YUFA
External
Communities and Universities: Partners in Education
Simon Fraser University
October 22- 23, 2006
By: Stephanie Baker Collins, Atkinson School of Social Work, York University
8 Nov 06 - This conference brought together representatives from universities and community groups in Canada, Mexico and the United States to share experiences and learning around community / university partnerships.
Opening Plenary:
David Maurasse, (CEO of Marga Incorporated and author of Beyond the Campus: How Colleges and Universities form Partnerships with Their Communities) began the discussion reflecting on how major institutions, like universities, can bring their resources to the community in sustainable partnerships that bring change to both the community and the university. Universities are primary sources of information, they engage in the community through service learning and they are large employers often located near marginalized communities. Maurasse laid out some questions for the group to consider about what the key ingredients are for a successful and democratic community / university partnership. Questions included: What kinds of policies and incentives can encourage greater engagement of universities in the surrounding community and how can universities become more accessible to socially excluded communities?
Pedro Cosio Pesado of Universidad Iberoamericana described how 29 Jesuit universities in Mexico have embarked on a Social Responsibility Project, which works toward social justice through teaching, research and extension. They hope to encourage a sense of responsibility in their students. Iberamericana is located close to numerous shanty towns in Mexico City and they have begun working with the communities of Santa Fe, Chiapas and Chimalhuacan. The partnerships with the community are interdepartmental with one teacher and a group of students from each department participating. As examples, ecology students are helping plant trees, sports students have developed a soccer program and a health project has begun with doctors from the university. Further projects include the elderly, arts projects, workshops for kids addicted to drugs / alcohol and the establishment of a computer centre in the community.
Ira Harkavy of the University of Pennsylvania began by stating that universities are not doing what they should be in response to deeply embedded social problems and they need to address their own institutional racism and elitism. Harkavy spoke of the key goals universities ought to embrace in their work with communities. These include:
- A platform of democracy: democratic purpose, democratic process and democratic product
- An engaged form of learning that integrates research, education and service learning
- Education for citizenship
- Focus on universal problems that are manifested locally
- Activity needs to advance learning
The University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia has developed a curriculum that focuses on improving the health of the surrounding community and includes students from dentistry, nursing, education, medicine, social work, the arts and more. Their community partnership approach is based on the belief that local schools should be the hub of their community.
Debbie Bell of Simon Fraser University offered a counterpoint to the panel by talking about what is not working in community / university partnerships and needed changes:
What is not working:
- The communities we work with are still living in poverty, their conditions have not changed
- Partnerships have fallen short of the full inclusion of community partners, especially in educational opportunities to develop leadership in the community
- Universities can maintain systemic barriers, by virtue of their institutional lenses based on institutional needs, deep seated biases and historical practices
- Communities have been researched to death, we take the only thing they have left: their stories, and they are rarely involved in analysis.
- Community education efforts tend to be short-term episodic and skills based rather than the broad based liberal education that we are giving our students
- Communities are not developing leadership to effect their own change.
What needs to happen:
- Engagement beyond self-interest, a contribution to the common good, do the work simply because it is the right thing to do
- Moving beyond the conditions of meeting needs to creating the conditions for human flourishing
- Using language of the heart; friends, solidarity, human flourishing
- Work needs to be long-term, minimum of 3 to 5 years, up to 7
- Only work on issues of abiding importance for community partners
- Local leadership is encouraged and the university should move out of a project before it is completed
- Encourage international partnerships
Workshop Session One: University of Pennsylvania
Relationships between the West Philly area of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania began during the turmoil of the 1960s, when neighbourhood representatives were pushing for gym facilities be open to the neighbourhood and when students from West Philly had difficulty getting admitted into Penn and upon admission, were treated hostilely. From these early conflicts developed a relationship between the West Philly neighbourhood and Penn in the form of Community Advisory Boards to the university. Representatives on community advisory boards include faith communities, community based organizations, city planning staff, and community associations. The key to this relationship is mutual respect and for the university to accept the leaders that the community chooses to represent it.
Penn now has a Center for Community Partnerships that connects academic resources with the resources and needs of the local community. Importantly, the West Philly neighbourhood is well organized at the community level. The Center for Community Partnerships includes many neighbourhood activities. One example is Academically Based Community Service which is a school curriculum of courses that works to solve real-world problems in the local community. From four ABCS courses in 1991, the program has grown to 53 courses in 2005. An example of an ABCS course is students working in local public high schools teaching English using hip-hop rhythms and story narratives to improve literacy. Another example is Learning by Teaching, students learn about a subject by teaching it in the local schools. The Center’s focus on the local public school as the core institution to revitalize the neighbourhood.
Workshop Session 2, Part I. Simon Fraser University and the History of Sex Work Project
SFU is supporting a group of current and former sex workers to reclaim their community pride and educate the public by exploring their the history of sex workers in Vancouver. The university supports 8 core participants who are doing research with capacity building workshops as need arises, on skills such as writing and communication, quantitative and technical skills. The groups’ work is connected to a global sex workers rights movement around human rights and working conditions. Changing laws and decriminalization is key. The history project has resulted in people talking together and reduced isolation and stigma. The support of SFU gave the project credibility.
Workshop Session 2, Part II, University of New Mexico and United South Broadway Corporation
Diane Dorn Jones returned to the South Broadway area of Albuquerque after some twenty years away wanting to encourage neighbourhood activity on larger issues such as violence and drug dealing. When the neighbours got together, however, they wanted to fix a pothole. This issue became a catalyst for learning how to organize: doing research on who fixes potholes, who decides, and how to prepare for advocacy. This lead to tackling issues of neighbourhood safety, housing, commercial revitalization and youth development.
Jones stated that projects in African-American communities must begin with the issue of race. Levi-Strauss funded a project in the community on institutional racism which looked at access to boards and commissions, access to financial credit and equity in education. Project Change developed public dialogue around racism in the schools and produced a wonderful strategy that was ignored by the school board. The neighbourhood association decided to create alternatives outside the school system. After school time was uncontested time, so the group took that on first. They created two storefronts operated by ten students through the Ameri-corp Program from the University of New Mexico. These storefronts worked on literacy with neighbourhood kids and on housing issues. Activities included book readings in the neighbourhood with the book being presented to the family whose home or yard was used for the reading. There was also a local bookstore established where kids who earn “book bucks” in school can redeem them for books. Michael Malahy Morris who described the storefront program said that it “changed the university”.
Important lessons / observations from Jones and Morris:
- the Project Change funding went directly to the community, not the university
- important to give the university students “literacy training” about the neighbourhood
- university can learn if they listen to neighbourhood leaders
- create community based learning places
- engage local youth and college youth
- youth leadership programs become training grounds for future neighbourhood leaders
- the community is the curriculum
- resources must be grounded and sustained at the community level
Workshop 3: Universidad Iberoamericana Ciudad de Mexico
Jose Garcia talked about the challenges of bring computer literacy to school teachers in settings where schools lack equipment / infrastructure and teachers, who work two shifts, lack time. The university began by equipping schools with computers. Then they trained teachers beginning with opening an email account. Next teachers learned to input lines of text for classroom use in the powerpoint program. This text was circulated to other teachers for reflection and input. A cyberspace has been created where teachers can post their material and other teachers can have access. Teachers were trained by using aspects of the computer that were directly useful to them. 57 teachers have now been trained in computer use and will pass on this knowledge to their students. University involvement includes social service students, students from the education department and engineering students who help with computer maintenance.
Iberoamericana has also implemented a health promotion program in shanty towns around the university. Health promoters from the community have been trained. University students help in the training and health measurements. The training was developed based on needs and issues identified by the community.
Other Reports from this Conference:
Joan Allen's Report
Don Dippo's Report
Sheila Lewis' Report
David McNab's Report
Deena Yanofsky's Report