Partnering With Higher Education: Why and How to Get Started
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Guest Post by Michael Wilson
There’s a movement for civic engagement in higher education. University presidents, deans, and professors are committing to more responsive relationships between their campuses and surrounding communities. These leaders aim to mobilize their colleges and universities to serve outside of their walls and, in serving, to deepen and ground the learning of their students and the quality of their scholarship. Given this climate, you’re likely to find a warm response to interest in partnership. And it’s worth it. Let me tell you briefly what your organization stands to gain from partnering with higher education, and how you might get started if you’re interested. Note—to learn more about the movement for civic engagement in higher education, see Campus Compact or the National Service-Learning Clearinghouse.
When you partner with higher education you gain disproportionately good access to twenty-somethings. Those of you working with youth know that teens look up to folks in their twenties naturally, because of the proximity between their respective energies, interests, and experience. Twenty-somethings are powerful voices, then, in youths’ direction in life, including their college aspirations. However, these folks are famously hard to access. As you may know, 17.7 percent of people in their early twenties volunteer, in contrast to the 30.3 percent who volunteer among 35 to 54 year olds (Bureau of Labor Statistics, Volunteering in the United States, 2007, United States Department of Labor, January 23, 2008). If Maine reflects national statistics, then chances are you’re hard pressed to recruit people my age as volunteers in any places other than college campuses, which are actively creating structures for mobilizing their students to engage meaningfully with the towns and cities around them.
College students will often come to you associated with a course that can offer something unique to your organization, as well. For example, Ed Laine of Bowdoin College led his Geology 267 students in original research on behalf of the Friends of Casco Bay. The students analyzed a 12-year data set using a technical graphing program; their work served as a pilot project for new research by the FOCB. Here at USM, English Professor Lorraine Carrol teaches literacy theory by placing her students as language tutors with organizations around Greater Portland. The students learn theory; the first- and second- generation refugees or immigrants they tutor learn the language from people with fresh insight on how to teach it. This pedagogy, called service-learning, is a cornerstone the movement for civic engagement in higher education.
Additional doors open when your organization collaborates with a college or university’s students and faculty. Faculty members sometimes locate their scholarship in community. David Scobey, an American Historian and professor at Bates College, writes on the social history of Lewiston’s mills—how did cabaret singer Maurice Chevalier come to croon for a city’s mill worker’s, after all? His research doesn’t hover lonely in the ivory tower, but contributes to the exhibits at the local community history museum, Museum L-A, instead. Grants are also available from select institutions in the state. Official affiliation is always an option, too, with the potential to lend credibility to your work.
To initiate partnership with higher education, your first step is to find a college or university you might like to work with. For a complete list of institutions in Maine (and their websites), click here, and for a map, click here. Narrow down the list geographically, first, and then by relevance: tease out an institution’s scope according to its mission statement and list of programs offered (available online).
Next, imagine where collaboration might take you. Consider your organization’s mission and how it resonates with each institution you have in mind. Identify concrete ways in which your organization might benefit from partnership, from student volunteers to research assistance, as above. Take the institution’s perspective, too: consider how students might learn and grow serving at your organization, whether affiliated with a course or not. Also consider what it might mean for the institution to be affiliated with your organization. And also, get specific. Consider what level of commitment you need from students and what support you expect them to receive from their college or university; and consider what support you will offer students in turn. Our office uses a worksheet to tease out these questions, attached. Finally, before you call, be sure to ask around at your organization for old relationships with the college or university. It’s useful to know about previous contacts and potential political pitfalls.
Unless you have a very good previous contact, I recommend you begin your inquiry with the campus’s hub for civic engagement. Doing so, you shouldn’t have to worry about political pitfalls: such hubs are typically responsible for matching campus programs with community partners, so that you don’t have to learn the whole institution. For a directory of civic engagement contacts, call Maine Campus Compact at (207) 786-8217. Note that the scope of these hubs varies widely between institutions. Some administrations dedicate comprehensive centers to civic engagement; others staff an office; and others assign the responsibility to an interested faculty or staff member.
Michael Wilson is an AmeriCorps VISTA member at the University of Southern Maine’s Office of Community Service and Civic Engagement.