paths to part-nership: University and community as learners in interpro-fessional education. New York: Rowman & LittlefieldPublishers.

Holland, B. (1999). From murky to meaningful: The roleof mission in institutional change. In R. Bringle, R. Games,& E. Malloy (Eds.), Colleges and universities as citizens (pp.31-47). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

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About the Author

Hal A. Lawson, Ph.D., is Professor in theSchool of Social Welfare and Department of Educational and Counseling Psychology at The University at Albany, State University of New York. Send comments to: 212 RichardsonHall. 132 Western Avenue, Albany, NY 12222. (518) 442-5324 FAX (518) [email protected].

I N T E G R A T I N G S E R V I C E S A N DT R A I N I N G

T H E C A R V E R H E A L T H P R O J E C T :L E S S O N S F R O M A N I N T E R D I S C I P L I N A R Y

P R O F E S S I O N A L T R A I N I N G M O D E L

Kevin W. Allison

JoAnne Henry

Humberto Fabelo

Marie Chapin

Catherine Howard

V I R G I N I A C O M M O N W E A L T H U N I V E R S I T Y

Abstract

Building on the framework of a developing partnership between Virginia CommonwealthUniversity and its adjacent neighbor, the Carver community, a group of university facultyhave developed and implemented an interdisciplinary training experience for professional stu-dents in nursing, social work, and child clinical psychology. The Carver Health Project worksto provide access to and support for a range of health services including screening and assess-ment, care coordination and follow-up to the children and families served by Carver School,a large inner-city elementary school. The project is designed to offer students and faculty theopportunity for interdisciplinary service provision and care coordination and training. Lessonsfrom the first two years of the training experience are presented.

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Children and families in many urban com-munities face considerable challenges accessingadequate health and social service resources.Fractured and unitary service delivery modelsrequire families to negotiate multiple systems andsettings to access basic medical, dental, mentalhealth, and other human service needs. Integratedservice delivery models are being increasinglyproposed as a remedy to this problem, however,current professional training models have not gen-erally been revised, augmented or coordinated toprovide medical and other human service studentswith training experiences to work effectively andefficiently in an integrated service setting.Training programs that do not address integratedservice delivery models may continue to reinforcedisciplinary boundaries and support professionalisolation. Consequently, continuing these deliverymodels will present resource-limited familieswith considerable difficulty. Relatedly, facultywithin human and health service fields may alsohave limited experience and knowledge in sup-porting professional students to work effectivelyacross disciplinary boundaries beyond traditionalmodels of consultation. If health and human serv-ice provision models increasingly move toward theprovision of integrated services, professionaldevelopment and training programs and their fac-ulty must increasingly support the development ofa knowledge base, skills sets, and professionalpractice models or worldviews that support nurses,doctors, psychologists, social workers, dentists,and others in working together effectively.

The current paper presents the example ofa professional interdisciplinary training experi-ence involving the Schools of Nursing, SocialWork and Dentistry and the Doctoral Training pro-gram in Child Clinical Psychology at VirginiaCommonwealth University. The Carver HealthProject is a model of interdisciplinary training inwhich teams of faculty and students work toimprove the health and well-being of an urbancommunity which neighbors VCU, the Carvercommunity. This interdisciplinary training expe-rience developed out of a broader university-com-munity collaboration between the CarverCommunity and Virginia CommonwealthUniversity. We will begin by setting the contextof the health training project by providing somebackground on the Carver-VCU Partnership,including a description of the Carver communityand the Carver Health Project. In addition, we will

share lessons we have learned from this experience.

Background

During the summer of 1996, Ms. BarbaraAbernathy, President of the Carver Area CivicImprovement League (CACIL), and Dr. EugeneTrani, President of Virginia CommonwealthUniversity, pledged to create a partnershipbetween the Carver community and the universitythat would pursue the goal of creating a safe andnurturing community for everyone who lives,works, and studies in the area. Dr. Trani statedthat, “it is critical that we build partnerships, notfences, between the University and our neigh-bors.” Rather than viewing the shared physicalboundary between VCU and Carver as a dividingline between an academic community and aninner-city neighborhood, they agreed that a col-laboration could be established that would have farreaching positive outcomes for the neighborhood,the University and the City of Richmond. ForVCU, the partnership would provide opportunitiesfor faculty and students to become involved in thereal challenges of urban communities and to applytheir professional skills to the creation of solu-tions. For the Carver Community and CarverElementary School, the partnership would providenew resources to address problems and concerns,and in so doing, create a stimulating learning envi-ronment for all participants. For the City ofRichmond, the partnership represented a newmodel of collaboration committed to improve thequality of life for a segment of the City.

One of the first steps in this partnership wasthe establishment of a Carver-VCU PartnershipSteering Committee. Dr. Grace Harris, thenProvost, identified VCU representatives, whichincluded faculty and staff from the Schools ofEducation, Social Work, Business, Nursing,Pharmacy, the Departments of Urban Studies andPlanning, Psychology, Student Affairs and theVCU Police. CACIL identified community resi-dents who represent the racial and economic diver-sity of the community. The Committee alsoincludes the principal, a teacher, and guidancecounselor of Carver Elementary School and rep-resentatives from the Richmond Redevelopmentand Housing Authority (RRHA), the Departmentof Social Services, and the Department ofCommunity Development. This group workedtogether in sponsoring a series of community

forums and meetings in which issues of commu-nity concern were raised, discussed, clarified andprioritized. These discussions shaped the focus ofthe partnership activities. The Steering Committeecontinues to be a vital force in directing the part-nership and its agenda.

Carver Community

The Carver community is home to approxi-mately 1,350 residents. Based on 1990 censusdata, the area’s residents are almost exclusivelyminority—94% black, 5% white, and 1% other.The median household income is $18,438 and18% of families fall below the poverty level. Theunemployment rate is 12.4%, approximately twicethat of the City of Richmond. Single mothers head48% of families with children.

The community is served by the largest ele-mentary school in the City of Richmond and at theinitiation of the partnership, the school servedclose to 1,000 students in pre-kindergartenthrough fifth grades. The original building wasconstructed in 1887 and is over 100 years old. The1995 test scores from the Iowa Test of Basic Skillsindicate that 4th grade students from CarverElementary School are performing as much as50% below the national average. Out of 31Richmond Public Schools, Carver students ranked30th in vocabulary and reading comprehension,29th in language and social studies, and 26th inmath and science. More recently, the test scoresfrom the 1998 State of Virginia Standards ofLearning examinations reveal that the students ofCarver fall below the average recommended scorein most subjects and below the average scores forschools in Richmond in all subjects.

Ninety-seven percent of all Carver studentsqualify for free or reduced lunch. The 1990 cen-sus reports that the average level of educationamong adults living in the Carver community is9th grade. Fifty-three percent of persons over theage of 25 do not have a high school education, andonly 6.9% have earned a bachelor’s degree orhigher. Carver Elementary School also serveschildren from Gilpin Court, the largest publichousing community in the City of Richmond. TheGilpin Court community houses 2,326 residents,1,331 of whom are school age children. Themedian household income in this area is $7,036.Ninety-four percent of the households in Gilpinare headed by single women.

Partnership Mission and Focus

During the first year of the Carver-VCUPartnership, the Steering Committee developedthe mission to, “. . . create a shared urban com-munity with a commitment to improving the com-munity’s quality of life including its health, com-munity development, youth development, safety,and community school; and with a commitmentto extending the experience of the community intothe classroom and the university.”

In September, 1997, the partnership receiveda $400,000 grant from the U.S. Department ofHousing and Urban Development to develop aCommunity Outreach Partnership Center (COPC).With support from the grant, the partnershipfocused on two sets of activities. The first,Networking and Neighboring, Leadership andCommunity Training, and Assessment andEvaluation, addressed building the core structureof the partnership. The second set targeted the spe-cific priorities, challenges and concerns expressedby Carver community residents. These include afocus on (1) Community Safety, (2) Communityand Economic Development, (3) Youth, (4)Community School, and (5) Health Promotion andServices Integration. The fifth focal area, HealthPromotions and Services Integration, was basedon a desire for improved access to and effectiveutilization of mental health, physical health andsocial services for Carver residents and the chil-dren and families served by Carver ElementarySchool. Each of these five focus areas wasassigned to a committee with shared leadershipbetween a Carver community resident and a VCUfaculty or staff member. The Health Promotionand Services Integration committee worked on aseries of activities focused on achieving goals ofimproving community access to health and socialservice resources. As part of this effort, JoAnneHenry, Associate Professor from the School ofNursing, took leadership in pursuing funding toprovide integrated health services at CarverSchool through an interdisciplinary trainingmodel, the Carver Health Project.

Carver Health Project

In 1998, VCU received a $200,000 grant fromthe Jesse Ball duPont Foundation to support theprovision of health, psychological and socialwork services for children and families of CarverElementary School and to educate professionalstudents in an interdisciplinary practice site

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through the Carver Health Project. As suggestedabove, many Carver Elementary School childrenand families have limited access to resources. Themajority of Carver Elementary School studentsare from single parent families, and have parentswho are unemployed or underemployed. Thefinancial difficulties and mobility of many mem-bers of the community cause unstable livingarrangements. Eighty-five percent of parents haveless than a high school education. These circum-stances create considerable challenges for parentsin providing resources and experiences that sup-port and prepare their children for learning. ManyCarver children have access to Medicaid, but thosewho do not have health insurance have even morelimited access to health care.

School administrators report that familiesoften use the school as their first resource forhealth care. Children frequently arrive at schooland seek out the school nurse for an evaluation ofdog bites, burns and sprains, as well as illness.Families see the school as an important resourcefor health. The Carver Health Project wasdesigned to enhance the health services availableto these children and to expand the health pro-motion services to adults in Carver as well. TheProject brings together a multi-disciplinary teamof faculty and students to learn together in theschool setting.

Project Goal and ObjectivesThe Carver Health Project goals are based on

the belief that accessible and efficiently coordi-nated health care, as well as relevant educationaland counseling services, will positively impactchildren’s overall health and school functioning.These support services are provided to “at-risk”children and their families through the CarverHealth Project. The long-term goal is to improvethe lifelong health of Carver children. Health isdefined broadly including physical and mentalhealth, as well as the community supports neededto sustain health. The project involves the Schoolsof Nursing, Social Work and Dentistry and theDepartment of Psychology at VCU who provideservices in the Carver Community. Linkages areprovided to community health care providers wholive and work within the Carver community andto VCU’s medical school, the Medical College ofVirginia (MCV), for services that are not providedin the community. These services include medi-cine, pharmacy and dentistry.

The project has three primary objectives. The first is to, “Provide health screening andassessment for the people of the CarverCommunity.” Screening and assessment activitiesof the first year included the initiation of healthscreenings for the children of Carver School. Tobeginthis process, the Carver Health ProjectCoordinator met with teachers and parents toexplain the program and answered questionsabout the types of screening that would be avail-able in the school. In coordination with the schoolnurse and school staff, children were screened forhealth risks and taught strategies for promotinghealth. Project staff, VCU students and other par-ticipating health care providers conducted healthscreenings, provided treatment, and made referralas needed for the children.

In 1998-99, there were 930 students enrolledin Carver School. The Richmond Public Schoolpolicy requires screening of all new students andthose in grades 1, 3, and 5. Working with theschool nurse, 293 children were screened by VCUnursing student and faculty teams. Fifty percentof the children screened were referred for furthervisual and dental services.

An additional focus that developed duringYear One of the project was to provide physicalexams for new students who do not have primarycare physicians. At the start of the school year, 45physical exams were completed and an additional27 exams were completed since then. Because thephysicals are required by law before students canregister for school, these physical exams assuredthat students were enrolled in a timely manner andthat they did not have to wait to begin school.

The VCU Dental Van provided services atCarver School one day per week. The dental team,composed of dental faculty and students, has beenable to meet the dental health needs of approxi-mately one third of the children who were identi-fied as needing dental care. All children whoneeded dental care received information aboutdental services in the community. A list of den-tists who accept Medicaid was sent home withchildren as well as a description of the dental carethat they needed. One of the major problems thatCarver community residents face regarding den-tal care is an inadequate number of dentists whoaccept Medicaid. During the first year of the pro-gram, 287 children were screened by the VCUDental School teams. Children who had minorcavities and who needed dental cleaning and

fluorides were treated at the van. Children whohad major dental problems were referred to theclinic at VCU, however, some parents did notreturn the signed permission forms and their chil-dren were not able to be treated. All children whohad needed dental care received referrals.

Screening and assessment objectives for1998-99 also involved the assessment of adulthealth needs and adult interest in health activities.A needs assessment was conducted at neighbor-hood meetings and a community health fair todetermine the needs of the adults in the commu-nity. Teachers at Carver Elementary School werethe first group assessed. They indicated that theywanted a program on stress management, diet andexercise. In this first group, many individuals werefound to have high blood pressure and many wereoverweight. In the Fall of the first year, a six-weekprogram was offered on Wednesday afternoons toaddress these health concerns. The program wasadvertised in the Carver Newsletter. Fifteen teach-ers and one community member participated.Each session included an exercise session offeredby the Richmond Public Health Department. Theeducational portion varied each week and coveredthe requested topics. Collaborators in this programincluded the Richmond Area High Blood PressureCenter and Retreat Hospital’s Stress ManagementUnit. During the second year, the Walkers’ Groupwas formed and a dozen teachers and staff par-ticipate weekly.

The Carver/VCU Partnership HealthCommittee and staff collected data from partici-pants in the annual Carver Community Health Fairthat is held every April. In 1999, seventy fiverespondents returned a health survey at the fair.The major health needs identified in the surveywere health education and counseling, rather thandirect health services. In 2000, survey results foradults were very similar to those of the previousyear. The Health Fair remains a focal point forhealth promotion in the community. Residents seethis as a community activity that brings neighborstogether and offers an opportunity to connect witha wide variety of community resources. Based onfeedback from last year, there will also be anincreased emphasis on resources for youth.

The second major objective of the HealthProject is to, “Develop an integrated servicemodel for follow-up care and referral, includingcare coordination.” An important component ofimproving health is assuring that follow-up treat-

ment is provided and that care is coordinated. Theproject worked with school staff and parents to seethat treatment recommendations were imple-mented. Project staff and the school nurse notifyteachers about children who have health problems.Teachers remind children to take the health refer-ral information home and follow up in conversa-tions with parents. Thirty-seven children receivedfree glasses through a special program withLensCrafters.

Classes are also offered for children withasthma. These classes focus on teaching childrento recognize early warning signs and manage theirmedications appropriately. Parents receive infor-mation about the classes so that they can reinforcethe learning at home. This is a popular programthat is offered annually. Children are linked toservices through a variety of program initiatives.

Coordinating care is a major area of focus forYear Two of the project, the current year. DuringYear One, staff and students developed commu-nity contacts and visited agencies that serve chil-dren and their families. VCU students from theSchools of Nursing and Social Work and theDepartment of Psychology are establishing rela-tionships with community agencies to assureappropriate follow up care for the children.

Students and faculty from Nursing, SocialWork and Psychology participate in a wide rangeof Carver School activities to achieve the goal ofbecoming a contributing part of the school com-munity. Regularly scheduled school events such asschool opening sessions, Family Carnival, teacherretreats, in-service training, and a student sleep-over provide opportunities to meet parents andteachers. During these events project staff, faculty,and VCU students share information about newprograms and provide individual support to par-ents and school staff. These activities are often notas well attended by parents as hoped but theseopportunities provide the only structured means ofworking with parents. These events also providean opportunity to meet with Carver teachers out-side the classroom.

The third focal objective of the project is to,“Provide health education and counseling to stu-dents, parents, mentors, school personnel, andadults within the Carver community.” A majorfocus of this project is to provide health promo-tion and disease prevention services that involveproject staff, school personnel and VCU students.Social work and psychology staff, faculty, and

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of the first year, fifteen nursing students had clin-ical experiences at Carver. Some experiences areshort-term, to conduct health screenings, forexample. Others extend throughout the semester.Students with extended experiences develop rap-port with the children and Carver School staff.They participate in community development activ-ities and strengthen the parent support in the PTA.

Two graduate social work students completetheir foundation field practice across the twosemesters of the academic year. The social workportion of the project contains three distinct learn-ing experiences. These learning experiencesinclude direct social work practice with individ-ual Carver students and their families, the creationand implementation of a macro-level project, and the design and implementation of groupinterventions aimed at students, families, andCarver faculty.

Social work interns work with individual chil-dren that are identified by teachers, school coun-selors, or the school principal as being at-risk dueto academic or behavioral problems. These Carverstudents receive weekly individual mentoringwith one of the social work interns. The socialwork students mentor children and assist themwith class assignments while modeling appropri-ate classroom and school behavior. The goal ofthese supportive relationships is to increaseappropriate school behavior and enhance learning.

The second learning experience includesdesigning and implementing a macro-level proj-ect that targets a need at the school. Each socialwork student assesses the school community andidentifies a need. The identified need becomes thefocus of a project. In coordination with their socialwork faculty supervisor, the students research,design, and implement an intervention to meet thatneed. During Year One, one of the students cre-ated a policy and procedure resource manual foruse in the social work field unit of the CarverHealth Project. The other student, in formal con-sultation with the administrators of a community-based meals program, conducted an evaluation ofthe meals program. The results of this evaluationwere presented in a formal report to the programadministrators. During Year Two, one student con-tinued the development of the policy and proce-dure resources manual begun the year before. Theother student designed and implemented a class-room intervention to reduce the number of officereferrals due to students with classroom disrup-

tive behaviors. This intervention was based on asocial-learning and behavioral model. At thecompletion of the intervention the student wrotea report with the results and her observations andrecommendation for further implementation ofthis program.

The third learning experience that socialwork students have, has to do with designing andimplementing group interventions. During YearOne of the project, social work students designedand implemented a parenting-skills group duringthe fall term for families of Carver students. Theother project, during the spring term was a girls’group designed to enhance and support self-imageand self-esteem. During Year Two, in coordinationwith graduate students in child clinical psychol-ogy, a brief survey of Carver School faculty needswas conducted. The results of this survey werethen used to create a professional development in-service that was presented to the faculty at theirannual retreat. The second group activity that wasimplemented during Year Two was another girls’ group.

Similar to social work students, first yeargraduate students in child clinical psychologydevelop mentoring relationships with studentsidentified as needing support, but relatively lowlevels of intervention. These relationships last fora year and are designed to allow graduate studentsto develop normative relationships with childrenand familiarity with the school environment.Second year psychology students work with theschool psychologist to provide educational testingfor students. Carver elementary school adminis-tration obtained permission from RichmondPublic Schools for VCU’s Center forPsychological Services and Development (thedepartmental training clinic) to provide free on-site individual and family therapy by third yearchild-clinical psychology students. This increasesthe availability of individual and family therapyfor Carver students. Services are provided free atCarver School.

VCU students from these three professionaltraining programs meet together both formally andinformally to discuss their learning experiences.During the first year of the project, the student-faculty team met once each semester to evaluatelearning experiences. The faculty team metmonthly with the Carver Principal to assure thatprograms and student experiences are coordinatedwith other school activities. VCU students are

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students provided counseling and educationalservices. Each program involved has integratedthe Carver interdisciplinary experience into theirprofessional training programs. A brief descriptionof this integrated program follows.

The Structure of the Interdisciplinary TeamFaculty and students from the Schools of

Nursing, Social Work, Dentistry and theDepartment of Psychology participate in theCarver Health Project. Project faculty meet withthe school principal on a regular basis and all proj-ects are discussed in the planning phase andapproved before implementation.

A key role in the linkage of Project faculty andthe program to the school is that of the coordina-tor. This faculty member joined the project at theend of the first year and has worked to developtrust and rapport with the key faculty and admin-istrators in Carver School and at VCU. The coor-dinator is the consistent presence in CarverSchool. She is the person who hears about ideasand problems, who works most consistently withVCU students in the school and who is the bridgeto the community.

The role of the health coordinator is to serveas the primary link between the elementary schooland the university. The coordinator has an obliga-tion to both the school and to the university. Theobligation to the school involves providing directservices, i.e., health screening, physical exams andreferrals for utilization of services in the com-munity. The coordinator brings an understandingof health resources to the school. From this van-tage point, the coordinator can assist students andteachers to utilize existing health services. Thecoordinator is in a unique position to determinethe utility of the university student’s projects forthe elementary school.

The obligation of the university and its facultywithin this project revolves around supervision ofuniversity students and providing linkages for stu-dent experiences. The supervision of university stu-dents involves coordinating students experienceswithin the parameters set forth by the elementaryschool while encouraging the university students togrow in their respective disciplines and in their abil-ity to work effectively with other professions.Students participating in the Carver Health Projectreceive supervision organized within the traditionalstructure and parameters of their specific profes-sional training programs, as well as in coordinatedinterdisciplinary team meetings.

Faculty PerspectivesThe same faculty from each of the VCU

schools and departments participating in theCarver Health Partnership have been involvedwith the project since its inception. This continu-ity has allowed faculty to develop rapport and alevel of trust within the school. The positive out-comes of the Carver Health Project have resultedin large part due to a generally high level ofacceptance of the project by school administrationand staff. The stability of the school administra-tors and VCU faculty provided the base of under-standing that is needed to move beyond multidis-ciplinary work. The biggest barrier to theinterdisciplinary model has been the limitedamount of time that faculty and students fromacross the disciplines have in the school at thesame time.

The goal of our interdisciplinary model hasbeen for all project members to work and see theperspective of the others, to accept the differentprofessional norms and to adapt to the schoolenvironment. Each individual views professionalexperiences from the vantage point of their disci-pline as well as from their personal experiences.In a multidisciplinary approach, each team mem-ber can contribute a different perspective and webelieve that any individual can utilize and gainfrom the knowledge of other approaches. Ourexperience of the results of these efforts suggestthat the project is achieving the goal of interdis-ciplinary work. This has required continued atten-tion and work by the faculty and school person-nel since it is so much easier to work side by sideinstead of together.

Student ExperiencesThe schools of Nursing and Social Work and

the Doctoral Program in Child ClinicalPsychology have organized experiences at CarverSchool as a structured part of their professionaltraining programs. Nursing students participate inthe Carver Health Project through several nursingcourses at VCU. For example, in the basic under-graduate nursing of children course, students andfaculty provide basic health screening for Carverschool children. In the undergraduate CommunityHealth course, students conduct communityassessments and offer health education programsfor children through a service learning project.Graduate nurse practitioner students provide phys-ical exams and work with teachers and parents ofchildren with health problems. During the course

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Moving from Multi-Disciplinary to Inter-disciplinary Training in Community Context:Lessons Learned

The goal to provide an interdisciplinary train-ing experience in the school setting has resulted inthe necessity to negotiate boundaries of multiple“cultures.” This analogy would suggest our analy-sis include the culture of a public elementaryschool, the culture of the local urban communitythat the school serves, the culture of the university,and the cultures of each professional discipline (i.e.,dentistry, nursing, psychology, and social work)working in the school setting. Each system has itsown unique set of values, goals, belief systems,organized social structures and practices. Whenthese different cultures come into contact, theircoexistence can range from interactions character-ized by cooperation and collaboration to interac-tions which are overtly hostile and destructive.Several models of inter-cultural contact have beenproposed which can inform our analysis. Berry andassociates (Berry, 1980; Berry & Kim, 1988) pro-pose a model focusing on acculturation, the processby which intergroup contact resolves through asequence of five phases. In the Precontact phase,prior to interactions between groups, each grouphas its own independently functioning culture andsocial systems. During the Contact phase, groupsbegin to interact with one another. This is followedby the Conflict phase, in which differences betweengroups become salient and result in pressure for onegroup or another to change or accommodate.During the Crisis Phase, this conflict comes to ahead and during the Adaptation phase, the interac-tion between groups is stabilized into one of sev-eral potential outcomes.

These outcomes include Assimilation, whereone group relinquishes its culture and assumes thedominant group’s culture and identity. A secondoutcome is Integration, where a subordinate groupmaintains their identity, but also incorporates theculture and identity of the dominant group intotheir own. Separation and Segregation outcomesresult where cultural group members do not inter-act with the majority culture, through self-imposed separation or externally forced segrega-tion. Individuals may also be marginalized andunable to identify or utilize either culture. Severalother resolutions have been suggested includingcultural alternation, where individuals develop theability to code switch, and move effectively andefficiently from one cultural contact to another.

Groups may decide to establish a multiculturalcontext where individuals can maintain theirgroup identity, accept, tolerate and interact withother groups, and learn each other’s language.Cultures may also Fuse, resulting in the blendingof the cultures and the creation of a new, inte-grated culture.

The experience of developing an interdiscipli-nary training model in a school context is very com-plex and requires the negotiation of interculturalcontacts at multiple levels simultaneously. Berry’s(1980) model may be useful in attempting to under-stand and inform the development of our trainingprogram. At one level, our interdisciplinary train-ing model must resolve issues linked to the inter-action of academic, professional and training cul-tures of nursing, psychology and social work.Should faculty work to increase their familiaritywith the values, goals and practices of the other dis-ciplines and become multicultural with respect tointerdisciplinary work? What processes and edu-cational experiences are important to facilitate thisoutcome? What are the barriers to interdisciplinaryefforts exerted by the structures of each profes-sional culture and what processes can address thesebarriers? In a cultural sense, what are the desiredtraining outcomes for students?

At another level, training programs that workto provide integrated services in a communitybased setting, must negotiate the culture of thatsetting. For example, faculty and students haveexperienced various levels of overt and covert con-flicts with and resistance from teachers and otherschool staff. An acculturation model suggestsviewing conflicts and crisis as normative process.It also raises the question as to the desired out-come of the intercultural contact? Should studentsand faculty work to become acculturated to theschool context and alternate between the culturalsystem of the school and their professions? Arethese outcomes developmental in nature? That is,do community based training programs providestudents with the expectation of first working withteachers within the frame of the school culture andsubsequently, providing experiences for teachersto learn about the student’s professional cultures?What are the expectations for cultural change onthe part of the school and community context andto what extent is this expectation congruent withthe culture of the school?

At yet another level, work in community-based settings requires negotiating the community

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developing the community-based skills that areessential for practitioners in the changing healthcare system and the faculty are learning to worktogether to share student supervision. This year theseminars are more formal and faculty are contin-uing to refine these learning experiences.

Student Perspectives on Learning Feedback from students has been consistent

across the disciplines. They are surprised at thecomplexity and severity of problems that the chil-dren and their families have. They are frustratedthat efforts to reach parents often have limited suc-cess. They evaluate their learning as positive andthey gain a new appreciation for the complexitiesof the lives of low income families and for therichness in community informal support systemsthat families form for mutual aid.

Students describe the challenge of learning tonegotiate the school environment and professionalrelationships with school personnel and eachother. Many enter the experience feeling that theyknow about schools, after all they have recentlybeen students. The school is a complex systemwith many programs to meet the needs of children.The major mission of the school, however, is toassure that children learn. The time that Carverchildren spend in class is carefully guarded.Although a VCU student may have an importantand approved project for the child, the time toimplement to project must be negotiated with theteacher to assure that the child is not missing anyvital classroom time. A focus on health and socialservices needs are important but the unspokenquestion for many teachers seems to be, “Whycan’t this happen after school?” In addition, some-times there are tensions with teachers and otherschool staff about the credibility of the interns’competence. Our experience suggests that asteachers experience the benefits of their work withproject interns, and as they develop relationshipswith these interns, they increase the utilization ofproject interns, services and programs. This real-ization resulted in our focus to support relation-ship development among the interns and schoolstaff. We believe that the underutilization of someservices of the Carver Health Project will bedecreased by our concerted efforts at relationshipdevelopment. Students have been able to use theseexperience to support their understanding of theimportance of interdisciplinary professional rela-tionships.

The complexity of coordinating student andfaculty time at Carver School has been a consid-erable challenge. Student clinical/field work expe-riences and requirements vary in length and time.Students were often not able to work together forproject development since they were in the schoolon different days and had to be in their other VCUclasses for their respective programs during othertimes of the week. Student-faculty seminars wereone way that cross-disciplinary learning has beenimplemented. The project coordinator, a nursingfaculty member, has been the link for students atCarver School. This individual supports the inte-gration of student learning experiences by coor-dinating schedules, facilitating student collabora-tion on projects, and developing strategies toprovide cooperative learning experiences.Effective integrated training is an area that proj-ect faculty want to improve as the project movesinto its third year.

The Carver Health Project serves as a modelof interdisciplinary community-based education tomeet the learning needs of VCU students and theneeds of Carver residents. We have modifiedexperiences throughout the program to assure thatthe VCU students learning objectives could be metthrough their experiences in Carver School. Oneexample is the parenting group. This service wasinitially offered at Carver school in late morningand few parents attended. Faculty, students andCarver staff discussed this problem and decidedthat although the school had identified this as aparent need, that parents did not agree. During theyear, a community assessment was conducted anda parent education program was located in thecommunity that is offered at night. Students havedeveloped a new project as they work with theParent-Teacher Organization.

Overall, the multidisciplinary approachinvolves exposing university students to othermethods of working in the community. While thiscan be a boost for the elementary school by pro-viding access to a new set of resources, it can alsoprove to be a difficult assignment for students whomust learn to function outside of familiar methods.The role of the coordinator is to support the uni-versity students through this learning experiencewhile ensuring that the needs of the elementary stu-dents are identified. A multidisciplinary approachby its very nature provokes change in both the uni-versity students and in the environment, which inthis case is the elementary school.

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faculty for the university students must work withthe coordinator to ensure that the inevitable con-flicts result in positive change and learning for theuniversity students. We believe that attention to thedevelopmental processes relevant to contactbetween the cultures of different stakeholder groupswill continue to inform our efforts to develop aneffective interdisciplinary training program.

References

Berry, J. W. (1980). Acculturation as varietiesof adaptation. In A. M. Padilla (Ed.),Acculturation: Theory, model, and some newfindings (pp.9-25). Boulder, CO; Westview.

Berry, J. W., & Kim, U. (1988). Acculturationand Mental Health . In P. R. Dasen, J. W. Berry,& N. Satorius (Eds.), Health and cross-culturalpsychology: Toward applications (pp 720-236).Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

About the Authors

Kevin Allison, Ph.D., is Associate Professorof Psychology at Virginia CommonwealthUniversity.

JoAnne Henry, Ed.D., RN,CS, is AssociateProfessor in the School of Nursing and Directorof the Community Nursing Organization and theOffice of Health Policy at VirginiaCommonwealth University.

Humberto Fabelo, Ph.D., is AssistantProfessor of Social Work at VirginiaCommonwealth University.

Marie Chapin, RN, MS, PNP, is an Instructorin the School of Nursing at VirginiaCommonwealth University.

Catherine W. Howard, Ph.D., is AssociateProfessor of Psychology and Director of theOffice of Community Programs at VirginiaCommonwealth University.

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culture and context. For example, CarverElementary School continues to negotiate its rela-tionships with the local Carver community andworks on its perception to be seen as belonging tothe community or as a resource to the community.Parents, who are the clients for our trainees, mayor may not find it easy to negotiate the culturalcontext of this educational setting. When con-ducting training in the school context, universitystudents and faculty may variously be seen asagents of Carver School, of their particular disci-plines, or of the university (which has its ownunique relationship with the community). Facultyand students are required to resolve these identi-ties when working in the community context.

Summary and Conclusions

The Carver Health Project has provided animportant opportunity to offer a range of healthand human services to children and adults in theCarver community, and is continuing to developand implement an integrated service delivery andtraining model. Practical issues such as schedul-ing and coordination have proved to be the largestobstacle, while the role of a faculty coordinatorwho facilitates a supportive and inclusive envi-ronment has been an important contribution to thesuccess of the experience. The program has pro-vided an important and accessible health andsocial service resource to the school and commu-nity, and has provided training opportunities to awide range of students in the health and humanservice fields.

These efforts take place within the context ofthe broader Carver-VCU Partnership that supportsa range of related Carver school-based projects. Forexample, in 1998, VCU received an EisenhowerProfessional Development grant for $55,000 toprovide training to Carver Elementary Schoolteachers in the innovative practices of teachingexperimental design during the 1999 Spring andSummer. VCU has also provided tutors to addressthe reading needs of first and second gradersthrough the VCU America Reads program. TheVCU AmeriCorps Program, provides full and part-time members who assist with tutoring, after-schoolprograms, the Parent Resource Center, and CarverPromise. In addition, VCU students in service-learning courses serve as volunteers to assist withvarious projects, including tutoring.

Preliminary indicators at Carver School revealsignificant improvements in academic improve-

ment and attendance, due in part to the large num-ber of tutors and specialized support from VCU.In addition, VCU supplied the Parent ResourceCenter at Carver School with a computer lab usingsurplus computers that were upgraded with fundsfrom the HUD grant. The grant also paid for theinstallation of Internet connections. The schoolcontributed the computer tables. The lab is avail-able to all parents of Carver School students andresidents of the Carver community for computerclasses and open hours for self-tutorials, Internetaccess, and use for resume writing. The HealthPromotion and Services Integration Committeealso sponsors an annual health fair that providesa range of screenings (e.g., mammograms, bloodpressure, hearing, prostrate) and provides oppor-tunities for the dissemination of health & socialservice information from over 35 vendors.

While we do not have explicit data that tell uswhether community residents and CarverElementary School families are accessing healthservices more easily, feedback from our annualTown Meeting suggests increases in the percep-tion that, “It is easy to get good health services inthe Carver Community.” Among respondents,agreement with this opinion increased from 23%in 1998 to 67% in 1999.

University-community collaborations that pro-vide training opportunities for students in health andhuman service disciplines may be useful resourcesfor communities lacking access to services. In turn,young professional may have valuable trainingexperiences through their work in urban communi-ties. Training programs may also benefit fromincreased opportunities to train, socialize, and pro-duce professionals who are effective in interdisci-plinary settings. Change in training programs andcommunity settings where this training may takeplace forms out of the conflict or tension that ariseswhen traditional methods of coping and function-ing no longer work. In addressing the challenge toprovide relevant and effective training experiencesto support the ability of health care professionalsto work in interdisciplinary settings, traditionalmethods of training will be called upon to change,and faculty and services settings will be asked towork together. However, when such groups areformed, with people that have different backgroundsand philosophies, conflict and change are inevitable.The dual goals of service to the elementary schooland promoting professional student’s learning mustbe kept focal throughout this process. The core

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of these professors was told, “I certainly didn’texpect anyone from your field to be involved inthis stuff.”

Although the community programs run by theuniversity students and professors began inChicago, one of America’s largest cities, it is nolonger a secret that many of our youth—perhaps themajority—need more help than our institutions givethem (Benson & Harkavy, 1997). Underservedneighborhoods and communities are everywhere.That’s why the six professors’ work takes place ina variety of locations, including Greeley, Colorado;Grand Forks, North Dakota; Greensboro, NorthCarolina; Los Angeles; Chicago; and Denver.Thus, the ideas being shared in this article have rel-evance for professors and students in all collegesand universities, not just those in major urban areas.

In the following sections, we detail the varietyof experiences, courses, and programs physicaleducators in higher education can use to develop acommunity focus within the college, school,department, or division. We draw on our experi-ences as professors as well as the experiences ofour students who have integrated serving under-served youth into their professional lives. We pres-ent several options that professors might consideras they consider how best to integrate experiencein community programs into university course workand degree programs. We conclude with somethoughts that may guide professors and students asthey strive to develop a community focus withinlarger physical education/kinesiology contexts.

Establishing a University Commitmenttowards Underserved Communities

In spite of periodic calls for reform andchange, kinesiology and physical education pro-grams have remained largely isolated from theirsurrounding communities (Lawson, 1997).Granted, teacher education programs place pre-service teachers in local schools to fulfill studentteaching requirements, but in most cases, theattention of student teachers, university supervi-sors, and cooperating teachers is focused on chil-dren and youth who fit within the normal rangeof ability and attitude. This is hardly surprisingwhen one considers that university course work isusually geared to this population as well as coach-ing elite performers or else students with clearlydefined “special needs.” With few exceptions,little regard is given to understanding the lives ofyoung children and youth who live in underserved

communities, and even less attention is devoted toconsidering how their needs can be met throughphysical activity programs.

A Brief History: How a “Lone Ranger”Community-Oriented Professor was Joined byKindred Souls

Until the late 1980s, Don Hellison was per-haps the only university professor in the UnitedStates who regularly taught physical activity pro-grams to kids in underserved communities. Afterhaving been a “lone ranger” at Portland StateUniversity for almost 20 years, in 1987 he joinedthe University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC)attracted by the then Kinesiology Dean, ChuckKristufek’s promise to support his efforts inteaching urban kids. It wasn’t long before a smallgroup of faculty members and graduate studentsjoined him and taught their own programs. UnderDon’s direction, this group was instrumental increating a School of Kinesiology commitment toproviding physical activity programs for under-served youth in the urban communities that sur-round the UIC campus. While students have grad-uated and faculty have moved on in theirprofessional lives, the group is still in place, andin 1999 there are nine programs being run inChicago schools and social agencies.

Today, Don’s efforts have branched out intoother locations around the US. Two of Don’s for-mer students—James Kallusky at Los AngelesState University and Nick Cutforth at the Universityof Denver—have used the knowledge and experi-ence gained from a close working relationship withhim to develop a community focus in their univer-sities and implement their own physical activityprograms. Two others—Tom Martinek at theUniversity of North Carolina at Greensboro andMissy Parker (formerly at the University of NorthDakota) now at the University of NorthernColorado—used their sabbatical leave to come toChicago to observe and assist in the UIC programsrun by Don and his students and on returning totheir universities applied this new knowledge todevelop community programs of their own. Theother professor—Jim Stiehl from the University ofNorthern Colorado—has known Don for manyyears and has always maintained close contact withhim by sharing ideas and writing. At the same timeJim has taught underserved kids in outdoor pro-grams, taking along university students with him.

Thus each professor’s journey toward a focuson university-community collaboration differs in

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C A P I T A L I Z I N G O N T H EP O P U L A R I T Y O F S P O R T A N DP H Y S I C A L A C T I V I T Y A M O N G

U N D E R S E R V E D Y O U T H : B R E A K I N G N E W G R O U N G I N

U N I V E R S I T Y / C O M M U N I T Y C U L T U R E S

Nick CutforthU N I V E R S I T Y O F D E N V E R

and

Don HellisonU N I V E R S I T Y O F I L L I N O I S A T C H I C A G O

Introduction

This article describes the work of six university professors who are doing important collaborativework with social agencies and educational institutions in their surrounding communities to impact thesocial, emotional, and educational growth of underserved children and youth. In these universities, pro-fessors and students are working together to provide a rich array of physical activity programs for under-served youth1.

This work takes place at different times (schooldays, evenings, and weekends during the school year,as well as summer vacations), in different venues (including elementary, middle, and high schools, alter-native schools, detention centers, universities, and boys and girls clubs), and involves different ages (fromthird graders all the way through to high school seniors). Much of this work has been going on for sev-eral years at the same site, while other program sites are new and may not be there forever. However,these programs have several things in common: they capitalize on the popularity of physical activity amongmost underserved kids; they are taught or directed by people who are concerned about the plight of under-served youth and who are committed to developing programs that work; and last but certainly not least,Don Hellison’s (1995) responsibility model is at the heart of each program’s framework and focus.

The responsibility model occupies a central place in this work because it provides a common set ofvalues, goals, and instructional strategies for all youth programs conducted in these university commu-nities. Furthermore, the model extends far beyond physical activity instruction by focusing on the teach-ing of life skills and values and their subsequent transfer from the physical activity setting to the class-room, community, and home. Four life skills/values—respect for others’ rights and feelings, effort,goal-setting, and helping and leadership—are learned and practiced as part of the physical activity les-son. Eventually, the fifth goal, outside the gym, is introduced and increasingly emphasized, along withactivities such as cross-age teaching and one-on-one sessions to show kids how to apply these skills inthe classroom. Empowerment, which simply refers to gradually shifting power from program leaders tokids, is interwoven throughout the program, so that students take more responsibility for their attitudesand behaviors, for solving their conflicts, for evaluating the program and themselves, and for teachingand coaching each other.

One of the reasons that this work is significant is because most faculty and students in departmentsof physical education (or kinesiology) in the United States have not been players in the university-com-munity collaboration movement (Siedentop, 1998). At a recent HUD-sponsored COPC conference, one

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the class. However, a service learning assignmentcan also be one of several options within a course.As a pedagogical process, service learninginvolves four elements: 1) planning, 2) imple-mentation and project monitoring, 3) reflectionand celebration, and 4) evaluation and reporting(Witmer & Anderson, 1994). University studentsare placed in community settings to “serve andlearn” through various roles. These might includementoring a child or a small group of childrenthrough physical activities, assisting teachers witha physical education class, athletic team, or afterschool program, or directing their own physicalactivity program.

The first step of the service learning experienceinvolves planning. Here, the students work coop-eratively with the professor and the communitypartner to describe and agree upon the major com-ponents of the service experience including tasks,schedule, outcomes, supervision, and assessment.This step also involves the preparation of the uni-versity students and the host site including know-ing how to act, what to expect, identifying the needsof the placement population, and planning a seriesof activities to meet these needs.

The next major component to be considered ineffective service learning experiences is projectimplementation and monitoring. During imple-mentation, a good monitoring process is needed toensure that the project is meeting the expectationsof the professor, the student, and the communitypartner. It also allows modifications too be madeduring the implementation process as needed.

Reflection and celebration distinguish servicelearning from other community service activities.Through reflection, students analyze, synthesize,and make judgments about their service experi-ences while also learning youth development con-cepts. Reflection is an ongoing process and caninclude writing diaries, logs, or journals and oralreflections such as presentations and discussionswith peers, site supervisors, or the professor. Thewritten materials enable students to compile arecord of what their experiences were about, thuscreating a system for reflection and growth; theyalso enable students to reflect on the meaning ofthese experiences, thus increasing the power oftheir application of theory and research to theirwork with children. The oral medium offers con-texts for sharing experiences, questioning partic-ular activities or events they observed, probingnew possibilities, discussing successful activities,

and exploring new solutions to problems. Studentsshould be encouraged to develop their own cul-minating experiences which might integratereflection with the celebration component ofservice learning. The final stage, evaluation andreporting, should be based on the objectives of theservice learning activity and should be designedduring the planning process. The students shouldlearn how to use both qualitative and quantitativetechniques to collect, analyze, and report the data.The evaluation should show the extent to whichobjectives were met, the degree to which the activ-ities were carried out as planned, and the impactof the experience on the children’s academic,social, and personal development. The reportingcould be done through traditional class papers ororal presentations, or through more nontraditionalapproaches such as poster presentations, video-documentaries, or Web Pages.

Thus service learning is a complex process thatinvolves careful planning, implementation, reflec-tion, and evaluation to be successful. (Erickson &Anderson, 1997). The time spent on these elementswill be reflected in the quality and impact of theexperience on the community partners, the profes-sor, and the students. The community partners ben-efit when the service experience is tailored to youngpeople’s needs (Cutforth, in press), and from theenhanced relationship with the university. Potentialbenefits accruing to the professor include increasedstudent motivation, an increased knowledge of thecommunity and the extent of services available, thebetter relations between the university and the com-munity, and the experience of using a nontraditionalpedagogical approach.

The students benefit from learning by doingand reflecting on their learning with the profes-sor and fellow students. Service learning experi-ences offer opportunities for students and profes-sors to link theory and practice in ways thatstimulate discussion, refinements of pedagogicalstrategies, and development of new teachingapproaches. For example, challenges such asdiversity and youth alienation can take on realfaces and specific locations for students. Suchshared, collaborative learning experiences result inthe students being active rather than passive in thelearning process, and their discourse is wide-rang-ing and interdisciplinary. Students in these smalllearning communities often say that these aresome of the most beneficial learning experiencesof their degree program. Furthermore, the stu-

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several ways. In addition, their present commitmentto youth programming takes many forms. Forexample, their kids’ programs differ in contentfocus and populations served (although all areunderserved); the way they connect these programsto their universities varies; and their organizationalstyles reflect their different personalities and val-ues. However, they are all connecting communityprograms in underserved communities to universitystructures, course work, and degree opportunities.

Options for Integrating Experience inCommunity Programs into UniversityCourse Work and Degree Programs

The university-community programs in theprofessors’ university settings take several differ-ent forms. They are distinguishable by the kindsof experiences available to students and theaccompanying degree of intellectual depth. Theyalso reflect professors’ and students’ motives forparticipating in such programs and their desiredlevels of involvement.

The professors range from tenured full pro-fessors to untenured assistant professors. Theirmotivations vary from always having done thiskind of work (Don and Jim), to an expandinginterest in applying many years of success in theirdisciplinary field to the needs of underserved kids(Tom and Missy), to a desire to pursue the chal-lenges of university-community collaboration forthe rest of their careers (James and Nick).

The students range from freshmen under-graduates trying to find something worthwhile todo to doctoral students writing their dissertations.Their motivations range from the simple desire tohave such an experience to an interest in pursu-ing a career in youth development work (includ-ing public school teaching). Their reasons for par-ticipation illustrate the variety of commitmentsone can make, ranging from a one semester expe-rience to an entire career change.

In this section we will look at several optionsincluding:

• Visitations to existing programs• Independent study• Optional (or mandatory) service learning

experiences in current courses• Graduate concentrations• Special programs • Faculty and student collaboration on

research and scholarship

Visitations to Existing ProgramsThese are opportunities to visit and observe

an existing program taught by a professor, uni-versity student, community youth worker, or pub-lic school teacher. They could be voluntary or pro-vide credit for students who show interest andpromise. The student’s role could be as an observeror, if sufficiently motivated or confident, he or shecould assist the teacher by working with individ-ual kids or small groups. While these visits neednot be connected with course work, they could beone option for a course assignment (for example,Curriculum Issues in Physical Education orPsycho-Social Aspects of Physical Education andSport) in which case they could be followed up bya written paper or class presentation.

Independent StudyAn independent study involves a student and a

professor having regular one-to-one exchanges ona project tailor-made to the students’ needs andinterests—for example, Effective Programmingfor Underserved Youth (Cutforth). The pair meetson a weekly, biweekly, or monthly basis to discussreadings or an issue or idea about underservedyouth and effective programming, Often, the result-ing more personal relationship enables the profes-sor to be in a better position to make course read-ings, discussions, and perhaps visits to existingyouth development programs meaningful.Sometimes, as a result of the course, the studentmay be motivated to become further involved withthe professor’s work by visiting existing programsor developing and teaching a program in the com-munity. The drawback is that the professor has tobudget time to meet with the student, read andrespond to the student’s journals or papers, and pre-pare for the next meeting, and often this work is“off-load” and therefore in addition to usual pro-fessorial duties. While new assistant professors, inparticular, may be concerned about this drawback,independent study arrangements do provide themwith a valuable opportunity to discuss readings andissues related to their academic interests.

Optional (or Mandatory) Service LearningExperiences in Current Courses

Service learning experiences involve studentsin community placements in which they assumehelping roles with youth. Such experiences can bemandatory or optional. When mandatory, “serv-ice learning” may even be included in the coursetitle or course description to reflect the focus of

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These special programs require faculty to workand think in a different way. Often the traditionalprofessor-student relationship is replaced by a teamapproach in which team members spend many hoursin discussions deciding what specific topics shouldreceive focus and how best to study them. Each per-son should feel able to express his or her opinion,and decisions are often made by consensus, ratherthan directives from the professor.

Faculty and Student Collaboration on Researchand Scholarship

Each of the above options may include pro-fessors and students engaging in varying amountsof teaching in community programs, consultingwith community agencies, presenting papers andconducting workshops at local, national, andinternational conferences, and undertakingresearch. Numerous applied research opportuni-ties are available for students and faculty inter-ested in making a contribution to the academiccommunity and to the advancement of the youthdevelopment model. Such opportunities illustratehow the university tripartite mission of research,teaching, and service can be combined rather thanbeing seen as separate entities (Cutforth, 1997).

Some Closing Thoughts About Developinga University-Community Focus

Collaborating with social agencies and educa-tional institutions in local communities takes a con-siderable amount of time, support, and intellectualenergy, and is often more messy than working onresearch projects and teaching. Problems and chal-lenges occur regularly and all the professors haveexperienced struggles and victories in gaining sup-port at the departmental, college, university, andcommunity levels.

Underserved communities are everywhere andmost are desperate for additional help and services.While such neediness can be an asset (there is noshortage of settings in which to focus our energies!)there is also the danger that we will be asked to takeon more of a challenge than we can handle. Forexample, on several occasions we have been askedto take 30 kids in our after school programs. Inresponse we make it clear that large numbers willtake our focus away from the responsibility goalsof the program to classroom management andbehavioral strategies (for additional thoughts on thisissue, see Hellison & Cutforth, 1997).

The adage, “Start Small” is appropriatebecause the options for university-community col-laboration discussed earlier take time to developand require professors and students to be recep-tive, ready, and willing to teach and learn in newways. All the professors started by teaching intheir own community program. Sometimes inter-ested students visit these programs, several gettheir feet wet as assistant teachers, and a few goon to direct their own programs. Others mayapproach their professor about doing an inde-pendent study.

Over many months, the professors and stu-dents begin to foster university-community col-laboration, often without much experience indoing so. As the years progress, they gain accessto and the trust of additional public schools andcommunity social agencies. Often the practicalquestions that arise from such efforts meritthoughtful consideration back at the university,and generate a demand for service learning expe-riences and the infusion of youth developmentconcepts into university course work. Severalyears later a graduate concentration or a specialprogram may develop, with faculty and studentcollaborating on research and scholarship

However, while this scenario may sound likea blueprint, it certainly is not. Rather it is nonlin-ear and loaded with uncertainty. Because of indi-vidual, group, and institutional values, priorities,and needs, the extent to which these developmentsoccur may vary. The important point is that onehas to start somewhere, and without the profes-sor’s initial efforts to venture beyond the univer-sity setting, there would be no opportunities forthe seeds of university-collaboration to take root.Vision, while necessary for success, emergesfrom, more than it precedes, action. Furthermore,productive educational change is really a journeythat doesn’t end until we do!

In the professors’ university-community pro-grams, students are more like colleagues than sub-ordinates, colleagues to be supported in any pos-sible way. Social functions play a large part in allthe professors’ programs, and they reflect the viewthat most of us possess minds capable of cultiva-tion beyond classes. Also, they reduce the isola-tion that innovators typically experience. Theseprofessors are almost always available to studentsin their offices and at homes and they have a solic-itous concern for their well-being—a concern

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dents’ involvement in planning, practicing differ-ent skills, and reflecting on these experiences rein-forces basic pedagogical behaviors common toteaching. Many students continue to work withkids long after the completion of the class.

Special ProgramsSeveral of the professors have built an admin-

istrative home for their work by establishing spe-cial programs. These programs differ in regard tothe academic experiences offered and their formof university-community collaboration. At theUniversity of Illinois at Chicago, Don offersundergraduate elective courses in At-risk YouthLeadership and Youth Mentoring, a master’s pro-gram in Urban Youth Development, and a doctoralprogram in curriculum design with the College ofEducation with a concentration in Urban YouthDevelopment. As staff members in Don’s UrbanYouth Leadership Project, students work in youthprograms in Chicago’s inner-city communities. Atthe University of Northern Colorado, Jim’s stu-dents can pursue Master’s and doctoral degrees inOutdoor Education while teaching outdoor andexperiential education in alternative schools in theGreeley area. At the University of North Carolinaat Greensboro, Tom directs a master’s degree inCommunity Youth Leadership and teaches coursesin underserved youth and program evaluationwhich are also attended by doctoral students.Students work in Project Effort—a mentoring andcross-aged teaching program held at the localBoys and Girls Club. At the University of Denver,Nick offers a two-course specialization in UrbanEducation at the master’s level. In addition, grad-uate students in the College of Education andundergraduate students in the Department ofService Learning provide numerous educational,curriculum, and mental health services to threeDenver public schools as part of his University ofDenver/Northwestside Schools Partnership.

While different in structure, these programsshare several similarities. The students enroll inmaster’s or doctoral programs, take several class-room courses and one or more service learning orfield-based courses, develop, teach in, and evalu-ate programs for underserved kids, and write the-ses and dissertations to expand their knowledgeand their connections to real world problems. Thepurpose of these programs is to prepare studentsto take leadership roles in a variety of institutionsand levels. Several graduates are teachers in pri-

vate or public schools and community recreationprograms, while others are pursuing careers inhigher education as faculty members in physicaleducation teacher education, kinesiology, recre-ation, or urban education.

Also, these special programs adopt modes oforganization in curriculum, pedagogy, academicwork, and assessment that promote educationalcommunity among students and faculty. Studentlearning spans the disciplines and is shared andcollaborative both in the university and in thecommunity so that students learn together ratherthan apart. These classes often follow an inquiryapproach into the dilemmas and challenges ofteaching and learning in underserved communi-ties. The professors build on the interaction offieldwork experiences and theory to ask questionsof students, direct them to a variety of resources,share perceptions, suggest some possible alterna-tives to try, and encourage them to persist in theirown learning until they resolve the dilemmas oftheir teaching practices to their own satisfaction.

When students study the same topic, they willnaturally form their own self-supporting associa-tions to give each other academic and social sup-port. The professors have found that studentsspend more time together out of class than do stu-dents in traditional, unrelated stand-alone classes.The common study of a subject within the con-text of kids’ programs brings them togetherquickly as small communities of learners.

These learning communities have severalbenefits. First, students become more activelyinvolved in classroom learning, even after class,and by spending more time learning, obviouslythey learn more. Second, the students spend moretime learning together, and by learning togethereveryone’s understanding and knowledge isenriched. Third, these students form social bondsoutside the classroom. They tend to learn andmake close friends at the same time. This last out-come is one that is especially important in an erawhich Robert Bellah (1985) says is defined byrampant “expressive individualism,” and of grow-ing racial, gender, sexual, and ideological divi-sions on university campuses. Collaborative expe-riences teach students that their learning and thatof their peers is inexorably intertwined, and that,regardless of race, class, gender, or background,their academic interests, namely working withunderserved youth, are the same.

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N A T I O N A L C O N F E R E N C E O N

U N I V E R S I T Y - A S S I S T E D

C O M M U N I T Y S C H O O L S

N O V E M B E R 1 8 - 1 9 , 1 9 9 9

Keynote Address

David Hornbeck SuperintendentSchool District of Philadelphia

David Hornbeck spoke on the need for collaborative partnerships between schools, community groups,and universities. He also addressed the School District of Philadelphia’s long-term agenda and how thesecollaborative partnerships can help accomplish the School District’s goals. Partnerships are not estab-lished overnight, but take time and a sustained effort. Schools can not just be inside four walls of a class-room or the province of school districts, but school needs to have a broader base to operate successfully.We form partnerships in a purposeful way and the power of partnership grows from synergy as a con-sequence of the agenda in which the partnership sits. In Philadelphia, Children Achieving is the ten partagenda of the School District. It consists of the following belief system: (1) we are about all children,(2) standards, assessment and accountability are vital—we want children to meet standards, outcomesbased and consequences driven, (3) site-based management model—push power from superintendent’soffice and into schools and communities that are closer to the kids, (4) teacher training—when alteringbasic structure in schools, there needs to be opportunities for those who are a part of the structure tolearn about it, (5) we must start education with kids when they are little, (6) meeting health, social serv-ice community, and sanctuary needs—with many children on welfare, we face challenges that must bedealt with but not barriers to learning, (7) we must have the tools of instruction—books, building, andtechnology, (8) public engagement—it takes partnerships to do all of this, (9) financial resources, and(10) must accomplish first nine—one must be systemic when approaching these issues, to the extent thatthese parts fit together will be the degree to which there will be enormous power within this framework.All nine items must be accomplished for real improvement to occur. Over the last three years, Philadelphiapublic schools have achieved a forty percent increase in test scores while increasing participation of youngpeople testing by twenty-two percent.

Partnerships, particularly with institutions of higher education, have played a large role in bringingthese accomplishments about. Standards, accountability, and assessment is one area where higher edshave helped to identify a world-class standard framework. Standards bring responsibility because thenchildren need to meet those standards. Being a good citizen is also important and there is a need to bepurposeful about creating teaching and learning space in which children learn by doing and practicingcitizenship. Such activity should be thoughtful, reflective, and rooted in writing and reading. Creatingthese opportunities has been an area of tight connection between universities and public schools.Experientially based learning is also an important component of Children Achieving. The University ofPennsylvania has been one of the largest employers in a school-to-career, American-style apprenticeshipprogram. In the governance area, a major initiative has been creating within each cluster a cluster resourceboard. Penn has served as a senior partner in the two clusters adjacent to the its campus. Access to a net-work of partners is the central service that senior partners bring to cluster resource board. The resourceboard meets and identifies needs and then finds the resources that can meet those needs. University part-nership is also important in professional development. Student teachers at schools are vital to the con-tribution of everyday learning in the school environment. Within health and social services, universities

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which is usually reciprocated. Such practicesembody the view of looking beyond labels suchas “inexperienced,” “beginning teacher,” “gradu-ate student,” or “member of a research team” andreplacing them with appropriate recognition forcontributions to various projects, whether they beteaching in community programs, writing researchreports, making presentations, or submitting man-uscripts for publications.

It has been our experience that neither cen-tralization nor decentralization works in efforts toreach out to the community. What is required is adifferent two-way relationship of pressure, sup-port, and continuous negotiation, amounting tosimultaneous top-down and bottom-up influence.Each of us—whether as individuals or as ingroups—have learned to manage this paradox.

The most important ingredients for successfuluniversity-community collaboration are the com-mitment, preparation, and persistence of the facultyand students involved. Every person can be achange agent but must forego the hope of discov-ering a set of easy-to-follow steps. Likewise, a com-mitment to university-community collaboration byitself is not good enough. A commitment needs anengine, and that engine comprises individual,skilled people pushing for changes around them,intersecting with other like-minded individuals andgroups necessary to form the critical mass neces-sary to bring about continuous improvements.Indeed, this is the spirit in which the partnershipinvolving the professors was formed.

Physical education/kinesiology programs inhigher education are well-positioned to direct moreof their energies to their local communities, and todevelop leaders in the youth development field—people willing to accept challenges and take risks.This article has provided several examples andguidelines for doing this kind of work and for devel-oping and implementing programs. We hope thatour efforts will inspire others to get involved.

Endnotes

1. The work of the professors mentioned in thisarticle is featured in an edited book by DonHellison and Nick Cutforth titled Servingunderserved youth through physical activity:Toward a model of university-community col-laboration which will be published by HumanKinetics, Champaign, IL. in 2000.

References

Benson, L & Harkavy, I. (1997). Universities,colleges, and their neighboring communities.Universities and Community Schools, 5(1-2), 5-11.

Cutforth, N.J. (1997). “What’s worth doing”:A university professor reflects on an after-schoolprogram in a Denver elementary school. Quest,49, 130-139.

Cutforth, N. J. (in press). Connecting SchoolPhysical Education to the Community ThroughService Learning. Journal of Health, PhysicalEducation, Recreation, and Dance.

Erickson, J., & Anderson, J. (Eds.) (1997).Learning with the community: Concepts andmodels for service learning in teacher education.Washington DC: American Association of HigherEducation.

Hellison, D.R. and Cutforth, N.J. (1997).Extended day programs for urban children andyouth: From theory to practice. In H. Walberg, O.Reyes, and R. Weissberg (Eds.) Urban childrenand youth: Interdisciplinary perspectives on poli-cies and programs, pp. 223-249. San Francisco,CA: Jossey Bass.

Lawson, H.A. (1997). Children in crisis, thehelping professions, and the social responsibilitiesof the universities. Quest, 49, 8-33.

Siedentop, D. (1998). Regaining the publictrust: Complex social problems meet specializedacademic disciplines. Quest, 50, 170-78.

About the Authors

Nick Cutforth is a professor in the College ofEducation at the University of Denver

Don Hellison is a professor of Kinesiology atthe University of Illinois at Chicago

Please address correspondence to: NickCutforth, Ph.D., College of Education, Universityof Denver, Denver, CO 80208. TEL: (303) 871-2477; FAX: (303) 871-4456; E-MAIL: [email protected]

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Universities are civic institutions whose orig-inal mission had a strong public purpose and arecurrently strategically situated to do somethingabout the problem of civic involvement.Universities are not just places that educate andconduct research, but they have immenseresources (such as libraries and technology) thatcould be relevant for the community. Whether theyview themselves in this role or not, universities arepart of the community fabric because of their roleas consumers and employers. John Dewey demon-strated this democratic spirit when he establishedthe Michigan Schoolmasters, an organization forprofessors at the University of Michigan and localschool teachers that met monthly to discuss whatthey had in common and how it was related to edu-cation for democracy. However, universities havedrifted away from this ideal. Community groupsfind it hard to access universities as institutions,faculty vary in their commitment to this idea, andfew top administrators have made educating fordemocracy a top goal.

Three elements need to be considered whenexamining the role of higher education in relationto its community and schools. (1) How can uni-versities help students, including k-h students, pre-pare for active participation in a diverse demo-cratic society? Today’s students are among mostpolitically disengaged in history. Interest in polit-ical participation is at a low level with incomingfreshman and declines while in the university,making this both a societal and institutionalissue. Possible solutions that the university couldimplement are research projects, service learningcourses, and co-curricular activities. Yet, evenwhen universities have these things, strong studentcommitment to public participation is still a prob-lem, leading one to believe that education is notenough. (2) How can universities engage facultyin research and teaching which involves andimproves communities? Dewey models a numberof avenues through which professors can involvethemselves in local community; opportunitieswhich include conducting research in and with thecommunity, providing technical support and con-sultation in areas of expertise, and connecting withteachers in schools. Yet faculty view themselvesas teachers or researchers, but generally do notperceive themselves as public participants.Furthermore, there is little in the training of pro-fessors and teachers to prepare them for civic edu-cation. (3) How can the universities form com-

munity partnerships for civic renewal? The prom-ise of partnerships is not often matched by theirperformance. Many partnerships show lack oftrust, inequitable power and control, differences incultural perspective, and conflicts over fundingand fiduciary agents. Partnerships in this arena aremost likely to be genuine if the community, andnot the university, is the fiduciary. While we haveexceptional partnerships, they are not typical andneed to become more numerous if we wish toaddress the issues outlined above.

David Lisman articulated that the servicelearning movement is headed toward a newdimension that connects service learning todemocracy and civic development. Communityschools are increasingly viewed conceptually as avehicle for helping students to achieve participa-tion in a diverse democratic society. The promo-tion of civic democracy as the underlying foun-dation for service learning is a strong developmentthat builds on three previous models of servicelearning. Using Service learningService learningto promoteas a basis for an ethic of service lacksinstitutional imbeddedness. While service learn-ing serves as a model for experiential learning,experiential learning can have other outcomesbesides civic development. Service learning as avehicle for promoting social conscious and justiceis not a sufficient rationale for people who areconcerned with the problems of public institu-tions. The civic approach wraps in these objec-tives, while giving it a foundation.

Public schools are one of the great commu-nity locations for working to achieve this civicdemocracy. They have the stability and infra-structure that other community institutions oftenlack. Yet higher-eds face many challenges whenworking with schools as well as other communitygroups. Universities may be high minded whengoing into a community but must realize that com-munity partners set the agenda. In public schools,established state and federal standards currentlyplay a large role in determining the agenda. Whenprincipals are pressured to achieve standards theywill want after-school homework clubs or otheractivities designed around raising test scores, eventhough the university might entertain larger goalsand aspirations for community schools. As wemove forward with the community school con-cept, higher eds must be careful to not use schoolsas a laboratory for their own interests. Yet, whilefocusing on both the needs of the university and

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have helped establish recreational programs, after-school and extended time programs both in theschool and with other community organizations.There are two main ingredients for good volun-teer programs: asking institutional partners andhaving a coordinator to organize their efforts. Theother stable institutions in urban areas are faithcommunities. Church-state prohibitions only limitcertain activities, and many connections can andshould be made between public schools and faithcommunities. Penn has played a leading role inhelping schools come together with faith organi-zations. Three years into the twelve-year goals, theSchool District of Philadelphia is ahead of sched-ule. Partnerships have played an important role inthat success.

Plenary Session on University-AssistedCommunity Schools as Vehicles forEducating Citizens for Democracy: K-HPerspectives

Convener: Nevin BrownPrincipal PartnerThe Education Trust

Panelists: Barry CheckowayProfessor and DirectorCenter for Community Service and ServiceLearningUniversity of Michigan – Ann Arbor

C. David LismanDirector of Service LearningUniversity of Denver

Terry PickeralDirectorCompact for Learning and CitizenshipEducation Commission of the States

Sondra MyersConsultant – International, Civic and CulturalProjectsMember, WEPIC Replication Project NationalAdvisory BoardDemocracy is a Discussion Handbook

Commentator:Ira HarkavyAssociate Vice PresidentDirectorCenter for Community PartnershipsUniversity of Pennsylvania

The opening panel chronicled the many devel-opments in service learning, community schools,and democratic education while laying out a num-ber of critical issues and questions that currentlyconfront schools, institutions of higher education,and democratic societies in their efforts to educatefor democracy.

Nevin Brown began the panel by noting thatone of the issues facing post-secondary learning isdetermining who is accountable for student learn-ing and what kind of student learning should beencouraged by those responsible for learning. Wemust ask what is it we expect from post-secondaryeducation and what are we trying to produce in thelearning that our students engage in. Learning forcitizenship and engagement in democracy needs tojoin the current focus on the academic. The move-ment for service learning and education for democ-racy is not just occurring in the United States, butshaping discussions about higher education and k-12 schools worldwide. The InternationalPartnership for Service Learning is pushing post-secondary institutions to think about their role increating citizens in emerging democracies in coun-tries such as Jamaica, Liberia, Uganda, India, andPhilippines. The implications of our discussionmove far beyond our own boarders.

Barry Checkoway asked if the universityshould have a strategy for involving community andcommunity schools in democratic education and ifso, what should it be. Civic education is essentialto a democratic society, but too many Americanshave reduced their engagement in public affairs.While they may have increased involvement incommunity service, engagement in public affairshas declined. Studies have documented that thedecline in traditional forms of political participa-tion is especially prevalent among younger agegroups. While new forms of engagement areemerging for an increasingly diverse society thattraditional political scientists do not necessarilyappreciate, serious questions still remain about peo-ple’s interests in public issues, respect for differ-ences, and ability to argue beliefs.

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pation. He asked to what extent is lack of partic-ipation a result of the careerist non-principlednature of politics. Political engagement amongyoung people is difficult despite the best effortsof the university because of the nature of politics.The core issue and question presented asks if thenature of the society is determined by the natureof the schooling system. If the schooling systemshapes the nature of politics, then we should beconcerned with the nature and function of ourschools. For example, Plato’s aristocracy calls foran authoritarian and elitist school while Dewey’sdemocratic society calls for a more democraticschool. Thus, the lack of democratic educationwill inevitably lead to a non-democratic society.We must consider how to develop education fordemocracy and ask what is education for democ-racy. While Dewey understood what democraticeducation might look like, he never developed astrategy for implementing it. William Harper, for-mer president of the University of Chicago, saidthat education is the basis of democracy and thathigher education is the primary shaper of theAmerican schooling system because it trains theteachers, educates the leaders, and dominates thepedagogical style of American schooling.Universities are prophets of democracy, but onlyif they are working with local schools. How do weengage in a successful implementation revolutionthat sees the implementation of education fordemocracy as the goal of that revolution?

University-Community-SchoolPartnerships as Strategies forCommunity and Economic Development

Convener: Lucy KermanDirector of Special ProjectsOffice of the PresidentUniversity of Pennsylvania

Panelists: Marcia Marker Feld Professor and DirectorUrban Field CenterUniversity of Rhode Island

Michael MorandAssistant Vice President Office of New Haven & State Affairs Yale University

Diana Dorn-JonesExecutive DirectorUnited South Broadway Corporation Albuquerque, New Mexico

Loomis MayfieldCoordinatorGreat Cities Initiative College of Planning and Public Affairs University of Illinois-Chicago

Henry Louis Taylor, Jr. DirectorCenter for Urban StudiesUniversity at BuffaloState University of New York

Lucy Kerman began the session by outlininga number of efforts the University of Pennsylvaniahas undertaken to promote the corporate involve-ment of the University in the West Philadelphiacommunity. Penn’s strategic effort of corporateinvolvement, entitled the West PhiladelphiaInitiatives, is an organized, comprehensive effortthat understands neighborhoods are like people;needing holistic approaches to meet its needs.Thus, the West Philadelphia Initiatives comprisefives main areas of effort.

(1) Education—a commitment to goodschools and public schools, especially the schoolsin close proximity to the University. In additionto the numerous academic efforts with localschools, Penn has recently joined with thePhiladelphia School District and the Teacher’sUnion in creating a new University-assisted pub-lic school. The school will draw students from thelocal community and serve as both a professionaldevelopment hub as well as a community center.

(2) Clean and safe streets—a realization thatany community needs to be both clean and safe.Penn has joined with the city of Philadelphia increating a special service district that keeps thestreets clean and places security ambassadorsaround the neighborhood. Additional initiativeshave helped light and green the neighborhood.

(3) Retail development—building retail corri-dors around the University. Penn has recently com-pleted a new retail complex that includes a book-store, inn and a number of upscale shops. Inaddition to upscale retail, Penn is establishing othercorridors with mixed retail. All of these initiativesare aimed at building retail in areas of West

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the schools, we must be careful to have an inclu-sive community school program and not just meetthe academic needs of youth through after-schoolprograms. Community schools must exist to serveadults in the community and operate during theevening. Community schools should also utilizeservice learning to promote civic developmentamong youth and engage communities in sustain-able democratic work. We are often focused on thecivic development of college students and publicscholarship of faculty, but we also need to bear inmind the civic needs of youth in schools. If webelieve that service learning contributes to aca-demic learning we ought to incorporate thoseactivities into the community school model.

Terry Pickeral offered two frameworks for theconference participants to consider. The firstframework examines three different levels ofwork: (1) practice, (2) policy, and (3) capacity andinfrastructure. A struggle exists for the prevalenceof high quality practice, which comes at the costof energy expended on policy matters.Practitioners need to examine the policies thatimpede and support our work (such as school reg-ulations). There is a need to help structure poli-cies and help policymakers understand the workbeing done and how that work leads to commonvisions of education and democratic society.Focusing on practice alone does not ultimately getus where we want to be and focusing on policyalone does not lift us up enough, so we also needto address issues of capacity and infrastructure.What supports the work we want to do? A schoolsuperintendent in Hudson, MA has organized aschool around education for democracy and serv-ice learning as an effective strategy and pedagogyfor democratic education. Thus, the teachers mustbe able to teach through service learning; that’s apolicy issue. How can that policy be institution-alized so when the current superintendent leavesthe commitment to service learning will continue?

The second framework involves four dimen-sions of schooling: (1) learning outcomes, (2)teaching strategies, (3) time & place of teaching,(4) climate & culture of schools. How do we havea culture in our school that is accommodating tothe community during school? What are outcomeswe want students to acquire, what are the effec-tive teaching strategies/pedagogues to achievethose outcomes? When talking about learner out-comes that are centered around democracy andactive citizenship, teaching strategies change from

lecture and homework to kinds of engaging activ-ities that are critical for young people to under-stand by doing. Knowledge is just one part of civicdevelopment (efficacy, experience, skills, com-mitment also help shape civic development). In K-12, the reliance on standards has led us to viewcivics as an outcome of knowledge while ignor-ing experience and commitment. Other elementslead us to higher levels of civic engagement.Standards need to go beyond one set of knowledgeand skills in order to examine the issues that makefor good citizens. Time and place also has tochange because students must venture outside theschoolhouse doors. Enrichment activities thatcurrently occur after-school must be employed inschool. Service learning has capacity to get to aca-demic, civic, social/personal responsibility out-comes while moving students from personal inter-est to communal interests.

The service learning movement should not beabout reformation, but instead transformation atindividual, institutional, and community levels.One can not expect transformation at k-12 levelwithout being concerned with transformationwithin higher education and vice-versa. How dowe move our schools from risk to resiliency, com-petency, potency, belonging, and connectedness?It is one thing to give students the capacity to servein the community, it is another for the communityto allow them to do meaningful work. Schoolshave lost their civic soul and service learning ishelping to regain it.

Sondra Myers spoke about the publishing ofher handbook entitled Democracy is a Discussion.

Our democracy suffers from an inadequacy inboth policy and practice. Yet both new and olddemocracies face similar problems and dialogue iscrucial to overcoming these inadequacies. Thereexists an absence of civic sensibility at universitylevel, yet that absence is starting to be addressed.George Washington University has launched a newproject called “Presidents Millennium Seminars:The University For A New Democratic Era.” Eachof the eight schools at George Washington will con-duct seminars to think about the University’s rolein civic development and democracy. Such dialogueand strategies will help address both the absenceof civic values at the university level and preparestudents to tackle the larger societal inadequaciespresent in our society.

Ira Harkavy responded to the panelists by firstaddressing the issue of student political partici-

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revitalization. This success has been achieved withlittle money, but much citizen participation (whichled South Broad to receive the national neighbor-hood award in 1994). USBC has served as a linkto the outside world and an organic vehicle forcommunity action; one whose role constantlychanges to be open to community identifiedneighborhood needs.

South Broadway has also attempted to insti-tutionalize their many successes to ensure theirlong-term success. This activity has seen SouthBroadway partner with many organizations, fromlocal and federal government to higher educationinstitutions. In partnership with HUD, they lookedat how the built environment of the communityinfluenced drug trafficking in the area. Public artinitiatives and regular community clean-up dayswere established to encourage people to take pridein their community. South Broadway has alsodeveloped a relationship with both the Universityof New Mexico College of Education and theirSchool of Architecture and Planning. When USBCundertook a project to identify vacant lots forhousing in the neighborhood, they worked with theSchool of Architecture to hold design meetingswith the community in order to come up with res-ident-derived design guidelines. In SouthBroadway’s partnerships there is a definite senseof equality, with residents actively participating inthe work and determining the nature of the part-nerships. Communities must bring a people/vol-unteer investment to the table for successful part-nerships and that takes grass roots organizing. Ifprojects are not resident driven, what happenswhen programs decline or are taken away?Partners can help move communities to next levelof activity, but they can not be relied on to sus-tain the activity forever. Thus, a model of resident-driven community development and self-help isneeded. Healthy neighborhoods precede healthyschools. Healthy neighborhoods can only happenwhen people feel safe, have decent housing, andwhen a neighborhood has found its voice and isable to articulate the terms of engagement withpotential partners.

Michael Morand discussed the intersection ofthe university’s roles in economic developmentand public education. One of the fundamentalissues of democracy is access to economic oppor-tunity. Yale University is engaged in a compre-hensive initiative to increase economic opportu-nity. The initiative focuses on economic

development, increasing home ownership,strengthening public schools, and revitalizingdowntown New Haven. A major generator of eco-nomic opportunity is the enormous potential oflife sciences to address human disease and pro-mote economic opportunity. Yale has recently cre-ated ten thousand jobs in this field recently andthe pace of development is increasing. Thisemployment boon raises the issue of who is get-ting these jobs. Currently, many people are beingimported for these new jobs, so Yale is working atcreating access to this economic opportunity forpeople in New Haven.

The University is working with Hill RegionalCareer High School, a 750 student regional mag-net school where students declare an interest inhealth science or business and computing. Yalesupports the curriculum of the school by provid-ing faculty and medical students who work withteachers and students in advanced college-levelscience classes. The medical students learn theirmaterial better because they have to know it wellenough to teach it to high school students. Thebio-tech certification that high school studentsreceives creates direct connections to economicopportunities because companies know that highschool students have a certain level of skills. Inthis manner, universities serve as the bridgebetween k-12 schools and the private business sec-tor because both institutions partner with univer-sities. This partnership has been facilitated by aformal agreement that signifies a commitment towork together by entering into open-ended rela-tionships based on trust. The University has beencareful not to overpromise, but has delivered onmodest promises including a shuttle between themedical school and high school, library access,and access to high school athletic facilities to stu-dents at Yale. This activity did not start with astrategic program, but strong relationships thatdeveloped trust which then led to development ofprograms. This has resulted in two hundred youthspending over eight hundred hours of studying inYale programs and an increase in the ability ofyouth to seize new economic opportunities.

Loomis Mayfield described the Great Citiesprogram at the University of Illinois-Chicago(UIC). This program is an expression of UIC’scommitment to deal with urban issues on a com-munity level, thus fulfilling the land-grant statusof university (albeit in an urban instead of agri-cultural environment). Community groups

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Philadelphia that the University helped to transforma number of years ago during its expansion.

(4) Housing—believing that homeowners helpmake communities stronger. Penn has began anenhanced mortgage program which gives $15,000(or $21,000 over 7 years) to help build home own-ership among Penn faculty and staff. TheUniversity is also involved in re-claiming aban-doned homes, by buying, re-furbishing, and thenselling those homes back to community. There isalso an emphasis on multi-family properties,which deals with the management of absenteelandlords and student overcrowding.

(5) Strong Economic Development—a strate-gic use of the University’s economic policies. Pennis focused on how you purchase and build. Lastyear $50 million was contracted to businesses inPenn’s neighborhood. In addition to job develop-ment and small business mentoring, a very strongpercentage of construction projects go to minor-ity business. The University has restructured sothat they are focused on helping communitybusinesses.

Marcia Marker Feld, Professor at Universityof Rhode Island and the first director of HUD’sOffice of University Partnerships, spoke on thehistory of university-school-community partner-ships, the initial assumptions the grounded thatwork, and current activity in the field. Since theearly 1970s there has been a growing movementto pair higher education systems with publicschool institutions. Although initially designed sothat higher education institutions could provide ahelping hand for public schools, the movement hasdeveloped on a broad equity basis that has broughtabout equal partnerships. These relationshipsencourage dialogue between university faculty andsecondary schools, stress quality educationrestructuring, and encourage recruitment of low-income and minority students to higher education.In the mid-1980s, led by the efforts of Ira Harkavyat the University of Pennsylvania, these partner-ships saw the addition of a strong communityservice learning component both in secondary andhigher education. The next major developmentoccurred in 1994, when Housing and UrbanDevelopment decided that government could nottransform communities alone, but needed com-munity partnerships for effective change. HUDsaw higher education institutions as the anchorinstitutions of many neighborhoods that couldbring community building resources and articulate

constituencies to solve inner-city problems. Forthis reason they established the Office ofUniversity Partnerships to act as catalyst and bro-ker for facilitating partnerships between highereducation institutions and local communities.

Six initial assumptions grounded this work: 1)partnerships create a level playing field; 2) part-nerships bring resources and technical assistanceto each partner and focus on solving urban prob-lems; 3) partnerships influence curriculum, com-munication, and behavior to move to their high-est level; 4) partnerships mediate the developmentof a community-based common vision and agendaas well as agreed upon implementation strategies;5) partnerships foster building capacity and shar-ing among all individuals; and 6) partnershipsempower all participants, from both the universityand community, in the decision process of how tocreate a sustainable quality community environ-ment. Experience has taught a simple equation forsuccess in community building: CEE=RT(Communication, Enabling (or capacity building),and Empowerment = Respect and Trust).

The perspective from the eyes of the commu-nity and a community development corporationwas outlined by Diana Dorn-Jones, who is theexecutive director of United South BroadwayCorporation (USBC). She discussed neighbor-hood and resident capacity building and empha-sized the need for local neighborhoods to be thedriving force behind community revitalization.South Broadway, a neighborhood in Albuquerque,NM, has had to deal with the many problems com-mon to urban neighborhoods. For many years thecommunity’s economic development was drivenby and dependent on outside forces, which meantthat such development was neither long term norsustainable. During this outside intervention, anenlightened and engaged neighborhood developedand realized that the time had come to engage intheir own community planning activities. This hasled to recent successes in building up the com-munity’s voice and its ability to act and achieveindependent of outside intervention. By educatingneighborhood residents and mobilizing them toact on behalf of the community’s interest, theUSBC and the neighborhood have achieved anumber of victories. These victories includebringing about changes in the local public schoolsystem, reducing crime and public nuisances,eliminating drug dealing, taking back the streets,and bringing about housing and commercial

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of individuals will buy-in to transforming thestrip. The first stage of implementing this projectwas creating an environment that would getgroups to concentrate on making visible changes.Central to this process was building collaborationsand coalitions that demonstrated to communitythat CUR was serious and committed to makingthings happen. Past actions have led to distrust, sobuilding the relationships and gaining trust is cru-cial. The first stage was primarily accomplishedthrough activities that build and develop a senseof trust. CUR helped to locate a new police dis-trict on the strip, created partnerships with severalof the banks to make resources and money avail-able, and worked with business owners to locatecapital and provide technical assistance.

To start the process of engaging schools, youneed to operate on multiple levels. It is essentialthat youth are involved in the process of neigh-borhood development because this will lead topride in community, investment in community,and a visible example that what they learn in class-room has practical application in the process ofcommunity development. Youth can help to builda sense that commercial strip is a sacred place withthe identity of community closely connected tothat strip. CUR worked with the community andschools to design a major clean-up campaign, aHalloween party, and other different activities thatcentered on the business strip so that the stripcould become a ceremonial place within the com-munity. The second level of activity allows com-munity and business development forums to beshifted to schools, thus creating important educa-tional and community capacity tools. Locating theforums in schools lets schools be identified withcommunity economic development in the eyes ofbusiness, government and schools leaders whilebringing those leaders into schools to see the con-nection between their profession and communityeconomic development. CUR hopes to soon estab-lish a youth entrepreneur program based on coop-erative economics and social purpose capitalism.Different activities that improve the communityrepresent a market that a school-based entrepre-neur program could meet. This would crate a pow-erful link between youth entrepreneurship and theprocess of community transformation. Such a pro-gram would translate into a new respect for thebuilt environment and neighborhood places.Because kids do it themselves, it becomes sacred.Finally, CUR hopes to get schools involved in

adult education programs. Many businesses endup with workers at bottom of market. If we canlink job training with neighborhood businessdevelopment these businesses can become spring-board for further opportunity. These initiativeswill take time to build, but the process will demon-strate that the community school can become aforce in transforming the neighborhood in whichit is located.

Evaluation and Assessment Issues inUniversity-Assisted Community SchoolPartnerships

Convener:David GrossmanDirectorCivic HouseUniversity of Pennsylvania

Panelists:Ian BeckfordEvaluation OfficerDeWitt Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund

Jean GrossmanVice President for ResearchPublic / Private Ventures

Eric AndermanAssociate Professor of Educational andCounseling PsychologyCollege of EducationUniversity of Kentucky, Lexington Campus

Francis JohnstonProfessor of AnthropologyUniversity of PennsylvaniaDirector, Turner Nutrition Awareness Project(TNAP)

David Grossman introduced the panel andprovided opening comments and questions forconsideration. Evaluation of partnerships isimportant to researches, activists, teachers, policymakers, and stewards. As researchers we want tobroaden our knowledge of this work and knowwhat works and why, people’s motivations,enablers and hindrances, and how varied stake-holders with varied goals come together to createpositive change. As activists we want to seepositive systemic change in our institutions andsociety while participating in collaborative efforts

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function as equal partners in the Great Cities pro-gram and help to determine the agenda by layingout issues of importance to the community. GreatCities attempts to effect how faculty do researchand teaching at the university by encouragingthem to be driven by community interests insteadof being discipline driven. The NeighborhoodInitiative program (UICNI) is focused expressionof this model in two neighborhoods around theuniversity. This project-based initiative developsprograms along a range of issues (health, educa-tion, public safety, economic development, etc.)according to interests of community and fac-ulty/students. Both the community and universitymust have an interest in the issue in order to havea successful project. Two examples of projects:

Great Cities—Great Careers. This projectbegan with HUD money in 1994, and was origi-nally designed to help students understand theircareer options and equip them to pursue thosecareers. When pressure came down on schoolsconcerning test scores the schools became lessconcerned with programs not directly related totests. Since this program fell into that category, are-evaluation led to a new project that related tofaculty interests and organically intertwined withthe curriculum of the high school. Professors per-formed a survey analysis of the school to under-stand what careers students were interested in andwhat information they had to pursue those careers.This new project was integrally related to Englishclasses and helped teachers evaluate the skills andmotivations of their students. Faculty receivedresearch and publishing experience for tenurewhile students realized that test scores matter toachieve goals. Tenacity, consistency and flexibil-ity allowed the project to develop and mature.

West-Side Consortium Home-Care TrainingInstitute. This project grew out of research theWest-Side Consortium requested regarding jobaspirations and barriers for people in public hous-ing developments. Research found that the biggestobstacle was lack of adequate daycare for low-income people while the biggest job interest wasalso in day care. Initially, the project’s attempt tobegin a day-care center floundered because it washard to get a private development established andthe policy focus of public agencies changed fromsupporting day-care to supporting home-care. Howdo you adjust to policy changes? Instead of estab-lishing a day-care center, the project began an insti-tute, set in a local community college, where people

could receive training and assistance with certifi-cation. The Institute has led to an ongoing rela-tionship between individuals interested in thehome-care industry and existing day care centers.

In both projects, it is important to note somecommon elements that serve as general rules foruniversity-community collaborative partnerships.These projects require tenacity, consistent effortson the issue, and flexibility. Furthermore, the endresults need to match up with interests of all theparties involved (public agencies, community, andfaculty).

Henry Taylor finished the panel presentationsby describing activities that represent efforts tobring neighborhood economic development to theforefront of the process of transforming neigh-borhoods. There is a need to develop a long-termstrategy for how we bring the schools into theprocess of neighborhood community economicdevelopment. A true community school will be aforce in the process of transforming neighbor-hoods by engaging the neighborhood in a varietyof activities which will re-enforce efforts tochange communities.

The Center for Urban Studies (CUR) at theBuffalo University is a freestanding research andpolicy unit located in the Department of Planning.The University allows faculty members to bereleased from part of the course load during asemester to engage in center activity while alsoproviding summer funding for faculty. CUR alsohouses a non-profit community-economic devel-opment corporation that is membership-based andlinked directly to the community. Neighborhoodeconomic development when done properly is asignificant vehicle for community capacity build-ing. A neighborhood intervention strategy thatwould center around neighborhood economicdevelopment was recently formulated by residentsand city council members in a troubled neighbor-hood in central Buffalo. The strategy focused ontransforming commercial strips around whichcommunities are built because these strips areoften dilapidated and crumbling. The communitychose to focus on strips for three reasons: (1) stripsare the window through which people view every-day life and culture in a community; (2) stripdevelopment is central to bolstering the quality oflife of people in neighborhoods; and (3) the stripcould potentially become a community commons.The capacity could be developed to attack othercomplex and difficult problems because a range

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include: use of children, peer, adult, and familyrelationships; youth’s sense of hope for future,belonging, and self-efficacy; engagement, behav-ior, and attitudes towards school. All those ele-ments are then correlated with type, quality, quan-tity, and cost of the activity. Are higher qualityactivities more costly? Is training critical for highquality? Does spending more money produce bet-ter outcomes? When is one method of raisingmoney more successful than other methods for an organization?

After visiting the 2nd level sites for a year, theorganizational survey allows evaluators to deter-mine how common the experiences of the ninesites are everywhere else. What causes one site tohave different visions? While the type of modelimpacts participant’s vision, the historical contextis also important in determining key visions forthe school. When do you get more of a consensuson the vision and when does it seem more dis-persed? Community involvement might play acrucial role in determining this. For some sights,the community runs initiatives and there is col-laboration of community and school groups withmanagement oversight. In other sights, less for-malized community input and involvement exists.Even when site-level governance is strong factor,it is a difficult factor to put into place becauseinput is easier, yet governance is much more dif-ficult. The biggest implementation challengesfound at this point primarily deal with issues oftrust and control. There are tensions at the schooldistrict level about getting school district supportand school-level tensions about space and liabil-ity issues (how does school allow community ontoproperty?) These challenges are based on funda-mental differences in mission, procedural differ-ences (makes communication difficult), andorganizations styles (do you go to top or bottomof a hierarchy first). Sites that are able to over-come those issues have the strongest collaborativestructure with both school and community takingpart in the governance of these after-school activ-ities. Unless school, particularly the principal, ison board and welcoming of collaboration, it willbe difficult to attain a collaborative partnership.Even when a program is up and running, tensionswith teachers arise, making the principal’s supportcrucial. Distrust at school-level comes from notunderstanding what the program involves. In gen-eral, there is more distrust at upper levels (i.e. highschool) than lower levels because teachers are

normally less involved in school activities at theupper level. Hiring teachers as staff for after-school programs is a double-edged sword: it helpsthem know about and buy into the program, butthey might teach the after-school time just like theregular school day.

Eric Anderman continued to address the issueof assessment by describing evaluation activitiesoccurring at Winburn Academy, a WEPIC repli-cation site in Kentucky. The University ofKentucky is involved in assessing how variousaspects of student motivation change throughoutthe process of community school. The study is notexamining objective data such as test scores orGPA, but instead asking more subjective questionssuch as why are kids in school, what do they thinkabout school, and why are they doing their work.If students see community school as worthwhile,important and as a safe-place, then they will bemore motivated and care about school and par-ticipate in more activities. The principal is impor-tant to making process work. If the principal seesoutsiders as partners then everything runs muchsmoother and teachers are much more cooperative.Survey methodology included collecting datafrom 1995-1999 (longitudinal data from 1995-1997 and cross-sectional data from 1998-1999).Data included questions dealing with motivationand goal orientations (mastery, performance, orextrinsic orientation) at the classroom and schoollevels. School belonging was measured since it isone of the strongest predictors, along with familybelonging, of a buffer against negative outcomeduring adolescence. Students’ expectations andvalues were also measured to determine what theyvalue in school and what they expect from thefuture. The survey also asked whether studentsbelieve they have control over what they becomeor if they think intelligence is inherited. Bothgeneral data and specific data relating to sciencewere collected.

The results did yield some preliminary find-ings. School belonging jumped dramatically afterthe Academy WEPIC-replication program began.While it is hard to tell if the program caused thejump in school belonging, there was significantcorrelation between participation in the academyand a higher sense of school belonging. Thisimplies that those who felt a sense of belongingwere also more likely to come back and partici-pate. As the school moved towards a communityschool model, there was a significant decline in

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that are respectful of many voices. As teachers, wewant to know if our service learning efforts arereaping real benefits pedagogically and in termsof learning outcomes, and if students at all levelsare learning better. As policy makers we want todemonstrate that our work matters and makes adifference. As stewards and fundraisers, we wantto demonstrate that our projects have achieved realmeasurable outcomes.

Questions raised by evaluation and assessmentare as numerous as its goals and purposes. Howdo we set up research and assessment so that itcaptures what we want to learn without getting inthe way of the program? How do we overcomefear and ignorance concerning matters of evalua-tion and assessment so that we see it as an instru-ment of confirmation and improvement?

How do we agree upon research goals andresults we need? What about methodologies and implementation of assessment tools (bothqualitative and quantitative)? How do we knowmore about what we know? How can we learnabout our experience in the most useful and com-plimentary ways?

Ian Beckford described the model of assess-ment in the DeWitt Wallace-Reader’s Digeststudy. WEPIC has been part of a larger DeWittstudy, which has invested 14 million into study-ing extended service schools since 1994. DeWittis studying the adaptation of four promising mod-els in twenty communities nationwide to helpschools become more effective educationalresources for young people by expanding their rolebeyond the usual school day. The models are: (1)Beacons model—operated by community basedorganizations (CBOs) at public schools sites, (2)Bridges to success—partnership including publicschools, youth-serving CBOs, and local UnitedWays, (3) Community schools—Universities,CBOs and public schools with social workers andeducational graduate students supplementing thework of youth workers and school staff, and (4)WEPIC—Universities and public schools—University faculty and students at University andschools during after-school time.

This evaluation is a three year evaluation thathas five components: (1) planning study, (2) implementation study, (3) participation study,(4) study of youth experience, and (5) cost andfinance study. The three-tiered evaluation firstidentifies a set of sites that are part of the inten-sive study, which closely examines those sites to

learn about planning, participation andimplementation. Sites that were not identified tobe in intensive group will receive an organiza-tional survey to be documented (tier 3 sites). Tier2 sites consist of nine cities identified as veryintense in terms of implementation planning andin terms of what they are doing. This will be partof the planning and participation study and six ofthose nine will be involved in a more extensiveparticipation study examining characteristics ofstudent participants, types of activities, etc. Sixsites will also be part of the experience survey.

Jean Grossman elaborated on the study beingconducted by DeWitt. She began by noting thedaunting nature of an evaluation that covers sixtyschools in twenty cities. Much effort has been putin to determining what are the important lessonsand information to glean and how to best go aboutgleaning them. It takes many sub-questions toanswer the crucial “How do you prove if this thingworks?” question. Among the most crucial are:“How do after-school and community-school ini-tiatives get off the ground?”, “How does a com-munity come together and determine the collabo-rators to put a program in the school?”, and “Whatare the lessons that can be learned?”. The modelis always beautiful, but we are evaluating what ison the ground, not what is in the model. Whenlooking at the implementation of what is on theground we need to ask who is involved, what typesof activities are in place, and how do we learn tomeasure the quality of activities in place (partic-ularly the youth development qualities). While thecontent of a program is somewhat important, thatis only one dimension of what determines the out-comes (i.e. different outcomes may come out ofsimilar activities depending on the structure andquality of the activity). Understanding what thedimensions of the program are and how they canbe measured is crucial (different dimensionsinclude the amount of adult supervision and youthleadership opportunities). There are also many les-sons that we can learn from asking questions aboutthe activity of a program. Does it matter if goodkids or bad kids are attending? How often do theyattend? Is the program geared toward many kidswith less intensive activity or fewer kids with moreintensive activity? Does intensive participationproduce different results? When surveying thechildren in the DeWitt study, a base-line surveywas utilized with a follow-up survey in a year.Issues that are being examined over time

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concern for social problems that impact themdirectly: race relations, crime and violence, druguse, etc. Students enrolled in one or more ABCScourses were more concerned about homelessness,poverty, teenage pregnancy, universal health care,income disparity, quality of public education, andhealth care. How do students view their academiccareers? While all were concerned about gettinggood grades, ABCS students proved to be moreconcerned with volunteering and slightly less con-cerned with socializing. What is the impact ofthese courses? ABCS courses increase students’abilities in being community leaders, actingmorally, developing research skills and a philos-ophy of life, and concern for community and vol-unteering. Non-ABCS students claimed to be con-cerned with attaining job skills, being competitive,and preparing for life.

The process of project evaluation ought to bea part of ongoing university curricula and not sep-arate from it. Evaluation is part of the total processin both university and community schools. Whileexternal evaluations are also needed, evaluation istoo important to be left to just the evaluators.

Concurrent Session 1: Service learningworkshop: Introducing service learninginto the K-12 curriculum and linking it toout-of school time

Convener:Karl NassDirectorPhiladelphia Higher Education Network forNeighborhood Development (PHENND)

Panelists:Cynthia BelliveauDirectorPennsylvania Service-Learning Alliance

Edison FreireLearn and Serve Master TeacherSchool District of Philadelphia

Tamara DubowitzGraduate StudentDepartment of AnthropologyUniversity of PennsylvaniaUrban Nutrition Initiative

Danny GerberGraduate StudentDepartment of AnthropologyUniversity of PennsylvaniaUrban Nutrition Initiative

Cynthia Belliveau described the many service-learning developments occurring in Pennsylvania,while raising general issues of concern for serv-ice learning. Service learning organizations aretaking a conscious look at how service learningcan be developed in a state as big and diverse asPennsylvania. A service-learning program needsto be both a good teaching methodology and acommunity-changing tool. Service learning is toooften a quick adventure into the community andthen a retreat back to school. Communities areoften changed during that adventure but there isno mechanism to look at the systemic change incommunities or individuals that results from serv-ice learning. Character education, traditionallykept separate from service learning, is nowbecoming increasingly linked with service learn-ing efforts. How can character education bedeveloped within the context of service learning,thereby making the two synergistic? Studentsshould not just learn about responsibility, but prac-tice it through service learning. A youth leader-ship model where youth are trained as facilitatorsto help their peers with service learning is oneexample of how service learning and charactereducation can effectively merge together.

Service learning must also follow a needs andassets based mode, which leads us to consider howcan we do a whole lot with a very little money.Communities many resources to offer the schools,but often have trouble establishing a relationshipwith the school because they do not know how.Youth-driven service learning centers are a newdevelopment in service learning that helps toaddress that problem. The centers serve as hubswithin schools for service learning and are oper-ated by students. The model empowers youth byallowing them to organize and produce servicelearning projects and directs community organi-zations interested in partnering with the schoolsto the youth-driven service learning center. Thismodel has been tested in Gratz High School inPhiladelphia and has been extremely successful.Students are leaders and administrators of the cen-ter and the organization has addressed issues ofsustainability, teacher involvement, and multi-

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extrinsic goal orientation, which is good sincepsychology shows extrinsic orientation to be theweakest motivator. There was also a decline ineffort avoidance. A decline was seen in anti-socialtendencies as the community school model wasadopted. A really strong interaction exists betweenusing aggression to be cool and GPA. Studentswho were not mastery oriented and had a low GPApossessed a high aggression index. Students whowere mastery oriented and had a low GPA had amuch lower aggression index (a mastery orienta-tion implies that they bought in to communityschool model). Violence towards teachers was alsoa concern. Students were asked how likely theywould be to respond in particular if they wereangry with a teacher. The strongest predictors ofaggressive tendencies were beliefs about intelli-gence and school mastery. Youth who bought intoidea that school is about effort and working hardwere less likely to be aggressive. Some variablesdid not change and some changed contrary to whatwas expected. The value of science, school mas-tery climate, and general mastery orientationdeclined, while worrying about school and beliefsin modifiability of intelligence decreased. Thestrongest predictor of high GPA was schoolbelonging. There was a dramatic increase in serv-ice learning and working with groups they are notfamiliar with, although there was only a slightincrease in actual community service rendered andthe importance of participating in communityservice declined.

For future evaluations, it is very important totry and have a comparison/control school, but thisraises the issue of how do you find a comparableschool. Classroom level differences (differentteachers doing different things) also need to betaken into account. Multi-level effects would helptease out individual differences from classroomlevel types of difference. Other lessons learnedinclude combining qualitative and quantitativemeasurements and using collected datacollaboratively with teachers and administrators at the school.

Francis Johnston concluded the panel presen-tations by commenting on the ongoing evaluationof a Kellogg-funded grant linking intellectualresources at the University of Pennsylvania withcommunity needs. Evaluation needs to be builtwithin the program of a university so that itbecomes a part of academically based communityservice (service intrinsically linked to the aca-

demic and research missions of a university). TheKellogg project demonstrates how universities canserve communities while advancing their researchmission and improving undergraduate education.The grant supported three different projects in thefields of nutrition and health, lead and environ-ment, and culture and community studies. Newacademically based community service (ABCS)courses along with expanded courses and courseprojects also resulted from Kellogg funding, help-ing the University to develop over eighty ABCScourses. These courses cut across departments andundergraduate schools. Finally, Kellogg providedsupport for undergraduate and graduate studentsto serve as research assistants, provide infra-structure support, and write ongoing doctoral dis-sertations and undergraduate theses.

How do we improve the quality of work thatwe do in local community schools? When con-fronted with this question, Johnston set up acourse on evaluation of programs: “Monitoringand Evaluation of Social Programs.” It is crucialthat the university draw on its only and mostunique resource—students. Students can learn theprocess of evaluation as part of their own coursesof study. Students develop of a concept of evalu-ation and monitoring as they learn and help to sen-sitize community schools to the evaluation processso that they can take an active part in that process.There are four central areas of evaluation: (1)establishment of program, process of implement-ing the program, impact of program on the schooland school community; (2) impact on universitystudents—how has it enriched and expanded edu-cation and developed their own sense of moral andcivic awareness; (3) integration of activities withinthe university and their impact on curricular struc-ture of university; and (4) impact on centraladministration—how has it shaped their view ofthe mission of the university.

Evaluation should be brought within what weare doing on a daily basis. In the class, group proj-ects, in-class presentations, and evaluation write-ups based on the four-fold model have all been uti-lized. Students then were able to present theirfindings at a recent Kellogg conference. Onegroup of students evaluated the impact of ABCScourses on undergraduates. Two samples of stu-dents were taken: one group that did not takeABCS courses, and one that did. What types ofstudents were drawn to ABCS courses? Studentswho did not take ABCS courses have a greater

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University involvement is needed in partner-ships where service learning experience involves acollaborative process in which all participants arelearners and teachers, receivers and providers.University-school relationships are a two-waystreet. How can high school students’ expertise beutilized with university strengths? For example, ifuniversity students have established an after-schoolmentoring program, then high school students inthe technology program could provide technicalsupport for the after-school mentoring program.This type of activity and partnership engages stu-dents, at the university and secondary levels, tosolve their own problems and develop models thatcan be emulated. Programs must be embedded inthe community to outlast individual personalities.Universities will be connected with the outsidecommunity to the extent that students take theiracquired skills back to their communities, whetherthat community be in West Philadelphia orVietnam. One example of a university-school-com-munity project that allowed for service learningopportunities at multiple levels was a partnershipformed between the University City New Schooland a school in Quito, Ecuador. Students from Pennpartnered with students from the technology pro-gram to establish computer labs at both of theseschools. Everyone who was involved in creatingthis program offered something to the program andthis brought together a local partnership to prepareto partner globally. By identifying common needsand skills we were able to bridge differences andbring different partners together. This in turn led topersonal transformation regarding education andthe use of technology.

Concurrent Session 3: Implications ofUniversity-Assisted Community Schoolsfor Teacher Education

Convener:Josephine RoblesCoordinatorCluster Resource BoardsUniversity of Pennsylvania

Panelists:Claudette WilliamsProfessor of Educational LeadershipClark Atlanta University

Nick CutforthProfessor of EducationUniversity of Denver

Kenneth TobinProfessor of Educational LeadershipDirector of Teacher EducationGraduate School of EducationUniversity of Pennsylvania

Claudette Williams offered that the term uni-versity-assisted community schools is ill suited forwhat it defines because the schools assist univer-sities as well. Community-based professionaldevelopment models are more of what the panelis considering. Clark Atlanta University workswith a school in urban Atlanta with this type ofmodel. The partnership between the university andschool has implications on policy. Policies mustput down very clearly so that the partnership’smission is well known. Since schools change per-sonnel very quickly, documentation is very impor-tant to ensure continuity at the school and schoolsystem levels. Conceptual frameworks are alsoimpacted. Before entering into a partnership boththe school and university should consider definetheir institutional mission and consider how a part-nership will help them achieve that mission. ClarkAtlanta came up with a new vision and missionthat relates to the partnership with local schools.Conceptual frameworks also evolve at the schoollevel. Teacher education should not be limited topre-service teachers, but also certified teachersand faculty at the university level.

Professional development is also impacted byschool-university partnerships. Joint trainingbetween university students and schoolteachersleads to an infusion of service learning. Middleschool teachers are invited to audit classes as partof their professional development. Staff develop-ment units (sdu) are also offered in service learn-ing, which counts towards a teacher’s professionaldevelopment. Assessment and evaluation must alsobe considered. The concept of community schoolsnecessitates different assessment and evaluationmethods in order to sustain community schoolefforts. When Atlanta’s new superintendent estab-lished goals centered on the primary academicareas and emphasized the necessity of meetingthose goals, teachers became hesitant to teach out-side of that established framework. While the prin-cipal at Clark Atlanta’s partner school has been

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disciplinary project planning. The communityuses classrooms to meet with students about com-munity issues, needs, and assets. The servicelearning that results is grounded in authentic needsdetermined by community. The community thenevaluates the effectiveness of service learningprojects. Students from Temple University taughtthe high school students to run focus groups tohelp determine needs in areas around the schools.What started out as student newsletter for servicelearning has evolved into community newsletter.Ten other similar centers in Pennsylvania havedeveloped following the successful Gratz model.

Tamara Dubowitz and Danny Gerber, bothgraduate students in Anthropology at theUniversity of Pennsylvania, detailed their workwith the Urban Nutrition Initiative (UNI), a pro-gram which has received funding from Kellogg,Ford, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and theCenters for Disease Control. UNI is a school-based, child-centered community health project,which is linked to an academically based com-munity service course in the Anthropology depart-ment. The course employs participatory-actionresearch with experiential learning as the peda-gogy of choice, and the class has evolved as under-graduates create the new knowledge that thecourse generates. Volunteers for the UNI programcome from both the Anthropology course and alsofrom the WEPIC volunteer organization. Themajor components of the project include school-based produce stands, school-based gardens, andan interdisciplinary curriculum that teaches aboutnutrition, health, business, social studies, science,math, and language arts. At the high school levelthere is also a business aspect where students growvegetables that are sold to local restaurants.

UNI primarily works with three schools. UNIvolunteers help students at Drew Elementary toplan and operate an after-school produce standfour days per week. Students also cultivate a veg-etable garden and are exposed to an interdiscipli-nary curriculum where the lesson plans incorpo-rate these activities. Turner Middle School alsoruns a produce stand, and the students are engagedwith designing school gardens, classroom gar-dening, and the interdisciplinary curriculum.University City High School focuses on micro-business development. Students work at the schoolgreenhouse practicing urban agriculture. In all theschools a problem-based approach to learning isemployed with the students. By choosing

nutrition, UNI links activities to local problems,examining how nutrition relates to diseases thatare prominent in local areas. By linking the cur-riculum to a dynamic problem, students act asagents of social change by solving real worldproblems which in turn improves their self-esteemand motivation. In the public school curriculum,health only gets a few minutes a day, so it is impor-tant to integrate health into other curriculum com-ponents. Ownership of the curriculum is veryimportant with teachers, so UNI volunteers workwith teachers to integrate health into the curricu-lum. Developments are being made to help theUNI project become more of a resource for theentire neighborhood around the school. Finally,UNI addresses sustainability through a financiallyprofitable project, curriculum development, andownership felt by school and community.

Edison Freire described his experiences incor-porating service learning as a teacher of technol-ogy. In a needs and assets framework, improvingtechnology skills among students creates assetsthat can then be used to meet the needs of the sur-rounding community. A group of Latino studentswanted to enhance their technology skills, whichled to the creation of an after-school technologyclub. If you give a child something they are inter-ested in, it does not matter if learning happens dur-ing or after school. Out of school experiences willbe successful if they are relevant and/or address-ing a need. The successful after-school clubtransformed into an urban technology project. Thefocus of the project is on meaningful access totechnology and technology professionals. Thegroup was able to establish a computer refurbish-ing and recycling center that is operated duringand after school by the students. Students acquiretechnology skills within the context of servicelearning. The students are challenged to considerhow they can take the skills they have learned anduse them to benefit their communities. Donatedhardware goes to schools and community agenciesafter it is refurbished. Another element of servicelearning is teaching kids that the problems of acommunity are in the eye of beholder. A buildingthat is an eyesore has potential to be used for suc-cessful programs, such as the computer recyclingprogram, turning a detriment into an asset. Non-profits are notoriously bad with technology so theproject has become a resource, providing non-profit organizations with needs assessments, hard-ware, and technical support.

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styles, making these students teacher-educatorswith respect to graduate students. Undergraduatesand graduate students work with teachers andprospective teachers to help open up the resourcesat the university for the high school students.Student teachers teach physics and mathematicsin the university departments. This affords moreways for both K-12 students and student teachersto learn.

After the panelists concluded their presenta-tions, the audience and panelists engaged in a timeof extended discussion. One of the central ques-tions raised in the dialogue was the issue of stan-dards in schools and the apparent tension betweenstandards and service learning. Education pro-grams must meet the challenge of preparing stu-dent teachers for the classroom while equippingthem to help youth learn the standards-based cur-riculum. How can we accomplish that and prepareour teachers to facilitate civic development foryoung people? Education students must know thatwhat they will be capable of doing is largelyshaped by the context of the school. But, withinthat context they should be proactive with respectto opportunities for civic development. On the pol-icy level, we need policymakers to realize thatnational standards do not work and schools needcommunity-oriented curriculum. Such a curricu-lum would lead to a natural marriage between cur-riculum and civic development. Still, most suc-cessful service learning initiatives naturallyconnect to existing standards. If you focus on thechild and the child’s development, then you willmeet the standards, although not always in tradi-tional ways.

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supportive of the community school and encour-aged teachers to participate in it, there is still a needfor community schools to be a part of the assess-ment process. If community school efforts do notbecome part of evaluation, teachers will be hesitantto do it. Similarly, because we are changing the waywe teach, it should be evident in the way we doassessment at the university. Teacher education isnot just about what is going on in the college class-room, but also in the local schools. Students atClark Atlanta are assessed on the basis of their rec-ommendations/evaluations of various school pro-grams. This incorporates service learning into cur-riculum and increases the amount that they learnfrom the class.

Nick Cutforth described the work that theUniversity of Denver is doing to prepare educa-tion students to meet the challenges of urban edu-cation. The University of Denver has a non-tradi-tional teacher education program, with the averagestudent age falling in the late twenties. The pro-gram is designed for working adults and lasts ninemonths with classes meeting on Wednesday nightsand all day Saturday. As part of the program, stu-dents are required to spend one day a week in theschools doing observation during the fall semes-ter and then complete a thirteen-week student-teacher assignment in the spring.

In recent years, an urban education elementhas been built into the curriculum of the educa-tion program. All students must do at least one stu-dent-teaching assignment in an urban school. Yet,the program needed to infuse the type of experi-ence that urban teachers need to address the spe-cial issues of culture and diversity, poverty, racialinjustice, etc. In response to this need, theUniversity of Denver began a voluntary programcalled SALUTE (Service And Learning in UrbanTeacher Education) that focuses on urban issues.The university invites all teacher education stu-dents to be a part of the voluntary education pro-gram. SALUTE spends two hours every weekworking with elementary students and then anhour seminar following the experience. Studentteachers train the 5th graders to help the 2ndgraders with their schoolwork. Then the 2ndgraders leave and the student teachers engage the5th graders in service learning projects. Studentteachers work in groups of four and are in chargeof 15-20 5th graders who are in charge of 10-122nd graders. Student teachers get to create theirown learning environment with urban students,

which is very beneficial experience for the aspir-ing teachers. The school-community seminar isalso important because it provides the reflectionpiece that service learning needs. The primaryfocus of the seminars is to get them to think crit-ically about their teaching, values, and biases.Exposure to the community is also an importantpart of program. Students do community walksand visits before the teaching starts to expose themto the urban environment.

Kenneth Tobin raised four points for consid-eration based on the teacher education graduateprogram at the University of Pennsylvania. (1) Theteacher education program is very intentionally anurban program because urban schools are goodplaces to learn to teach. If students want to teachin urban schools, they really need to learn in urbanschools. If students want to teach elsewhere, urbanschools are excellent venues to be prepared forother environments. (2) The Graduate School ofEducation has transformative goals. The Schooldoes not place student teachers in schools just tolearn to teach, but to help transform the schools.The teacher education program needs to workclosely with the school community to co-developgoals and to facilitate the learning of youngsters.By facilitating learning and working with teach-ers, student teachers will learn to teach. (3)Education is facilitated by co-teaching (learningat the elbows). The best way to learn to teach isnot to read about methods and pedagogy, but toexperience it. Students spend half days in theschools during the first semester of the programand full days during the second semester. A teamof about eight student teachers is normallyassigned to a small learning community of sixteachers. Teams of student teachers allow classesto be divided and student teachers gain hands-onteaching experience. In the science education pro-gram, student teachers were teaching high schoolstudents chromatography. The issue of standardsnever arose because the problem solving andactivity was closely involved with scientific inves-tigation and learning. If teachers are confident thattheir teaching methods are solid, then they will bemeeting the established standards. (4) Guided bya believe in teaching from a social-constructivistpoint of view, the teacher education programthinks about learning in communities. Studentsplan lessons and activities with other students andwith cooperating teachers. K-12 students arebrought in and asked about effective teaching

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Australia and in Asia the growth is 412%.Empirically, there can be no doubt that there is aconvergence of mass systems of higher educationaway from elite systems. In Trow’s Taxonomy,elite systems enroll up to 15% of the age group.Mass systems enroll between 15 - 40% and uni-versal systems enroll more than 40% of the agegroup. The problem with these numbers is that itignores the life long learning factor in that eveninitial higher education is no longer the initialprovince of the uniformly prepared young. Forexample, in Britain, there are a majority of stu-dents over the age of 21 have had some experi-ence in school when they start. Secondly, the tax-onomy concentrates entirely on the process ratherthan on output. What are all these students doing?

Looking at graduation rates in 1998, Sir Davidpointed out that internationally there are severalmass systems, a majority in the developed worldare close to or over the mass threshold and veryfew which can be safely regarded as elite. Therates also question the relative efficiency of dif-ferent national systems. The UK system producesthe same amount of graduates into the populationas the US, but on very different age participationrates. In the UK, over a third of young people par-ticipate, but in the US it is roughly 50%.

There are certain characteristics in higher edu-cation that seem to be generic if not universal. Themajor one is pressure for expansion on economic,as well as personal and cultural reasons. There arecertain features, which are almost unstoppablecharacteristics of expansion. The first one is thechallenge of the distinctiveness of higher educa-tion as an intellectual or epistemological enter-prise. The second is the concern of the mainte-nance of standards. This is a special dilemmawhen education shifts from elite to mass (quan-tity versus quality). The third feature is anincrease in “instrumentality.” Students make morevocational choices in a mass system and sponsorswant to see more economic return.

Such educational inflation can lead to para-doxical outcomes. A simple additive model such asmore years in school and higher qualificationsincreases democratic tolerance as measured throughattitude surveys, but does very little for social equal-ity or for improving material life chances. Doescompetition for education advantage result in moreeducation than we can afford? As in a competitiveframework for social position, educational attain-ment rates are pushed higher and higher.

There is debate institutional status, both strat-ification and the acceptable limits of diversity ina higher education system. Larger systems alwaysraise questions of relative institutional esteem.Purely market systems quickly produce bad rank-ings and a rigid ranking order. Other systems relymore on the state to fix and maintain strata ofinstitutions. Usually there is a policing the divideof academic and higher education. The UnitedStates and Japan are examples of the marketdriven model and Germany is an example of theother system.

Finally, there is controversy about increasingcosts of a larger system and how they should bemet. This usually focuses on the identification ofwho the real beneficiaries of higher education areand how much they should pay. That issue is usu-ally cast in the marketization or privatization ofhigher education. There are three counter instancesto the market model. Only in the most extremeinstances are which students can become con-sumers and purchase awards and qualifications.Secondly, there are no systems that are entirelyindependent of public investment. Finally, marketfailure is reluctantly tolerated. Most of thegeneric features have been played out betweenWWII and the 1980s. In that period, USA partic-ipation rates went up from 11% of 16 - 24 agebracket, to 40%. Expansion of the UK system hasbeen much more recent. The UK went through itsown transition from elite to mass at about twice therate of the US. In contrast to the US, there is thecentral role of the national government and of pub-lic policy. One result shows that educational pol-icy in the UK is deeply political and on a partisanbasis. Secondly, it is important to show that highereducation institutions are not warmly referenced inthe public press in the UK. There has been muchmoral panic, even in the British tabloid.

If you want a more socially valuable system,you have to allow it to expand. Sir David showsa chart showing how UK student numbers haveexpanded in that past thirty years from 300,000 to1,800,000 students. Along with that chart, isanother showing students by mode of study andlevel of courses from 1979 to 1999. In the chart,the highest increase occurred in part-time post-graduate student. The next chart shows womenas a percentage of total home full-time studentsin Great Britain from 1979 to 1999. In highereducation, the percentage of women has increasedslowly. The next chart demonstrates the

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I N T E R N A T I O N A L C O N F E R E N C EO N H I G H E R E D U C A T I O N -A S S I S T E D C O M M U N I T Y

S C H O O L S A S S I T E S O F C I V I CE N G A G E M E N T

March 29-30, 2001

Keynote Address

UK Universities and The Social Agenda

Sir David WatsonDirectorUniversity of BrightonUnited Kingdom

Sir David began with his reflections on the changing role of higher education in civil soci-ety from a global perspective and then turned to his views of British higher education. Oneof the greatest strengths of the university system is the ability to periodically re-invent itselfas well as managing the balance between continuity and change. Each phase of reinventionhas carried forward previous elements within a changed context. There are various examplesof this. Patterns of participation in higher education have changed and as well as their goalsin educating their students. The late medieval university produced rhetoricians and mathe-maticians. The early modern university served to create theologians and natural scientists.The nineteenth century university created civil servants and the modern university has cre-ated a whole range of professionals from engineers to teachers and health workers.

The technological environment has also changed. The march of modern science and thatof the university have been in lock step. Both have experienced rapid expansions with noclear end in sight. Both have also struggled to maintain what they regard as appropriate lev-els of resource for the job in hand. Shifts throughout the economy and the public life in gen-eral have been both formulated and absorbed by the university. Social expectations havechanged as well. Universities have been refuges for the poor and devout, finishing schoolsfor the elite, and engine rooms of technology and democracy.

With greater investments into universities in Europe, came greater expectations in policyrelated returns. This may partly explain why universities have been able to delay and resistchange. Universities have to some extent wanted to be apart from the world of social, eco-nomic and technical life and to maintain a critical and disinterested standpoint. With the“Dearing Compact” of 1997 in the UK, higher education has retained its independence, whilegetting increased financial security, but in return, there is clearer accountability and greaterresponsiveness to a wide range of stakeholders.

There are epistemological as well as policy currents at work here. For some critics, theadvances in the modern society have prevented the humanist vision of the university as thearea of liberal and non-technological knowledge. For many commentators this decline is dras-tic. The belief is that the modern university now has received material status by disengagingitself from the problems of human life.

The main thing that is happening worldwide is that higher education is growing rapidlywithout a clear end in sight. In global growth in higher education, there has been a 278% in

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graphs show very high unemployment levels inlower class and ethnic minorities. Even for uni-versity graduates, many face discrimination in thework-place.

Universities can no longer isolate themselvesfrom what goes around them. Sir David con-cluded that the University of Brighton needs tocontribute graduates who will work locally as wellas contribute to the performance of the maintainedschools in the area. This is not just about accessto higher education, but supporting the teachers,health workers as well as the entrepreneurs whohold the city’s future in their hands. This work iscentral mission to the University of Brighton as itis to University of Pennsylvania, promoting avision advanced by Sir David’s professor at Penn,Lee Benson, over a quarter of a century ago-theTocquevillian notion of community empowermentthrough democratic, collaborative action.

Plenary Panel on Universities, Schools,and Information Technology: WhichFuture for Education-Democratization orCommodification?

Convener and Panelist:Henry Louis Taylor, Jr.Professor of City PlanningDirectorCenter for Urban StudiesUniversity at Buffalo-SUNY

Panelists:Lee BensonProfessor Emeritus of HistoryUniversity of Pennsylvania

Gabriele MazzaHead of Education DepartmentDirectorate of Education, Culture and SportSecretariat GeneralCouncil of Europe

Sir David WatsonDirectorUniversity of BrightonUnited Kingdom

R. Eugene RiceScholar-in-ResidenceForum on Faculty Roles and RewardsAmerican Association for Higher Education

Henry Taylor began by looking at the questionon university, schools and information technology.Democratization or commodification? When thisissue is discussed it is generally around the ques-tion of the digital divide and the process of mak-ing this technology available to those who do nothave access. Mr. Taylor believes in expansion.Information technology for what? Why is the dig-ital divide such an important issue? Access toinformation technology is critical. The task andgoal is poverty alleviation and the radical trans-formation of inner city environments and neigh-borhoods. For much of the last century, theapproach to the spirit of this work was charity andphilanthropy. This is not a radical transformationof the environment, alleviation of poverty, and thedemocratization of society.

Information technology in this framework isa tool; an instrument in reconstructing the envi-ronment. There are at least four issues that needto be considered beyond the digital divide. Thefirst is the design and construction of a system ofinformation technology that will serve these ends.How will we create infrastructures in communi-ties so that every household has the type of tech-nology and equipment that will take advantage ofthis? How will we have a system of fast and clearcommunication? The second is issues of culture.How do you build and construct the type of cul-ture that makes individuals aware of the power ofthis technology? How do you make them excitedto learn about this? The third issue is the ques-tion of finance. Where will the money come fromto build this information technology system?Priorities have to begin to change. The last issueis the role of university-assisted schools. How dowe turn these schools into hubs around that infor-mation system? How do we show that technol-ogy is not for just the people in the schools, butin the community?

Mr. Taylor goes on to define commodification.This is the access to buy anything. Everything isbased on a dollar value. Access is the ability to buysomething within the private market place. It isbased upon the market economy as currently con-ceived. Commodification goes against the idea thattechnology should be given to everyone, especiallythose without access to it.

Lee Benson began by referencing Ira Harkavyand his paper, titled “Democratic VirtuousUniversity Versus Entrepreneurial VirtualUniversities: Education for Virtue Versus

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continuation of full time first year students inundergraduate courses aged 21 and over and 25and over from 1979 to 1999. There has been asteady increase in this chart.

Ethnicity in higher education and the nationalpopulation is the next chart Sir David shows. Itshows the percentage of minorities in higher edu-cation versus their percentage in the population.For example, the White majority, particularlyyoung males, is underrepresented in higher edu-cation, while others in minority groups are moresuccessful. The next chart deals with the esti-mated participation rates in higher education bysocial class. There is a failure of the system toaddress the problems of social class in higher edu-cation. In the UK, there are five groups based onparental occupation. There is very high repre-sentation by the elite in higher education. The pro-portions hardly change, even though the systemis changing. The numbers have gone up, but therates are the same.

The second issue is that the burden to addressthe social agenda is unequally shouldered by onepart of the sector, the new university (formerly poly-technics). The gender effect is neutral, but in termsof older students, students from the lower threeclasses, and ethnicity, the new universities are shoul-dering the greatest load in terms of social change.

Expansion in the UK has come at the price ofrelative under-funding. The next chart Sir Davidshows is a decreasing rate of public funding perstudent for higher education. Between the 1960sand 1990s, higher education was a free good in themiddle class. The Dearing Report, completed in1997, looked at the educational needs for the nexttwenty years. The report is huge with hundreds ofpages. It asked for support for expansion, supportfor research, greater use of communications andinformation technology, graduates to contributeapproximately about 25% of the price of theircourses on an income contingent basis, and strongerregional role for higher education.

The Dearing Report provoked extensive dis-cussion. People wanted a leveling out of thereduction of the amount of money per student.The government took a highly controversial stepover fees. They recommended charging fees on aflat rate basis, but maintaining living support forthose in need. The government established the flatrate fees, but took the stand on means tests.Accepting fees was a bold step.

Sir David demonstrated the impact of the stu-dent funding issues at his own institution. Theacceptance of loans is almost universal, almost80%, starting from 40%. Students are now work-ing for money during their studies, almost 50%working at 15 or more hours a week. Lifestylechoices do of course affect these financial choices.Cars, cell phones, computers all affect students’“need” for money.

Another pressure for convergence is the gov-ernment’s concern on policy returns for higher edu-cation. The catch phrase is “something for some-thing.” If the government puts in more money, theywant to see their social agenda being achieved.There is a very strong emphasis on wider partici-pation and the drive for social inclusion.

Pursuing the social agenda is the developmenton the inside; these include action on admissionsand non-student support and choices on teaching,research, and service priorities. The second is out-side development; for example, developments inschooling and on community capability. There areapparent risks in this second option. For example,the partnerships with the community often forceuniversities into junior or secondary positions,something which universities may find hard.Secondly, there will always be voices inside the uni-versity stressing ambiguities about the bottom line,when a general social good may not be felt directly.

In the UK, there is a serious problem of the lackof lower class peoples getting into higher education.There is much research in this area trying to solvethis problem. Partly as a result, there are good ini-tiatives looking at engagements with schools andcommunities, trying to make higher education arealistic goal. The higher education institutions,eager as they may be to engage in these projects,need to do some owning up. The first is the dan-ger of using these kinds of schemes as a way torecruit in areas that are difficult, such as engineer-ing, nursing and education. Second, that highereducation’s interest in the secondary school cur-riculum has been in its the efficacy as a pipeline ofstudents who would go onto higher education,rather than looking at curriculum’s intrinsic values.

Globalization and higher education can be lib-erating, but can also be very divisive. One of thegreatest challenges UK schools have to take on isexposing discrimination in employment. Twoslides show the number of graduate unemploymentby social class and the extra unemployment of eth-nic minority graduates over white graduates. Both

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has had in reinventing itself to meet new needs.That reinvention is focused on three elements.The two obvious elements are continuity andchange, allowing itself to maintain the factors thatmake it successful, while being able to changethose that do not. The third element is restoration.One of the agendas is to restore that social elementwithin the mission of the university.

On schools, Sir David noted that they are crit-ical, and often deciding the factors in socialadvancement. For example, in Africa you improvehealth fastest by giving women primary education.

On information technology, it is very impor-tant to note it is a technology, an applied science.Universities are scared all over the world. Ifhigher education is not globally entrepreneurial,the for-profit sector will dominate. Sir Davidended by warning that people should not get over-whelmed by the future of this. The way to go for-ward is to understand where you are and to findout what is really going on.

The last speaker was R. Eugene Rice. Ricesuggested that in order to change universities, youhave to change the reward system..

There are great changes in higher educationnow. This is the time to attend to this problem.The first change noted by Rice is the changing ofthe guard among faculty. Higher education grewdramatically during the 1960s. Many White malefaculty were recruited. Today they are ready tomove on. For the first time in years, universitiesare hiring junior faculty. More females andminorities are being hired, a silent revolution.They are non-tenured track, full time faculty andadjunct faculty are growing in numbers.

The second change is the pedagogical revo-lution, started by three developments. The first isinformation technology and how it relates to thelearning process. The second is experience-basedlearning (or service-based learning).Collaborative learning in the community is thethird development.

The third change is the most disturbing.Universities are the field where competitive strug-gle takes place for advantage. Students, admin-istrators and faculty are all competing. Highereducation is seen now as a private benefit, not apublic good. There is a serious disconnection withhigher education and American society. Thereseems to be two forms of social rationality. Thefirst is procedural rationality, questions on havingto do with how. The second is substantive ration-

ality, question on having to do with why. Our soci-ety is getting caught up with the procedural andtechnical issues of process. We are narrowing ourunderstanding in technology. Here is where com-modification occurs. The moral obligation of theteacher is to ask inconvenient questions. If teacherdo not have this, there is no education. You havetraining. The for-profit companies and the cor-porate universities can do this kind of training.

The fourth change is between the collegiateculture and managerial culture. The collegiate cul-ture is faculty-oriented, peer-reviewed, with anemphasis on the community of scholars and merit.Then in comes managerial culture comes from thecorporate sector. They focus on the bottom line,efficiency, productivity, output, etc. They talk aboutcustomer orientation, that is the student. The man-agerial culture is driven by market economy. Thecollegiate culture is about the academic economy.

Commodification is a problem in higher edu-cation, but there is also the collegiate culture wherestatus is big. In terms of the relationship betweenthe university and the public schools, this status dis-crepancy probably has a lot more to do with lackof appreciation for and neglect of K-12. Althoughthe US is the envy of the world in research, the pub-lic schools have deteriorated and fallen apart. Theuniversities have not focused on this problem. Thisis a serious problem of the university.

Ralph Waldo Emerson asked the question,“what does it mean to be a scholar in a dynamicchanging democracy?” There is a tradition therethat has developed that is uniquely American.Freedom began to change in meaning, not justfreedom from tyranny, but freedom to learn andgrow as people, institutions and society. There hasbeen a neglect of schools and multiculturaldemocracy. They are tied and go together.Equality also has changed, not to mean equal, butto also celebrate and confront differences. Therehas to be a broader vision of the scholar.

Plenary Panel: Perspectives of K-12Educational Leaders on HigherEducation-Assisted Community Schools

Convener: Laura Pires-HesterConsultantMemberWEPIC Replication Project Advisory Board

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Education for Profit—Saving the Soul of theUniversity, What is to Be Done?” The basic argu-ment of the paper is not simply radically rein-venting American universities, but radically rein-venting the entire schooling system. Universitiesare the strategic agencies to do so. The basic argu-ment is that universities should be democratic vir-tuous schools whose primary functions are todevelop democratic virtuous citizens who thenwill go on to create democratic virtuous societies.The argument made is that the university is the keyentity to bring this. Contrasting Marxism, whichheld that the economy is the subsystem of soci-ety, Dr. Benson stated that he believes it is theschools in today’s society that is the strategic sub-system. Battles over the university is where thebattle for good society takes place.

The primary purpose of the university shouldbe education, not research. The mission state-ments of universities say that education is theirfocus, but this is not quite true. The researchemphasis has become obsessional. The paper doesnot, however, say research is unimportant, quitethe opposite. But Dr. Benson believes that the pri-mary mission is education. The argument is thatif universities focus on education, there will bebetter research. Dr. Benson noted that professorsshould be mentors to students on how to doinquiry, problem solving, and research. The argu-ment is that if universities are centered on thatprinciple, every course in every university wouldbe rooted in some real world problem solving.There would be most impact if the courses wouldbe designed to solve strategic real world problems.All higher education should make solving theproblems of education their greatest priority. Ifdemocratic universities could solve the problemsof their local schools, a revolution could occur.

The next panelist to speak is Gabriele Mazza.The question that is brought up is whether or notthis partnership is a good model for practice forhigher education. The second question is whetheror not it offers lessons in democratization for thefuture of education in general. Mr. Mazzabelieves that the answer to the first question is yes.In Europe, there has been a small project on uni-versities for sites of citizenship which extends toa bigger school based project on democratic citi-zenship. The one qualification is that Europeanuniversities have less resources for this kind ofaction. US universities are the envy of the world.However, European secondary schools receive

more money than American secondary schools.European universities are now thinking moreabout the education they offer. They are seekingpartnerships with businesses and local govern-ment to secure their futures.

The more difficult general question is democ-ratization. Americans somehow believe thatEurope acts as a single entity and when it does notAmericans conclude that it is fragmented. Europeis a project without a master plan. There are manyissues to address when looking at Europe. Thefirst is cultural diversity. There are many lan-guages and dialects. There are ranges of condi-tions from first world to third world standards.There are political stabilities and instabilities. Thecommon goal though is the shared future. Second,there is a divide in Europe. The greatest divide isin Western and Eastern Europe. Another divideis the Protestants North and the Catholic South.The last divide is the Southeast Europe with allthe violence in Bosnia and Kosovo. The thirdissue is war. It has been 137 years since the lastwar on American soil. Most of Europe is hasexperience reoccurring trauma. The last issue isgovernment. Almost all European countries havea history of strong governments. Citizens expectmore from governments than they do in the US,including a minimal standard of education andhealth. The good side is Europeans have a macroframework for equal opportunity. The bad side isa cultural dependency on authoritarian style ofeducation and government.

The stage is different in Europe and America,but in both universities are being challenged as areK-12 schools. There have always been good andbad reasons for having schools. The bad reasonis to train the young in docility and ideology. Thegood reason is now teaching is centered on learn-ers, active competencies, and greater flexibility.Mazza quoted Dewey in saying that “true educa-tion has to be a collected enterprise.” You may getfacts from lectures, but you learn critical learningfrom problem solving. What we know is of no usewithout action. Schools and universities will sur-vive and adapt, but they need to show their rolein democratic education. The strongest argumentwill be examples. Although the democratic workthat happens in Philadelphia may not be perfectfor Naples, it is the model of the right kind ofpolitical view of action.

Sir David Watson focued on the historicalview of the success the university as an institution

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predominantly Black community in its own city?Early in 1994, UK began to turn its attention

to the north end. They were grappling with issuesof: “How does the UK change itself to local focus?How can the UK come in and how can they sup-port the mission of the school?” As Covingtonnoted, higher ed cannot come in and change theschool agenda. Kentucky schools were pressed toraise achievement levels, and sanctions and rewardswere implemented. Schools that did well academ-ically would receive teacher bonuses. If you werenot successful, you could be closed down. UKwanted to help, and the teachers agreed, but theystated that you could not take them away from thisfocus of sanctions and rewards.

The problem with all these projects is thatthere is a lack of focus. Bringing in the UK theyhoped would help them find direction and sup-ports needed for all students to achieve. UK begansending students to help tutor Winburn studentsin the afternoon.

If this effort was to expand and serve morestudents, funding was needed and UK foundPenn’s WEPIC Replication Project, then gettingunderway by Ira Harkavy and Joann Weeks. Theywould fund the school as a community school.Winburn could loosely structure its program onthe Penn model. The only hard and fast require-ment was to have a relationship between theschool, the community and the university. Theycreated the Winburn Community Academy thatextended student learning after school and openedthe building in the evening and on Saturdays forthe entire community. Doing it raised issues, forexample, teachers had a problem with other peo-ple “messing around with their stuff ” if night pro-grams were implemented. This was a legitimateproblem and still is an issue today, but they workthrough it. Reflecting on their experience, Mr.Covington noted that there has to be benefit forthe individual teacher in the building. There hasto be something tangible for the teachers to see.The teachers have to see that the school is a safehaven for the students and the community.

Nolan Graham began by describing whatPatterson Kennedy was like ten years ago. He wasa second grade teacher ten years then. The schoolwas predominantly white with the community asalmost all white as well. Today the school has17% White females, 24% Black females, 24%White males, and 29% Black males. Ten years agothe school also had a large population of special

education students, which is currently nearly fortypercent. Ten years ago the regular students andspecial education students never met. There weremany misconceptions between the two groups.Some of the teachers had been there for over 20years and did not want to change the situation.

Creating a climate for change was not easy.There were about ten teachers that wanted to seechange. Because of this small group, they formeda group with parents, teachers, and staff. Theywanted to develop a mission. The test scores wereterrible. They had the lowest scores in 34 schools.Presently, after ten years, they have moved up to 17.

A vision of partnership with the communitywas emerging. Mr. Graham wanted to create agrassroots community council in the school.Many of the teachers did not want this, they didnot want the community in the school. The teach-ers did not live in the community. Key to creat-ing partnerships was engaging PK’s close neigh-bor, the University of Dayton (UD). Many in thecommunity were scared of UD. It was seen as thewhite ivory tower. Most of the community did nothave a college degree. Once the parent/teacher/staff group was developed, a room was developedfor the parents. On a daily basis they have fourto eight parents working in the parent room, assist-ing with attendance and discipline. If others areneeded, they are a phone call away.

UD’s engagement has deepened from sendingtwo student teachers to three hundred students.This is not just the school of education, but fromother colleges and and departments such as busi-ness, planning and environmental sciences.Technology education has grown enormously.

Much of Patterson Kennedy success also hadto do with money and grants. The grants havehelped develop new structures at PK. The schoolbefore had only teachers who had taught from 20-40 years. A successful school has one-third firstyear teachers, one-third ten year teachers, and one-third veteran teacher. You have to have the wis-dom of the old teachers and the zealousness of thenew teachers. Any teacher that is hired atPatterson is now required to work there for twoyears. Teachers loop for two years with their stu-dents, i.e., kindergarten to first grade. Test scoreswent up drastically because of this initiative.

The grants have also provided equal distribu-tion of money. Before, only science and mathwere receiving money. Special education wasoften neglected. The WEPIC grants have helped

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Panelists:Virgil CovingtonPrincipalWinburn Middle SchoolLexington, Kentucky

Nolan GrahamPrincipalPatterson Kennedy Elementary SchoolDayton, Ohio

Terence JohnsonPrincipalNorth Middle SchoolAurora, Colorado

Dr. Pires-Hester introduced the three princi-pals as school-based practitioners and generatorsof emerging theories. Their schools have beenparticipating in the WEPIC Replication Project forat least three years, working to develop elementsof Penn’s higher-education assisted communityschool model.

The first principal is from the Winburn MiddleSchool in Lexington who works with the Universityof Kentucky; his name is Virgil Covington. Hisschool has been engaged in this work the longest,since 1994, when three sites were funded throughPenn by the DeWitt Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund(Fund). The other two principals began their part-nerships in 1998 with renewed Fund support andassistance from the Corporation for NationalService-Learn and Serve America (CNS). The sec-ond speaker is Nolan Graham, principal ofPatterson Kennedy School. His partner is theUniversity of Dayton. The final panelist is TerenceJohnson, the principal of North Middle School inAurora, Colorado, who works in partnership withthe Community College of Aurora.

Pires-Hester noted that the principals willaddress issues such as: How do they figure outwhat kinds of experiences will begin to shape andcraft their journey? How do they and we spreadthis knowledge and practice? What have beentheir toughest challenges?

Referencing W.E.B. DuBois, Pires-Hesterframed the discussion in the broad context of crit-ical issues facing American society, namely:“The problem of the twentieth-century will becolor line.” As we go into the twenty-first cen-tury, this problem is even more complex. Thereare growing changes in demographic context. We

are more and more not just a multicultural soci-ety, but we have greater acknowledgement ofstanding and claiming a multiple ancestries andcultural experiences by more and more individu-als. A second trend is the numerical growth thatchallenges the traditional definitions and under-standings of minorities and majorities. The pub-lic school is suppose to be the place of access tofamily and communities and that is the placewhere the changing diversity confronts people arein the schools everyday. This is the place of greatpossibility and potential for helping young peo-ple and citizens to deal with the issues of diver-sity. Finally, she states the question, what are thebroader impacts that are engaging in this types ofpartnerships? What will be the products of thework as well? What are the positive impacts forthe students, schools, family and communities?

Mr. Covington noted that he has been atWinburn Middle School since 1984 and becamethe principal in 1990 at the time the state passedthe Kentucky Educational Reform Act (KERA).KERA been continuously studied and examinedand many people are following its results. Mostteachers doubted it, expecting it to not last pastthe first two years, but it continues. The act hascaused many changes, mainly changing decisionmaking from the top to the bottom. In the chang-ing of the decision making, it required the schoolsto be partners with the community. If there wasto be any type of success, working with the com-munity was necessary.

For Covington and his staff the question theyfaced was: How do you gain trust from the com-munity? Winburn is a predominantly Black com-munity at the north end of town. Out of this smallsubdivision, students are bused to seven or eightschools out of the community. The Winburnschool is not predominantly black, 55%Caucasian, 44% Black). How does a schoolengage the community when the school does notreflect the majority of the community? It neededpartners, in the neighborhood and elsewhere. Atthe south end of Lexington was the University ofKentucky (UK), a predominantly white institu-tion-with a statewide mission to serve allKentuckians and under KERA to assist K-12 edu-cation. However, until then UK acted on its astate-wide mission, but there was no evidence ofnorth end of Lexington mission. Mr. Covingtonquestioned how can a higher education institutehave a mission statement, but not one to a

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Ted Howard convened the panel by noting thatwhile democracy has recently triumphed, as the21st Century begins, democracy faces somedaunting challenges both in the US and through-out the world. In the US, citizens are apatheticand mistrust their government. The differences inincome and wealth have been quite destructive.The challenges to democracy raise serious ques-tions. One of them is what is at least one institu-tional base that can renew and rebuild democracyin the US. There have been such institutionalbases in history. For example, the organized labormovement helped to build democracy. However,we know organized labor today has gone down tonine percent of the workforce.

When you look at an institutional base, onepossibility is the university. With its resources,intellectual capacity, civic mission, and financialwealth and its partnership with the communitycould make a huge contribution to democracy andcivic engagement. While there have been a lot ofnegative trends, such as commodification, thetime is possibly right to renew the mission ofhigher education. In recent years there have beensome favorable trends to promote this.

The engaged university focuses on the trend,how can our higher education institution bestbring about academic renewal in our communi-ties? If universities are to meet the historical chal-lenges facing them at this time, various elementsmust be present. First, civic engagement respon-sibility must become central to the mission ofhigher education. Next, internally, universitiesneed to further develop and use pedagogy that bet-ter integrates theory and research that focuses ondemocratic problem solving and meeting realworld challenges. Finally, the whole effort needsto focus on locality and community in recognitionthat democracy and civic engagement begins athome. In order for the society to focus on democ-racy, the community must first begin to be civi-cally engaged.

Panelist Marty Blank observed that if univer-sities are an engine for renewal, then the commu-nity schools is the place where all this happens.This is where the university, community, parents,youth organizations, and faith based institutionsall come together. Breaking down the wallsbetween disciplines, institutions and sectors insupport of public education is what he does. Thequestion that needs to be addressed is what is theconnection between the work that is done in the

university and the partners they are working with?Education reform people state this is clutter; aca-demic achievement should be the number one pri-ority. So it is very important to gather everyoneand build a strategic community school. Peopleneed to come with their distinct perspective.

What is then the most important outcome in theschools? Success in school is the answer. If youcan get kids through schools successfully, they dowell in life. Everything somehow has to be con-nected. Higher education has a bit of prestige. Whoelse is working with the local schools? How canwe bring about those sectors together? Academicachievement is not the only important thing to meas-ure, but it is an important goal. If work is to be donein school, that has to be the focus.

Mr. Blank next addressed the kind of work theCoalition for Community Schools is doing. TheCoalition is trying to get more principals andsuperintendents on this vision of civic engagementand community schools. They are also trying tofigure out a way for principals to get prepared, thattheir successors have some idea about community.There is not enough skill to build communityinside and outside of the school. For years manypeople have gone around the school. Because ofthis alternative programs are developed. But theschool just remains there separated and isolated.The Coalition is also focused on policy and work-ing on a state framework. Many of the principalsfeel overwhelmed by all these renewals. TheCoalition is trying to make their jobs a lot easier.

Nevin Brown began by reminiscing aboutwhat happened twenty-one years ago when heheaded the Department of Urban Affairs. Thisdepartment was focused on how to make urbanpublic universities try to figure out how to be bet-ter citizens in the community. If people are reallyserious in getting higher education engagement incivic engagement, there is a lot of internal workthat has to be done, not just democratic, but edu-cational as well. There are some areas where thework has to be done. There are four areas in whichMr. Brown feels there needs improvement. Thefirst is teacher professional development andteacher preparation in our institutions in highereducation. We often forget the primary focus ofhigher education is the preparation of teachers;preparation in pedagogical knowledge and contentknowledge are all ways in which people becometeachers. Most people have not been exposed tomodels of good teaching. Nor do we think that

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distribute the money so that all the children arereceiving resources. The school has developed acyber café with wireless Internet. The school isbeing completely renovated so that every com-puter will go wireless. So often public education,without the support of higher education, contin-ues the same old curriculum every year. UD hasbrought curricular innovation, such as project onlead-based paint exposure and risk reduction.Lead poisoning has taken place in many of thestudents. The UD went in with surveys and pre-sentations to the parents on lead. Many of the par-ents did not even know of the effects.

Terence Johnson noted that North MiddleSchool has developed two key partners: theCommunity College of Aurora and the city ofAurora. North Middle School is very close toDenver, in “original” Aurora, the lowest incomesection of Aurora and one that is experiencingextremely high rates of demographic change.They are approximately 850 students at North.There were approximately 38% African American,32% Caucasian, and 17% Latino five years ago.Today they are 50% Latino and 40% African-American. There was also a mismatch betweenthe school and the teachers. There is a large pros-titution and drug problem near the school..Approximately 75% of the students are eligible forfree lunch. They are considered a lower achiev-ing school and had a very high suspension rate.There had been a huge disconnection between theschool and the community. Attendance was poor,roughly about 87%.

When Mr. Johnson first came to North MiddleSchool he spent his time in the alleys learningwhere the fights would take place. There was afight just about everyday.

The mission had to be created. The focus wason academic achievement. The goals are oftenfocused on how they are doing on standardizedtests. They needed to connect their children to theschools and the parents to the schools. One of theways they did that was to invite people back intothe building. During this time they went througha five and a half million dollar renovation.Through the partnership with the city of Aurora,a grant was submitted to plant trees, have picnictables, and other measures of beautification for theschool. Parents, students and everyone wasinvited. It was an entire day of effort. From thatday the graffiti diminished and the fights sloweddown. Soon afterschool programs were imple-

mented. Tae-Kwon-Do, computer programming,tutoring club, drill teams, theater and drama, shopclub, newspaper, games club, science academyand junior life guards were all created in partner-ship with the community.

The current impact of the project on theschool has been profound. The suspension ratehas gone down from 16% to 8%. The attendancerate has gone from 87% to 92%. There is almostno graffiti anymore in the school. The fights donot take place anymore. Student achievement hasgone up—25% of the students who took the read-ing tests had been at grade level, currently 33%of the students are at level. Another impact on thepartnership is the leveraging of funds. The fundsare coming in very quickly.

The challenges that lie ahead are that the peo-ple that are involved often change. Mr. Johnsonnoted that the goals have to be defined early on.The goal is plain and simple, student achievement.

Plenary Panel: National Perspectives onHigher Education and Civic Engagementin America

Convener:Ted HowardDirector, Civil Society/Community BuildingInitiativeCollege of Behavioral & Social SciencesUniversity of Maryland

Panelists:Marty BlankStaff DirectorCoalition for Community Schools

Nevin BrownPrincipal PartnerEducation Trust Member National Advisory Board of the WEPICReplication Project

Amy CohenActing DirectorDepartment of Service-Learning Corporation for National Service-Learn andServe America

David RayDirector of Community Outreach United Negro College Fund

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The final panelist speaker was David Ray whoaddressed issues of diversity and service learning.The United Negro College Fund is a consortiumof historically Black and private colleges and uni-versities. Most are their students are first or sec-ond generation college students. They come fromcommunities that are often marginalized, dealingwith critical socio-economic problems.Historically Black schools tend to embrace theidea of service. The idea of service-learning didnot usually resonate because these colleges werealready used to the idea of service. Clearly therewas a language barrier. Many of the institutionsfelt this was the last movement of the society.Many did not want to participate because theyfeared being dictated by the outside. Service-learning at a historically Black school does notembrace the idea of charity. They speak in termsof change; how one engages young people, staff,and faculty in service. How do we educate youngpeople so that they are civically active.

What does civic mean then? Does it mean tovote? To be politically active? The whole idea of civic engagement can be foreign to thesehistorically Black institutions because voting andbeing politically active were not even allowed until recently.

Service learning-provides constructive dia-logue. There can be a provision of opportunitiesfor civic engagement. How do you recognize thatthis way of learning needs to be viewed differentlyby different people? These are students that havea stake in the community. They will go to collegeand come back to their communities to help.

There are always assumptions about the natureof the civic engagement. Mr. Ray noted that thereis no level playing field when it comes to civicengagement. There are many people who do notsee the value of being an engaged citizen. The pro-grams Mr. Ray is involved in are trying to show itsvalue. The idea of what Blacks think of civic maybe different than the idea of the majority: civicengagement is not that you have the privilege to beengaged; you have the right and responsibility tobe engaged and educators have the responsibilityto find ways in which everyone can participate.

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the students in the classroom are going to be futureteachers of America. How often do we encouragethe best students in the departments that K-12teaching is a high goal to have? Rather is it morelikely that you take the best students and help theminto graduate schools. The promotion of teachersmust be more widespread, not just isolated in thecollege of education.

The second area that needs work is prepara-tion of students in college to be successful. Oneof the key to that is looking hard and seeing whatstudents need to do on the high school level, whatstudents need to do to be admitted to the institu-tions, and more importantly, what they need to doto be placed in college bearing courses. Manytimes students may be admitted to college, butfind when they take placement exams, they are notprepared adequately. Far too many low incomeand minority students find that this ends theirhigher education experience. Third, colleges needto think about their own undergraduate programs.In many cases, it is not clear to students what theyreally want them to know, to learn, and to takeaway from the completion of college. There is nottalk about qualities of learning. In this area, partof the problem is the lack of modeling of goodteaching practices. There is also the lack of focuson two year colleges. For many low income andminority students, that is where they first experi-ence higher education. Finally, there needs to bea serious consideration being educational institu-tions. Many urban universities employ a largenumber of local citizens as nurses, aides, janitors,groundskeepers, etc who we never think of aspotential students, the parents of students, andother ways they can be members of a learningcommunity. Here is a good opportunity to pro-vide educational chances.

Mr. Brown concluded by describing the edu-cational environment of Alverno College, a smallall women’s college. He noted that AlvernoCollege has done its best to make sure all the stu-dents are learners and civic minded citizens. AtAlverno, faculty work is seen as the school’s work.Most people say my work or my research. AtAlverno, the real work is what they do. Not theindividual, but the school. Secondly, Alverno isvery public about its expectations and what it does.Students know what they need to have to besuccessful. Many institutions are not transparent.

The third panelist speaker was Amy Cohen.The first part of the talk focused on what the

Corporation of National Service and the secondpart on her observations on undergraduates andservice engagement. The Corporation of NationalService is a small federal agency created in 1994.There are three essential programs. The most pop-ular is the AmeriCorps program, which puts indi-viduals in direct service for an extended period oftime in their local community. They also operatethe National Senior Service Corp Program whichbrings Americans 55 or older into service in theircommunities. Lastly they have the Learn and Serveprogram that provides service learning in K-12 andhigher education. In all three branches, perhaps80% of programs are involved in education.

The service-learning resource availability iswidespread. Under Learn and Serve America, 43million dollars has been made available annuallyfor the last seven years. Three-fourths of themoney goes to K-12 related programs. The goalof these programs is to get students into servicethat is embedded into their academic curriculum.Service-learning also promotes civic responsibil-ity as well as academic learning . The ways inwhich it promotes civic responsibility depends onhow well the service-learning is done. The qual-ity of the service, the length of time, and how thatservice is analyzed, discussed, and contextualizedis what engenders civic responsibility.

The higher education programs get a quarterof the funds. They fund 57 direct grants. Those57 direct grants are nearly evenly divided betweengrants to consortia and individual institutes ofhigher education. Why does that matter? Throughthe consortia they are able reach 250 colleges ayear to do service-learning and to make sure thosecourses are integrated into the community. Goodservice-learning focuses on the community.Service-learning also focuses on making the per-sonal political, to find the motivation for serviceand civic engagement. Personal politics createspersonal responsibility. It carries with it a com-mitment to join others to get things done.Individual action can lead to collective action andthis collective action takes place on campuses.Collective action has to deal with diversity andmany of the barriers have to be broken down.Civic engagement teaches how to live in a multi-cultural world. In short, Ms. Cohen concluded, weneed to engage young people in civic engagementsthat are high quality and meaningful which willlead to democratic action.

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