PROGRAM - Afternoon Workshops
1:45-3:15
Various rooms in Coffman Memorial Union
Community Engagement as Knowledge Production
Atum Azzahir, Powderhorn-Phillips Cultural Wellness Center
Janice Barbee, Powderhorn-Phillips Cultural Wellness Center
Brikti Hiwet, Powderhorn-Phillips Cultural Wellness Center
Cultural communities and academic institutions are both involved in producing new knowledge, and both produce scholars who help to create and apply that knowledge. The purpose of this workshop is to create space for academic scholars and community scholars to have a dialogue about the intersection of academic and community knowledge production. The workshop will introduce the concept of community knowledge production, and will use the People’s Theory of Sickness, developed by the Cultural Wellness Center, as an example to illustrate a community knowledge production process. After this introduction, elders will facilitate a discussion about community knowledge production, academic knowledge production, and how academic scholars who feel disconnected from their communities can reconnect and come home.
A CHANCE for Neighborhood Collaborative Engagement
Merrie Benasutti, CHANCE Coordinator of Community Partnerships
Desiree Culpitt, Graduate Student
Sarah Martyn, Graduate Student
Katie Peacock, Career and Community Learning Center
Join students, staff and community members of CHANCE for a tour of the Cedar Riverside neighborhood. See the neighborhood through the experience of university graduate students engaged in community-based research projects and learn more about the CHANCE model of university civic engagement that aims to create new and effective partnerships between the University and Cedar Riverside neighborhood.
Wear comfortable shoes. Space is limited to 20 participants.
Webs of Engagement
Jessica Beyer, Center for Small Towns
Lisa Denzer, Legacy Living
Wendy Hyatt, Office for Service-Learning
Argie Manolis, Division of Humanities
Carol McCannon, Office for Student Activities
Presenters will use a case study of Legacy Living, an adult daycare in Morris, Minnesota, to show how students can be engaged in multiple ways through differing programs in a single initiative and agency. Participants will have time to create “webs of engagement” for their own campuses through a series of practical small group exercises.
Listening to Minnesota Voices on School Connectedness
Pamela Moore, Department of Pediatrics and Adolescent Health
Paul Snyder, Department of Pediatrics and Adolescent Health
Pamela Moore and Paul Snyder from the Konopka Institute for Best Practices in Adolescent Health in the Department of Pediatrics will discuss how active listening is important to gain trust, maintain relationships, and sustain community partnerships. Moore and Snyder gained these insights on the importance of active listening through their work on a statewide youth initiative. An interactive exercise will allow attendees to experience firsthand the importance of practicing active listening when working with community partners. Recently, Moore and Snyder conducted listening groups with students and staff from traditional and alternative educational programs throughout the state; in addition to sharing findings from theses listening groups, they will facilitate a group participation exercise where session attendees will identify factors that cause students to either stay in school or drop out.
Bridging the Leadership Gap in Rural Communities
Catherine Rasmussen, University of Minnesota Extension
Beth Zabel, Bridging Brown County Program
Jerry Bentz, Former Brown County Administrator
Would your community benefit if leaders and citizens came together in non-partisan settings to build a collective agenda? Do you work in rural areas that are losing legislative influence? Do you hear grumbling about lack of communication amongst community leaders, and do you want to do something about it? This workshop will enable you to learn how to get started building support for a “bridging” leadership program, position yourself and your organization as a key organizer of the effort, and plan quality educational experiences for elected officials and community leaders.
Assessing Our Impacts: Does Service-Learning Do What We Think It Does?
Monica Siems, Career and Community Learning Center
Mary Kennedy, Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences
Amy Libman, Minnesota Internship Center Charter School
Every semester, U of M students participating in service-learning courses supported by the Career and Community Learning Center (CCLC) complete a survey about their experiences and how service-learning has impacted their academic learning and their personal and professional development. During this session, the presenters will share key findings from several semesters' worth of survey data and discuss how they have used these results to shape and adapt their work from semester to semester. Workshop participants will be asked to join in a discussion about assessing service-learning and other public engagement efforts focused on brainstorming key evaluation questions (what do we want to know) and measurement techniques (how can we find out what we want to know). Participants with any level of program evaluation experience are welcome to join in and reflect on how they can improve their existing assessment efforts or begin envisioning an evaluation plan for their work. The goal is for all participants to come away with a better understanding of how we can be sure our work has relevance and results.
In the Shadows of the Towers: Literacy and Social Justice in the Cedar Riverside Community
Jean Strommer, Multicultural Center for Academic Excellence
Abdulaziz Ali, African Pre-University Institute of Minnesota
Mustafa Jumale, Undergraduate Student
Kazua Vang, Undergraduate Student
Desiree Abu-Odeh, Undergraduate Student
Literacy and its implications for social justice are issues confronting the University of Minnesota’s in its awareness and response to the neighboring Cedar Riverside community. K-12 youth/families within walking distance of the campus do not consider the University community their community, because of literacy issues and social economic status. The photographic project of panel member Kazua Vang, images the proximity, alienation and invisibility of this community from the vantage point of the University community. Mustafa Jumale and Desire Abu-Odeh address issues they have experienced at their Cedar Riverside tutoring sites, Brian Coyle and Children Home Society/ Family Services after-school programming. Abdulaziz Ali, Director of the African Pre-University Institute of Minnesota, which is a recent Cedar Riverside community partner in the Family Literacy tutoring program, addresses the issues of African immigrant community youths’ accessibility to higher education and their program’s response.
Tourism Resource Team
Okey Ugaka, Regional Sustainable Development Partnerships
Ingrid Schneider, Department of Forest Resources and Tourism Center
Gordy Anderson, Two Harbors Area Chamber of Commerce
Bryan Anderson, Arrowhead Regional Development Commission
The Tourism Resource Team (TRT) program offered by the Northeast Minnesota Sustainable Development Partnerships (NMSDP) uses a combination of University and community teams to provide technical assistance to local communities and tourism organizations to enable them realize their sustainable tourism goals. The TRT program, like all the other U of M Regional Sustainable Development Partnership projects, are based on three bedrock principles: 1) active citizenship, which means local citizen participation in designing and implementing projects, 2) sustainable development, which means addressing issues according to sustainable development principles, and (3) university involvement with community, which means building and strengthening effective relations between Minnesota communities and their University. In 2005, Two Harbors applied for and was awarded a Tourism Resource Team visit. Key issues addressed in Two Harbors include: Tourist Information Center, Coordinated Planning Efforts, Major Developer Involvement, Trailhead Center, Historic and Artistic Opportunities, and Traffic Congestion. A panel of university and community representatives will share program philosophy, approach, and outcomes. Lessons learned include insight on public engagement, team formations, community culture, action plan, resource allocation, and follow-up.
A Sustainable District-University Partnership Lasting 20+ Years
Teri Wallace, Institute on Community Integration
Doug Marston, Minneapolis Public Schools
Stan Deno, Department of Educational Psychology
Renata Ticha, Institute on Community Integration