Campus Spotlight: Towson University’s Freedom Square

By Guest Blogger Darcy L. Accardi, Towson University

This fall, after months of hard work, Towson University unveiled its new Freedom Square.  On Friday, September 17^th Towson launched a new space and initiative to actively engage students in their community, government, and environment.  Freedom Square is a space in the middle of Towson’s campus dedicated to civic engagement activities.  The space is equipped with electrical outlets, sitting areas, a public forum area, and two chalk boards.  Each week a new thought-provoking question is posted on these chalk boards and students are encouraged to write their thoughts.  The first question posted on September 17^th was, “Why is Free Speech important to you?”

The Freedom Square Launch event was open to the entire campus and attended by several members of the Student Government Association and University officials. Remarks were shared by the SGA Director of Civic Engagement, the Provost, and the Vice President of Student Affairs.  Following these remarks, several student groups performed.  Performances included speeches, dances, poems, and skits related to the mission of Freedom Square.  The purpose of the event was to introduce the space and its mission to the campus as well as encourage passerby to answer the chalkboard questions.  At the end of the event, attendees were informed that Freedom Square is available to all students and student groups to reserve for events related to its mission.  A Freedom Square Grant has also been created to help subsidize costs related to these events.  Over the course of the fall semester numerous events were hosted by student groups in Freedom Square, including an overnight Night of Homelessness demonstration, immigration rally and 2010 Election activities. Each week students responded to a different question written on the chalkboards. In the future, in addition to the physical Freedom Square, there will be a virtual Freedom Square on the Towson website with the same mission.

The Freedom Square Mission Statement:

The Mission of Freedom Square is to provide a forum for the campus community to express and deliberate issues of civic concern.  The space shall be a haven for freedom of expression and speech, in addition to encouraging an atmosphere of critical thinking and debate.

Spreading the Minnesota Way

By Harry Boyte, Director, Center for Democracy and Citizenship

This Martin Luther King Day weekend I’ve been thinking about the “Montgomery Way” and “The Minnesota Way.”

The beginning of the freedom movement, which later shaped me as a college student in the 1960s, was the formation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) on January 10-11, 1957, in Atlanta, Georgia. SCLC was created to spread “the Montgomery way” across the south. It communicated lessons of the famous bus boycott, begun when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat for a white man on December 5, 1955, in Montgomery. The bus boycott was an enormous successful nonviolent movement of black people and their allies to desegregate city buses that stunned the nation and the world. SCLC spread not only organizing lessons about boycotts but also a “Crusade for Citizenship,” launched by Ella Baker, first executive director, in 20 communities across the South. The Crusade for Citizenship communicated democratic hope, the idea that battlers for racial justice, growing in numbers, were not alone but rather part of a rising tide. A freedom movement was about to break on the nation’s consciousness that would change the course of history.

There are lessons that can ground a similar “We the People” movement today. One way to describe it is “Spreading the Minnesota Way.”

On January 24 in partnership with the congressionally mandated National Conference on Citizenship and the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship, our Center for Democracy and Citizenship is publishing A Tale of Two Cities. The report compares the “civic health” — levels of civic engagement — in the Twin Cities and Miami Florida. The Twin Cities is the most civically engaged community in the nation, Miami is the least, according to composite of a number of indicators (voting levels, volunteering, charitable giving, involvement in community problem solving, participation in public meetings, campaigns, and also informal measures like talking to neighbors and having dinner with families). Civic health is correlated with social benefits such as economic well-being, income equality, and individual health and happiness.

The report is an opportunity to analyze reasons for the Twin Cities success. I believe that there are three elements, present everywhere but especially developed in the Twin Cities.

• Civic agency. Most simply, people here believe that change is possible and that they can make it –  that everyday citizens, not superheroes or famous celebrities, can develop the capacities for public work across differences to tackle tough problems and shape the world around us.
• Civic educators. In the Twin Cities, the detachment from community life of many institutions – families, schools, congregations, businesses, nonprofits – that is widespread visible in America generally has also taken place. But many buck the trend. There is still an unusual degree of institutional engagement with communities in ways which educate for citizenship. In some cases civic dimensions of institutions are being revitalized.
• We the People government. The Twin Cities also embody many continuing examples of political leadership, government agencies, and civil servants who make government the partner, instrument and meeting ground of citizens – neither savior providing “customer services,” nor the problem.

These elements add up to a “culture of civic empowerment.” And just as in the civil rights movement when a widespread desire for change warred with a deep pessimism about whether segregation could be ended, a culture of civic empowerment can spread. In fact this week’s civic outpouring in Tucson, Arizona where citizens have shown the world that the community is much bigger than the violent shootings can also be seen as stirrings of a new movement of civic empowerment.

In this movement everyday citizens are the foundational agents of making change.  What do these have in common?

Democratic hope.

 

Announcing the Speakers for the ADP National Meeting

By Cecilia M. Orphan, National Meeting, American Democracy Project

I’m pleased to announce that three exciting people have agreed to speak at the ADP National Meeting in Orlando, Florida, June 2-4, 2011. Erica Williams of the Center for American Progress, Andrew Rosenthal of The New York Times, and Russell Dalton, author of The Good Citizen: How a Younger Generation is Reshaping American Politics will speak at our meeting. The New York Times is sponsoring Andrew’s involvement in the ADP Meeting. We are very grateful to the Times for their continued support of ADP. To learn more about The New York Times Knowledge Network, please visit this website.

See below to learn more about Andrew, Erica and Russell and don’t forget to register for the ADP Meeting!

To register for the ADP National Meeting, please visit this website.

Speaker Bios

Andrew Rosenthal, the editorial page editor of The New York Times, is in charge of the paper’s opinion pages, both in the newspaper and online. He oversees the editorial board, the Letters and Op-Ed departments, as well as the Editorial and Op-Ed sections of NYTimes.com. The editorial department of the paper is completely separate from the news operations and Mr. Rosenthal answers directly to the publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr.

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Erica Williams is the Deputy Director of Progress 2050, a project of the Center for American Progress that develops new ideas for an increasingly diverse America. The project seeks to build a progressive agenda that is more inclusive and reflects the rich racial and ethnic makeup of the nation. Progress 2050 does this by promoting innovative policy ideas, facilitating honest dialogue about the intersection of race and policy, analyzing demographics, and developing new leaders.

Listed by Politico.com as one of Top 50 Politicos to Watch, she is the former Deputy Director and Policy Manager of Campus Progress, the youth outreach arm of the Center where she still serves as a senior advisor. While there, she led the staff and network of young Americans in advancing progressive policy with and for 18- to 27-year-olds across the nation. Her advocacy work focused on economic mobility, equal opportunity, health care, and clean energy.

Before joining the Center for American Progress, Erica worked at the Leadership Conference on Civil Right to coordinate grassroots activity in nearly 45 states to advance effective civil and human rights legislation at the federal level.

She is a past participant of the American University Women and Political Leadership Training Program, a 2008 O Magazine Women Rule Leadership winner, and a 2008 Aspen Institute IDEAS fellow.

Williams has appeared on CNN, C-Span, “The Tavis Smiley Show,” “Focus Earth with Bob Woodruff,” and BBC among others. She has been widely quoted in various print publications such as U.S. News and World Report, The Washington Post, O Magazine, andThe Nation.

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Russell J. Dalton is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine and was the founding director of the Center for the Study of Democracy at UC Irvine. He has received a Fulbright Professorship at the University of Mannheim, a Barbra Streisand Center fellowship, German Marshall Research Fellowship and a POSCO Fellowship at the East/West Center. His recent publications have focused on youth and politics:  The Good Citizen: How the Young are Transforming American Politics (2009) and editor of the Engaging Youth in Politics: Debating Democracy’s Future (2011). In addition, he has authored or edited 20 books and almost 150 academic articles on public opinion, political behavior, and political parties.

ADP Query: Does Your Campus Have a Civic Engagement Center?

By Cecilia M. Orphan, National Manager, American Democracy Project

In the American Democracy Project, we believe that there is no more important public purpose for higher education than the preparation of informed, engaged citizens for our democracy. To this end, we are constantly seeking strategies that universities have used to fulfill their role as citizen educators. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post about Western Carolina University, campuses must find ways to institutionalize civic engagement programming in order to fulfill this public purpose. Institutionalization is of paramount importance because it provides every student on campus with opportunities to be educated and engaged as citizens. We use the term “institutional intentionality” to express this notion. Western Carolina demonstrated its commitment to institutionalizing civic education by incorporating Constitutional programming into a basic and required university function: the Quality Enhancement Plan. And many more of our campuses have been creative and bold in their design and institutionalization of on-campus programming.

One way a university can demonstrate its seriousness about institutionalizing civic engagement programming is through the establishment of a center that facilitates and connects the disparate civic engagement activities on campus. An effective civic engagement center can also perform a variety of functions that include (but are not limited to) conducting faculty development on community-based learning, linking interested students to community-based projects, convening the campus community for discussions about civic topics, facilitating equitable and effective community/university partnerships, providing programming for student civic leadership, and partnering with elected officials and community members to solve public problems.

Civic Engagement Centers Query

Mike McCullough is a professor of management at the University of Tennessee at Martin and is helping run a civic engagement center for his university. He’d like to learn more about other civic engagement centers. That’s where you come in. If your campus has a center that handles some of the activities I described above, or other functions I did not list, please take a moment to complete this brief, online survey so that we can better understand such centers. After the results are compiled, we will share a summary of the findings on the ADP Blog. 

To complete this survey, please click this link.

Thank you in advance for taking the time to complete this survey. Your response will help us better understand this important strategy for institutionalizing civic engagement programming.

Campus Spotlight: Western Carolina University

By Cecilia M. Orphan, National Manager, American Democracy Project

Civic engagement scholars and practitioners often site knowledge about government as an important element of citizenship development. This makes good sense. If citizens are going to solve societal problems and interact with elected officials, it is important that they understand governmental structures. Our nation’s Constitution is likely one of the most important documents for citizens to familiarize themselves with. Constitution Day was created as one way to assure that more citizens will learn about and celebrate this governing document. Constitution Day takes place on September 17th and celebrates the anniversary of the signing of the Constitution. Each educational institution in the United States that receives federal funding must observe this holiday. In the ADP, many campuses have transformed this little-known federal mandate into an opportunity to reflect on our government, our liberties, and our obligations as citizens in this democracy.

Some ADP campuses have extended celebrations of and conversations about the Constitution beyond this holiday by incorporating Constitutional programming into ongoing campus activities. Western Carolina University in North Carolina is one such enterprising institution. Western Carolina has tied discussions about the Constitution into its  Quality Enhancement Planning (QEP) process. The Student Affairs and Undergraduate Studies departments at Western Carolina are hosting a semester-long celebration of the First Amendment as part of the QEP process. Faculty members are encouraged to develop lectures, workshops, exhibits, multimedia projects, and other programs with the goal of educating the Western Carolina community about the First Amendment. Administrators at Western Carolina are encouraging a variety of faculty members from different disciplines to consider how a program about the First Amendment might fit into their disciplinary work. Part of Western Carolina’s goal is to get each person on campus to talk and think about how the First Amendment relates to their daily lives.

What is particularly compelling about the Western Carolina project is that it is using a mandatory university process (QEP) to increase the campus community’s knowledge and understanding of the Constitution. One distinctive thing about the ADP is its focus on institutional intentionality. Institutional intentionality can be defined as how an individual institution organizes its resources and activities to achieve specific institutional goals. Civic engagement programming must be institutionalized on individual campuses so that all students have the opportunity to develop as citizens. By incorporating civic education into their QEP process, Western Carolina is demonstrating its level of institutional intentionality.

In ADP, we work to educate “informed, engaged citizens.” It is campus programming like Western Carolina’s that builds student civic knowledge and helps us realize our goal of educating future citizens for our democracy.

For more information, please contact Carol Burton, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate Studies, at Western Carolina University.

Question: How might you use existing campus functions to educate students as citizens?

Partner Spotlight: The Democracy Imperative

By Cecilia M. Orphan, National Manager, American Democracy Project

National partners are extremely important to the success of the American Democracy Project. With limited time and resources, without our partners we would not be able to offer our members the amount of innovative resources and programming we currently do.

Occasionally, I use the ADP Blog to spotlight the work of some of our stellar partners who have helped advance ADP as a national movement. Today I am highlighting the work of The Democracy Imperative (TDI). TDI’s mission is to strengthen public life and democracy in and through higher education. TDI’s mission has a lot of connection to ADP’s mission of preparing informed, engaged citizens for our democracy.

I became acquainted with the work of TDI when I attended the No Better Time conference the summer of 2008. The Executive Director of TDI, Nancy Thomas, also spoke at our national meeting in Providence. She gave a thoughtful and well-received presentation on politics, power and privilege in community/university partnerships. I have been deeply impressed with TDI’s ability to bring community members, pracademics (practitioners/academics), students, faculty members, administrators and staff  together with the goal of improving democracy.

TDI is a national network of multidisciplinary scholars, campus leaders, and civic leaders in the fields of democratic dialogue, public deliberation, and democracy-building. In ADP, we see democratic dialogue and deliberation as key 21^st Century Skills that students need to hone in order to be effective citizens and professionals. TDI’s work has challenged us in higher education to consider how we are helping our communities develop these skills.

Membership in TDI would dovetail nicely with participation in ADP for a campus striving to develop and expand their democracy-building agenda. And the best part about the membership in TDI is that it is free! The TDI website is rich with resources and information about teaching deliberative democracy, democratic leadership and decision making. I urge you to spend some time on TDI’s website and consider joining this incredible network of colleagues and scholars who care deeply about higher education’s role in advancing American democracy.

To learn more about TDI, please visit this website.

Reclaiming Civic Spaces: The Project for Public Spaces

By Cecilia M. Orphan, National Manager, American Democracy Project

It is important for every healthy community to have public space for citizens to engage in democratic work. AASCU universities are often instrumental in partnering with community leaders to reclaim these types of public spaces for civic purposes. This work grows out of their commitment to being Stewards of Place. Indeed, every community has public space that has the potential to be used for important public work – be it as the site for dialogue about important community issues, public problem solving, community organizing, political campaigning, or other important civic activities.

Project for Public Spaces (PPS) is a nonprofit planning, design and educational organization dedicated to helping people create and sustain public spaces that build stronger communities.  PPS was founded in 1975 to expand on the work of William (Holly) Whyte, the author of The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. Since then, we have completed projects in over 2500 communities in 40 countries and all 50 US states. Partnering with public and private organizations, federal, state and municipal agencies, business improvement districts, neighborhood associations and other civic groups, PPS improves communities by fostering successful public spaces.

Please see below for additional information about PPS. I hope many of you will consider how the type of work PPS is doing might fit into your own campus’s community outreach agenda. There are also a lot of great resources and tips on the PPS website that could be helpful for you as you’re thinking about how to improve and/or reclaim a public space in your community. The website also has tips on how university leaders might maximize the use of public space on campus. To read these specific tips, please visit this webpage.

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The Re-Emergence of the Public Square

Public Squares enhance urban livability and provide new anchors to downtown development

Today, cities everywhere are thinking more broadly about how to gain an economic boost. Big ticket items, like sports arenas and lavish performing arts centers, which cities once viewed as the key to reviving their struggling downtowns, are taking a back seat to new, lower-cost, high-impact strategies to foster prosperity. More and more, public squares and urban parks, not expensive mega-projects, are emerging as the best way to make downtowns more livable—and not just in depressed urban cores.

A central attraction of cities throughout the world, public squares not only bring economic rewards but offer people a comfortable spot to gather for social, cultural and political activities. They are the pulsing heart of a community and foster true urban sustainability.

Two of PPS’ public square projects recently opened in Houston and Pittsburgh to great fanfare. And in Amsterdam, PPS facilitated a Placemaking workshop that brought diverse stakeholders together to develop a shared vision for an inclusive and livable town square.

	Houston’s new Market Square opened to great excitement this fall, with Mayor Annise Parker declaring, “This is the perfect park: it has history, it has green space, it has food, it has places for the pets, it has places for kids to play.” That’s quite a turnaround for a spot once featured on PPS’s Hall of Shame. This is another milestone in Houston’s progress toward creating a series of great public spaces and a vibrant, livable downtown.  PPS was also a key partner on other Houston projects like Discovery Green and Emancipation Park.
	Pittsburgh’s Market Square reopened this fall with roaring public approval. Mayor Luke Ravenstahl enthused, “today our vision for this public space became a reality, “citing the newly closed streets, freshly planted trees, outdoor seating, and wider sidewalks  that now run through this historic public space. The opening marked the culmination of years of public process and a $5 million investment in the area, with improvements guided by PPS’ community-based plan for the Square.
	Amsterdam’s Plein 40-45, has great potential to become a thriving town square for a mixed Dutch, Turkish, and Moroccan neighborhood on the western edge of the City.  Just days after a PPS Master Class workshop, the community started implementing a number of the low-cost, high-impact improvements. The Square was even included on a city-wide boat tour of markets as part of Amsterdam’s annual 1001 Markets Festival.  The recent workshops facilitated by PPS brought stakeholders around the town square together- perhaps for the first time- to develop a shared vision for the space that would include all cultural groups.

One of the main reasons for the resurgence of the public square is that they bring livability and many diverse benefits to a city—at a lower cost and greater speed than traditional large-scale developments.  Public squares that emerge through a Placemaking process are sustained by community buy-in can:

• catalyze private investment and foster grassroots entrepreneurial activities.
• nurture identity, encourage volunteerism, and highlight a community’s unique values.
• draw a diverse population and serve as a city’s “common ground.” Successful squares—those that are sustainable both economically and socially—draw different kinds of people with a series of dynamic places within them offering many choices of things to do—socializing, eating, reading, playing a game, interacting with art, etc.

A recent  Washington Post article focuses on the power of “City Parks” to spur economic growth across an entire city, and it points to two PPS projects, Houston’s  Discovery Green and Detroit’s  Campus Martius, as benchmarks for success. Alive with year-round programming and activities, the best squares offer the type of thriving Public Multi-Use Destinations treasured by urban residents which also generate millions of dollars of investment, proving there can be an  Upside of a Down Economy.

PPS is honored to celebrate these and other public squares that have recently opened to make their cities more livable.  We are seeking your stories about squares in your communities that you think are successful. Please send us a description, photos and facts about the impact of a square that has recently opened or been revitalized in your community so that we can share your successes with others! Email info@pps.org.

Please visit the PPS website for more information.

Question: How might your university reclaim spaces in the community for citizens to do public work?

Missouri State University: Public Affairs Conference

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein

By Cecilia M. Orphan, National Manager, American Democracy Project

I am pleased to announce the upcoming Public Affairs Conference at Missouri State University (MSU). MSU has long been a leader in the American Democracy Project, and this conference is one of the signature events of their on-campus and regional project. The Public Affairs Conference will take place April 12-15, 2011, and will be held on MSU’s campus in Springfield, Missouri.

The ADP organizers at MSU recognize that the challenges facing American democracy are increasingly complex and call for a new kind of leadership and collaboration. Along these lines, Gloria J. Galanes, Provost for Public Affairs at MSU and Conference Chair writes that, “Most people from the United States envision leadership as synonymous with ‘take charge’ behavior. This narrow view of leadership assumes that if someone is not visibly directing and controlling the activities of others, that person is not exhibiting leadership. This is, however, only one model of leadership—and not necessarily the model most likely to be effective in addressing contemporary issues.” Gloria goes on to write that “we need leaders who understand the need to collaborate with others, who both want to and are able to bring multiple voices to the table to ensure that the best ideas have the opportunity to surface and be recognized.” We couldn’t agree more.

At the Public Affairs Conference, participants will explore  strategies for effective leadership and collaboration with the goal of bringing diverse groups of people together to solve public problems. The conference will also showcase leaders from all around the world. This is why we’re hoping many ADP schools will consider sending representatives to this important conference.

All events are free and open to the public. No registration is necessary for conference events. The conference features a series of keynote presentations, panel discussions, and special events throughout the week, which touch upon business, family, international issues, the arts, and education.

I am heartened by MSU’s recognition that we must use new and different leadership, thinking, and strategies for collaboration to solve the pressing social problems we’re facing. This conference will be an excellent opportunity for participants to develop the collaborative leadership skills that we, as a democracy, so direly need.

To learn more about this exciting conference, please visit this website.

Question: How has your ADP chapter been deliberate about developing student leadership skills for the 21st Century?

Writers’ Blocks: An Experiment in Design and Public Deliberation

By Cecilia M. Orphan, National Manager, American Democracy Project

The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung believed that there is a collective unconscious that links all people in the world together. He conjectured that this is why we often witness the creation of similar myths and fables despite great distances in land, language, and culture. While no one can prove the existence of such a collective unconscious, certain events can at times make us wonder if there is something that connects and inspires us all. Case in point: Writers’ Blocks at Penn State University. Writers’ Blocks is very similar to the Democracy Plaza pioneered at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI).

“The Writers’ Blocks are a series of installation works which foster debate and engagement within public spaces…The project has been developed into a system for everyone to use, easily constructed from commonly available materials.” The blocks consist of artfully displayed chalk boards that showcase student-selected questions with Constitutional dimensions and were originally designed in celebration of Constitution Day in 2007. The blocks are located in a central location on the Penn State campus and feature questions such as “Should the Ten Commandments be posted in public spaces?” “Is torture justifiable?” and “Is intolerance of the 9/11 mosque fundamentally un-American?” (Taken from the Writers’ Blocks brochure.) Because of the installation of Writers’ Blocks, the Penn State community has engaged in an ongoing and sustained discussion about these and other important societal issues. In addition to this discussion, students have learned more about how the Constitution relates to their daily lives.

Aside from the civic learning that is taking place, what is remarkable about Writers’ Blocks is that it was created by Peter Aeschbacher and his architecture students with no knowledge of the Democracy Plaza project at IUPUI.  Writers’ Blocks grew out of a desire by Peter and his students to create discussion on campus about Constitutional issues. In 2008, the model was recognized by the American Institute of Architects and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture with the National Education Honor Award.

“The project functions at two levels: as an example of design thinking applied to a topic outside the traditional bounds of design (the Constitution) and as an example of a problem-solving tool developed by a substantive engagement with an issue (public participation and civic engagement),” wrote Peter in a recent email to me. Peter continues, “my pedagogic strategy in taking on the topic of Constitution Day with first-year architecture students was to challenge them to come to terms with how they define their chosen profession and its public mission. In addition, the students were also asked to follow through with their ideas in a very disciplinary manner: actually designing and building the final projects. This process closely follows a design process of divergence>transformation>convergence at both the active learning as well at the project level.”

Peter and his students have refined the project so that it is easily replicable by campuses interested in using it for Constitution Day celebrations and other on-campus programming. With this goal in mind, Peter is in the process of developing a manual for installing Writers’ Block on other campuses. As soon as this manual is produced, I will share it on the ADP Blog. I encourage leaders in the ADP network to consider creating similar projects on their campuses – be it a Democracy Plaza or Writers’ Blocks or something else that suits the campus environment and circumstances and encourages discussion.

We see this project as a Signature Practice in Civic Engagement. The project necessitates multidisciplinary learning by, for example, challenging architecture students to explore how landscape architecture might create space for political discussions and learning. Writers’ Blocks also supports an ongoing conversation about how Constitutional issues impact our daily lives, thus developing in students a deepened understanding of the Constitution. Finally, Writers’ Blocks allows students to hone the important civic skill of discussing difficult political issues in a civil manner.

Whether or not the spontaneous creation of two identical and innovative projects proves the existence of a collective unconscious is somewhat unimportant for our purposes. What is important is that both projects arose on separate campus communities to create space for a visual and verbal grappling with pressing contemporary issues facing our democracy.

For more information about Writers’ Blocks, please email Peter Aeschbacher. For more information about Democracy Plaza, please visit this website.

Question: How might your campus create civic spaces similar to Writers’ Blocks that support ongoing discussion about Constitutional issues?

Campus Spotlight: Portland State University’s Second International Institute on Partnerships

By Cecilia M. Orphan, National Manager, American Democracy Project

This week’s Campus Spotlight is on Portland State University (PSU). PSU is hosting its Second International Institute on Partnerships: From Reciprocity to Collective Transformation: Achieving the Potential of Community-Campus Partnerships in Portland Oregon, May 23-25, 2011.

Portland State has earned an exemplary reputation for facilitating and researching equitable and effective community/university partnerships. In ADP, we see effective community/university partnerships as a Signature Practice in Civic Engagement. When a university partners with the community with the goal of helping to solve local, public problems, it is also fulfilling part of its role as a Steward of Place. Community/university partnerships are also one of the most important tools a campus has to facilitate the development of civic agency on the part of students. It is imperative that these partnerships serve both the community’s and the university’s interests. Of equal importance is that universities  are deliberate about building reciprocity into the partnerships they establish. This institute will be an excellent event for those in higher education looking to deepen their understanding and practice of community/university partnerships. Please see below for more information, and consider submitting a proposal for presentation.

International Institute on Partnerships: From Reciprocity to Collective Transformation: Achieving the Potential of Community-Campus Partnerships

May 23-25, 2011

PSU Campus, Portland, Oregon

We have extended the proposal deadline to Monday, Jan 17^th, 2011. For details, visit this website.

The 2011 International Institute on Partnerships will utilize a variety of session formats to engage participants in a unique learning environment that brings together national and international leaders in partnership research and practices. We are thrilled to welcome a wide variety of Institute facilitators to share their unique insights on partnerships from the perspectives of community organizations and higher education institutions.

Why “PARTNERSHIPS”?: Insights from decades of practice and emerging research confirms that the most effective community-campus collaborations must be supported by solid partners who work regularly on their partnership development and sustainability.

Why “INTERNATIONAL”?: Community-campus engagement is now a global phenomenon. Thus, we invite colleagues from around the world to focus with us on the many kinds and types of partnerships that undergird local, regional, state, national, and/or international collaborations.

Why an “INSTITUTE”?: The Institute program is directed to strengthening the capacity of both community and higher education constituents for participation in transformative partnerships.  This “hands-on” program will empower attending participants to extend and enhance the foundations of community-campus partnerships with contemporary understandings, research, and practices within a supportive national and international network.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND: Join community partners, faculty, administrators, and students interested in deepening their understandings and practices of community-higher education partnerships.

How will this gathering be “DIFFERENT”?: Through a blend of presentations from the field, plenaries and working sessions, we will deeply explore strategies to address persistent challenges, analyze promising practices, and examine research to advance the study of partnerships.

A sampling of this year’s facilitators includes the following:
Maria Avila, Director, Center for Community Based Learning, Occidental College

Patti Clayton, Consultant, PHC Ventures & Senior Scholar at IUPUI

Amy Driscoll, Senior Scholar, Portland State University Partnership Initiative; Consulting Scholar, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; Visiting Scholar, New England Resource Center for Higher Education (NERCHE)

Katherine Lambert Pennington, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Memphis

Karen McGee, Steering Committee Member at South Memphis Revitalization Action Project

Seth Pollack, Professor of Service Learning and Director of Service Learning Institute at California State University, Monterey Bay

Kenneth M. Reardon, Professor in City and Regional Planning Department at the University of Memphis

Curtis Thomas, Deputy Executive Director at The Works Inc.

Facilitator bios are now available on our website.