Synergy E-Newsletter
Synergy is published quarterly by Washington Campus Compact. We solicit submissions and accept, with prior approval, unsolicited submissions. All submissions may be edited. Please send all queries, final submissions, and general comments/suggestions to Brian Heinrich at
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In This Issue
Executive Director's Message
Jennifer Dorr, Executive Director
Happy New Year! 2010 is well underway at Washington Campus Compact. It's a busy and exciting time as staff are writing grants and planning events, both of which will serve the membership well.
First, we are very pleased to announce that Lisa Jacobsen has joined the Washington Campus Compact staff as the new Grant Manager for the Retention Project. Lisa brings a wealth of knowledge and experience and will be a valuable resource to our membership.
As you may have heard, registration is now open for the 13th Annual Continuums of Service Conference. Held this year in Portland, Oregon from March 31 through April 2, 2010, the conference has much to offer. The theme this year, Vision, Courage, Leadership: Engagement to Strengthen Communities is particularly relevant to our field as we face increasing needs in our community while being asked to find solutions with tighter budgets. Visit the COS website for more information about how you can participate. We look forward to seeing you in Portland!
Also, we are optimistic about possible new grant opportunities for our membership. We are actively seeking potential subgrantees for a Learn and Serve America proposal that we will submit in March 2010. Many of you have already submitted applications to participate in our VISTA and/or our Retention Project AmeriCorps grants. Almost all of our member-campuses currently participate in the Students in Service program and we anticipate even more partners this next year. Additional information about these programs and opportunites is included in this newsletter and on our website.
Washington Campus Compact will continue to advocate on your behalf to bring these, and other valuable programs and resources to your campus and communities. Visit the WACC website for more information.
Finally, many of our member-campuses have organized activities for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Thank you for your leadership on this very important day and we encourage all of you to participate in a project in your community.
We look forward to working with you throughout 2010!
Professional Development Opportunity for AmeriCorps Retention Members
Lisa Jacobsen, Grant Manager College Access and Success
During the Continuums of Service Conference on March 31 – April 2, 2010 there will be a great opportunity for five AmeriCorps Retention members to gain professional development by presenting poster sessions and to give 20 minute presentations. College Spark Washington has generously supported the opportunity for AmeriCorps members to present on their work at the conference. Washington Campus Compact chose AmeriCorps members and their service sites based on information from their mid-term progress reports. Sites that turned in their reports on time and showed a variety of mentoring programs and successes were chosen to present.
The two sites selected to do a 20 minute presentation and poster sessions are as follows:
- Stephen Sanoja; the UW’s Dream Project which is a student-initiated high school outreach program that partners UW with first generation and low-income students in Seattle area high schools to assist in the college admissions process.The program has a dual approach: one, to give these college-bound high school students the assistance that they may not be able to receive at home or from other areas of their lives; and two, to simultaneously teach UW students about educational opportunities and social mobility and examine these ideas I the context of the University of Washington.
- Aaron Lee and Samantha Franks; Evergreen State Colleges Gateway’s for Incarcerated Youth are first generation college students and students of color who are involved in peer mentoring. These students enroll in the academic program Gateways: Popular Education. Students plan and facilitate weekly learning opportunities for peers held on site at the JRA institutions. Students coach each other in preparation and evaluation of workshops with faculty guidance. This program also has First People’s Advising, which is support for students of color and are culturally based student activity groups (ex: Black student Union) who provide on campus mentoring to participating students.
The two sites selected to do poster sessions are as follows:
- Lemuel Cannonier; CWU’s Bridges program is an inter-disciplinary and outreach program, working with regional public schools providing mentoring, co-curricular and enrichment activities for underserved populations in middle and high schools.
- Katherine Bouck; WWU’s Compass 2 Campus aims to get more kids thinking early about college with the help of mentors and role models to show them the importance of higher education. The program has the following objectives:
- Increase GPA and reduce truancy among elementary students
- Empower kids to make good choices about the future
- Increase university student’s leadership and commitment to giving back to their community.
Our overall goal is to help more students graduate from high school and encourage them to consider some form of higher education. Washington Campus Compact strives to provide professional development opportunities for AmeriCorps members as well as showcase the amazing work being done at colleges and universities across the state and region. Please consider participating in these presentations while you are at the Continuums of Service Conference on March 31 – April 2, 2010.
Students in Service (SIS) AmeriCorps Program
Patrick McGinty, Students in Service Program Director
The Students in Service (SIS) AmeriCorps program welcomes Mike Brenaman to our team. Mike, a Human Services major at Western Washington University and veteran, will intern in our office for the Spring and Fall quarter working on Veteran student initiatives. One of the priority areas of CNCS and the SIS program is to educate Veterans at our participating campuses about the SIS program and to engage many of the Veteran students in joining a new mission by serving their local community in a critical need area. Mike will work on creating a contact list of veteran representatives on our participating campuses, educating veteran student coordinators about SIS, answering veteran student questions, and guiding veteran students on how they can enroll in the SIS program on their campus. Mike will start his internship during the first week of April. If you are interested in contacting Mike please send an email to
sishelp@wwu.edu or call 360-650-2044.
As of March 10, 2010, the SIS program has enrolled 88% of our allotted slots. April 1st is the final benchmark for campuses to enroll 100% of their slots. Campuses not enrolling 100% of their slots may have their slots relinquished as all slots not enrolled after April 1st will go into a pool and can be transferred to campuses with waiting lists. The SIS program is looking to have 100% enrollment as early as possible so as to gear up for our new grant cycle beginning August 1, 2010. The SIS program has requested a major expansion for the next grant year as we have requested 6,913 slots (compared to 2,282 slots for the 09-10 grant year) and adding 15 new states. We should know whether the SIS program has been selected by CNCS to receive continued funding of the SIS program for a new 3-year grant cycle and at what level of funding by June 15, 2010.
South Puget Sound Community College Hosts Winter Dialogue for Democracy in Olympia
Linnea Broker, VISTA Program Manager
On February 12, 2010, South Puget Sound Community College, a first year Washington Campus Compact member, hosted Dialogue for Democracy: Community Based Service-Learning. Coordinated through the Office of Service-Learning at The Career Center, this event brought together Washington Campus Compact Members, community partners, AmeriCorps*VISTA members, faculty and service-learning professionals to discuss programs and projects involving campus and community partnership models, ideas for service-learning implementation in the classroom and highlights from the various campuses.
For the past year, The Center For Community-Based Learning and Action at The Evergreen State College held Dialogue for Democracy events each quarter, a program that was started with a Learn and Serve Grant. It continued through the support of the service-learning community who saw the importance and need for such a gathering to further the public purpose of higher education through service-learning. After being part of the planning process and attending the Fall Dialogue for Democracy, WACC AmeriCorps*VISTA member Sherrie Dunlap and her Supervisor, SPSCC Director of Career Services, Corinne Daffern, decided to host the Winter Dialogue for Democracy.
SPSCC College President, Dr. Gerald Pumphrey gave the welcome address emphasizing the importance of experiential and service-learning initiatives and commended the work of those in attendance. Dunlap commented, “One of the great things we discovered while planning the Dialogue for Democracy event was that the host campus can take the traditional roundtable format and make it specific to their topics of interest, through speakers and activities.” In addition to organizing speakers, the SPSCC team decided to have two breakout brainstorming sessions discussing and developing ideas for effective, meaningful service-learning reflection and for best practices and ideas for service-learning implementation into ESL and ABE classes.
One session involved all participants discussing their most recent project, with many focused on the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service. Another presentation highlighted a newly forming service-learning internship program at SPSCC called The Shared Apples Project, born of SPSCC student Jim Ayres’ ideas. A presentation by Tacoma Community College VISTA member, Sean Bulthaup on his campus’ experiential Service-Learning and Capstone Course was very compelling. All of the presentations were followed by thought-provoking questions and discussions integral to the growth of service-learning as a whole. Dunlap added, “We are excited to be a new member of the service-learning community and are just beginning to develop our program this year. Being able to host the Dialogue for Democracy continued to make our new program visible to the campus and the community as a whole and gave us valuable networking opportunities especially those where ideas were shared.”
Colleges represented at the event through their faculty and or service-learning professionals were South Puget Sound Community College, The Evergreen State College, Tacoma Community College, Gray’s Harbor College, Clark College; community partners, The Crisis Clinic, Bookends Literacy and South Sound Reading Foundation. In addition to the three WACC VISTA members in attendance, Clark College’s VISTA, South Sound Reading Foundation and The Crisis Clinic each had an AmeriCorps members present. Even the lunch was procured through a new community partner who was highlighted at the Fall Dialogue for Democracy. MIJAS (Mujeres Improving Job Abilities and Skills) Transitional Restaurant is a Latina outreach organization specifically working with SafePlace and women who are victims of domestic violence.
In addition, short video clips of speakers from SPSCC’s Dialogue for Democracy will be available on SPSCC’s YouTube Channel soon. In the future, the plan is to rotate the host site for each quarter’s Dialogue for Democracy, bringing more schools into the service-learning and civic engagement in higher education conversation. The next Dialogue for Democracy: Community Based Service-Learning will be held at Clark College in Vancouver, WA on Friday, May 14, 2010 from 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
For more information on Dialogue for Democracy contact Sherrie Dunlap at:
sdunlap@spscc.ctc.edu
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Assessment
RaeLyn Axlund, Research and Assessment Director
