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In This Issue:
MEMBERS CAN
ANTICIPATE SUBSTANTIAL BENEFITS AND
SERVICES IN
2004–2005 As I meet with new or potential Washington Campus Compact members, I am often asked a variety of questions about the benefits and services of Washington Campus Compact. Their essence can be distilled into one question: “What do we get for our membership?” Whatever the person’s role—college/university president, community service director, faculty member or administrator—this is the common bottom line. And it is a valid one.. As we begin to wrap up the 2003–2004 academic year, we are planning for 2004–2005. We have several exciting opportunities for you, our members, and look forward to your continued involvement with Washington Campus Compact. To date, we anticipate the following services and benefits will be available to our members for the 2004–2005 academic year:
In addition, Washington Campus Compact will pursue additional federal, state, foundation and private funding on behalf of our members.
These programs and services would not be available
without your ongoing membership in Washington
Campus Compact. We look forward to working with
you to find ways to support the important work you
are doing on your campus and in your community.
Please let us know how we can be of service to
you, our members. Thank you for your partnership
and friendship. Enjoy your summer!
FIRST
DIALOGUE FOR DEMOCRACY ATTRACTS STATEWIDE
SUPPORT, PARTICIPATION Washington Campus Compact was proud to hold its inaugural Dialogue for Democracy forum at Town Hall Seattle on May 6. Dialogue for Democracy builds on WACC’s vision of connecting campuses and communities in order to promote vital democracy. The successful Dialogue convened more than 140 participants from across the state, largely comprised of 17 teams sponsored by the following WACC member institutions:
Comprised of a diverse array of K–20 educational administrators, faculty, teachers, students and community partners, these teams came together with additional guests representing these organizations:
Dr. Ira Harkavy, associate vice president and director of the Center for Community Partnerships at the University of Pennsylvania, was the keynote speaker. Harkavy, a nationally recognized leader in the movement for democratic education, spoke about the need for American education not only to reclaim, but also to further, its public and civic purposes. He asserted that campus–school–community partnerships are the best means for effecting this movement. Participants deepened their understanding of these issues through an array of collaborative dialogues, then regrouped with their partnership teams to begin developing resolutions toward action plans to help strengthen their communities. WACC will produce a film documenting highlights of this Dialogue for Democracy forum. Four camera crews—directed by Jennifer Labbienti and composed of student volunteers from Seattle Central Community College and community volunteers from Bellingham and Seattle—worked during the Dialogue to capture the vibrant array of voices and ideas that emerged throughout the day. DVD copies should be available this fall.
Coordinated by Washington Campus Compact staff—and co-sponsored with the Campus Compacts of California, Oregon and Hawaii—the annual COS conference brings practitioners together to build new skills, explore issues and topics germane to the service-learning and civic engagement field, and network with and develop a community of practitioners. The theme of this year’s conference—Is Higher Education a Public Good? Service-Learning, Civic Engagement, and the Public Purposes of Higher Education—provided a foundation for deep and engaging plenaries and workshops. Highlights included:
In addition to the plenary sessions, more than 150 presenters offered 55 skill-building workshops and foundational issues forums, and 17 poster sessions. Within the concurrent sessions, three tracks focused on faculty roles and rewards, students in service, and community partnerships. Some highlights included:
Finally, participants expressed that they learned new information and left the conference inspired and motivated, as was captured in these evaluation comments:
The eighth annual Continuums of Service Conference will be in Portland, Ore., in April 2005. Please plan on joining us. Visit the Washington Campus Compact website for regular conference updates.
Campus Connections Program Update
In the meantime, Campus Connections/AmeriCorps members continue remarkable work on their campuses and in their communities. In March, the Campus Connections team gathered in Wapato for a team meeting and service project. Fifteen team members spent several hours painting over graffiti in various city locales. Pomai Valeria and Priscilla Enriquez, the two members serving at Heritage College, organized the project. To enhance its experience, the team learned about the area and its history by visiting the murals in Toppenish and the Yakama Cultural Museum. More recently, Seattle-area members and Moonwater traveled to the annual Northwest National Service Symposium in Portland. Lee Wiles (Bellevue Community College) submitted a poem, and Brooke Kempner (Seattle University) submitted a story and photography. Brooke's photography won an honorable mention and was displayed during the gallery walk. Congratulations to both of them! The team also is wrapping up an innovative project undertaken by all Washington Service Corps AmeriCorps members throughout the state. This civic engagement project links AmeriCorps members with middle school-aged youth to define community, identify what it means to them, recognize the needs and assets within their own community, and decide upon a youth-initiated service project to address one of the needs. Stay tuned for project results.
Students in Service Program Update
Washington Campus Compact is pleased to announce
that we recently received almost Close to $1 million in scholarships is for students in Washington state alone! Campuses will be able to enroll students in the program as early as Aug. 1. Students in Service is a multi-state program for Campus Compact member institutions. Students enroll as AmeriCorps members, serve in their communities and on their campuses and earn education awards ranging from $1,000–$2,362. The program is designed to foster the civic engagement of higher education students and to support service-oriented work-study efforts. We want to help our members support their students by involving them in this program. To get involved, please contact Moonwater at moon.water@wwu.edu or 360-650-7448. Non-member institutions are welcome to apply for these funds, but participation in the program is contingent upon joining Campus Compact.
Washington
Reading Corps
Program Update Washington Campus Compact’s Washington Reading Corps (WRC) is a literacy program that involves 21 full-time AmeriCorps and VISTA members in eight area elementary schools. With the school year nearing completion, the 2003–2004 WRC program has accomplished much of note:
EDMONDS COMMUNITY COLLEGE CONTRIBUTES TO LOCAL
DISASTER PREPAREDNESS On May 4 more than 150 students, staff and community members attended a successful community preparedness forum at Edmonds Community College in Lynnwood. This forum, which originated as part of WACC’s Campus Connections /AmeriCorps program, was a means of addressing the way in which higher education can proactively contribute to disaster preparedness issues. Guest speaker Pamela Whitelock began the forum by addressing faculty and staff members about a new citizen leader program and a Prepare America undertaking. Pam joined us from Florida, where she teaches at Gulf Coast Community College, with generous support from both Edmonds Community College and the Community College National Center for Community Engagement (CCNCCE). An informational booth fair in the afternoon represented more than 20 community agencies and several service-learning projects. Participants included service-learning students highlighting their research of issues faced by ethnic community members when interacting with first responders, and of differences in how various religious faiths perceive disaster. Local police departments and a local hospital were represented. A certified emergency response team (CERT) held a rescue demonstration. Citizen Corps and AmeriCorps members, among various other forum participants, offered information about their organizations and projects.
Two sessions ended the forum: a presentation on the geology of
natural disasters in Washington state and a panel
discussion. The panel discussion brought together
first responders and members of different ethnic
communities. These two groups discussed challenges
and opportunities for improvements among the
various groups during emergency situations. CIRCLE OF SUCCESS ENRICHES
QUALITY OF LIFE FOR HERITAGE STUDENTS, COMMUNITY If you ever drive the back roads of the Yakama Reservation in Toppenish, you may come across several green-roofed buildings within the hop fields. If you do, then you have located a unique higher education institution: Heritage College. Heritage College is a nonprofit, independent, nondenominational and accredited institution. Its mission is to provide quality, accessible higher education to a multicultural population that has been educationally isolated. The college offers undergraduate and graduate education programs. Within its liberal arts curriculum, Heritage College offers strong professional and career-oriented programs designed to enrich the quality of life for students and their communities. The Circle of Success program is one such example. It is a collaborative effort of Heritage College and Circle of Success, Inc. of Yakima County. The Circle of Success program uses college students and WACC's Campus Connections/Americorps volunteers as outreach workers to expand parent education and early childhood literacy and education in Yakima. These outreach workers provide home visits to families with children under age 6. They provide support and learning opportunities to ensure that parents are better prepared to have their children ready to learn and enter school. Outreach workers have received a total of 150 hours of training in early childhood development, brain development, outreach techniques, file management, club facilitation and team building. WACC's Campus Connections/Americorps volunteers have played a vital role in this program by facilitating the Circle of Success’s PEPS (Program for Early Parenting Support) clubs. These clubs provide an opportunity for parents with children under age 6 to meet and support each other as they share a variety of experiences and ideas, and discern ways they can improve their parenting skills. Parent clubs, open to the community, are located throughout the Yakima Valley. An impressive outcome of this program is the personal growth that the students and Americorps members experience alongside the families they serve. Whether or not students or Americorps members have children, they become early childhood advocates and improve their parenting abilities. And, they are skilled in becoming involved in their communities. NATIONAL INDICATORS OF ENGAGEMENT
PROJECT SPOTLIGHTS HERITAGE COLLEGE Editor’s note: Campus Compact’s national Indicators of Engagement Project (IOEP) is a strategy for deepening civic and community engagement in higher education. Its twofold purpose is to document and disseminate best practices of civic and community engagement, and to help campuses achieve broader institutionalization of civic and community engagement. One major project activity is to visit colleges to identify, document and disseminate best practices for that particular type of institution. The IOEP focused on community colleges in year one (May 2002–May 2003) and minority-serving institutions this year. Margarita Lenk is a member of Campus Compact’s Service-Learning Consulting Corps, a group of senior teacher-scholars who are respected leaders in the service-learning field and active in their disciplines. Dr. Lenk is an associate professor in the College of Business at Colorado State University. In October 2003, Heritage College completed Campus Compact’s Survey of Engagement at Minority-Serving Institutions. The survey requested information on service-learning as reflected in a variety of areas: the institution's mission, the academic and administrative leadership, the disciplines and departments, faculty development, support structures, community voice, external resource allocation and student voice. In December 2003, Heritage was notified that, on the basis of the survey information provided, it had been chosen for a site visit. The visit was scheduled for March 22 and focused its exploration on three areas: Community Voice, External Resource Allocation and Student Voice. Before the site visit, visitor Margarita Lenk provided Heritage with a list of questions. The core questions follow:
Community Voice Since Heritage is located on the Yakama Nation reservation, it was well prepared through its experience with Yakama people to undertake the challenge of this important project. Today Heritage students from the Yakama Nation work on the project with Sahaptin native speakers. During the visit, the trustees who were interviewed reported on the multicultural composition of Heritage’s board and the activities of the board’s Community Partnerships committee. Faculty, staff and students reported on various community-based learning activities. Interviews with community leaders confirmed the information provided by the campus community.
External Resource Allocation During the interviews, students described Heritage’s Circle of Success program designed to serve at-risk families with children under the age of 6. Heritage raises the funds to pay for the work done by the students, scholarships, child-care subsidies and specialized training for the student outreach workers. Staff described the EMPIRE (Exemplary Multicultural Practices in Rural Education) program, a consortium of elementary and secondary schools throughout the Yakima Valley. Through its activities, EMPIRE educates staff and students about living in a diverse community. It promotes positive race relations and appreciation for ethnic and cultural differences. It encourages schools to develop learning environments where students of all backgrounds can be successful. The EMPIRE staff is funded and housed at Heritage. The schools pay a $1,000 membership, which is returned to them to fund their multicultural activities.
Student Voice
All of these activities had been designed and implemented by Heritage students.
Conclusions Perhaps the greatest insight obtained through interaction with Campus Compact is the realization that minority-serving institutions differ from other educational institutions’ involvement in service-learning by the fact that our students are our community. Community service in minority-serving institutions must, of necessity, focus on our students.
June 28–30,
2004 - Summer Institute, and Self-Reflection
and Renewal Retreat June 28–30 Location: Sleeping Lady Mountain Retreat, Leavenworth See Summer Institute on our website for program details, registration forms, scholarship information and facilitator bios.
Summer Institute Choose from two tracks, designed for service-learning administrators, faculty and community partners:
Cost: $290–$375
all inclusive for Campus Compact members,
depending on
Reflection and Renewal Activity Open to all practitioners, from new to experienced. Facilitated by Nadinne Cruz.
Cost: $150–$235
all inclusive for Campus Compact members,
depending on Oct. 5–6 Carmel Valley Ranch,
Carmel, Calif. The national office will mail formal invitations to member presidents in early June. Click here for details. Fall 2004 This comprehensive meeting will be held in Seattle, tentatively at the University of Washington campus. Dates to be determined.
Day 1: 9:00–12:00 Board meeting Day 2: 9:00–3:00 Members meeting continues The annual board meeting will anchor a two-day event including—at various times—board members, the remaining presidential membership and key institutional contacts (administrators, faculty, community service directors, students and community partners). After the board meeting, member presidents from across the state will join the board members for lunch. The combined group will attend the afternoon all-presidents meeting. Based on survey responses, the all-presidents meeting will focus on funding development and sustainability and will be open to all member constituents. The annual members meeting will begin late afternoon on the first day and continue through the next afternoon. Agenda to be determined. April 2005 The next conference will be in Portland, Ore. Dates and location to be determined. Visit our website often for updates.
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