Five-campus collaboration earns federal community service grant to address effects of economic downturn
The five University of Massachusetts campuses have jointly earned a $471,000 Learn and Serve America grant from the Corporation for National and Community Service. The grant will engage 1,500 students across the state in course-related community service that responds to needs resulting from the economic downturn.
UMass Amherst’s portion of the grant will bring $74,000 in the coming year to Commonwealth College, the campus’s honors college. John Reiff, director of Commonwealth College’s Community Engagement Program, was one of the grant’s authors. He said, “Each of the five UMass campuses has developed particular strengths in different areas of service-learning and civic engagement. I look forward to our campus benefitting from access to the strengths of the other four, just as I look forward to sharing with the other campuses the models for student leadership in service-learning that we have been able to develop through Commonwealth College and honors CSL courses.”
The UMass initiative is called “Building on the Promise: Strengthening Our University/Community Ties.” The one-year grant has the potential to attract more than $1.4 million in continued federal support over the next three years.
Reiff will direct the funds to support the Community Engagement Program in sharing with the other campuses program models designed to foster student leadership in community service learning. The programs to be shared integrate coursework, community service and student leadership, and include Commonwealth College’s nationally recognized Citizen Scholars Program, anthropology’s “Grassroots Community Development” honors courses and an undergraduate course assistant program.
UMass Dartmouth’s recently established School of Education, Public Policy and Civic Engagement will take the lead on the grant. With the Amherst, Boston, Lowell and Worcester campuses involved, the project will have a far-reaching impact. “With this grant, we will be able to introduce more students to service-learning, a proven education method that promotes community service while enhancing students’ academic and civic skills,” said UMass President Jack Wilson. “Service-learning helps students get involved in their communities at a young age, setting them on a path toward active citizenship as adults.”
As one of only 36 grant recipients in the country, the five campus system secured funding on the strength of its collaboration as well as the value each institution places on engaging its students in support of community organizations. With a combined 60,000 students, the University of Massachusetts is the nation’s only system of public higher education where every campus has earned the Carnegie Community Engagement Classification. This classification recognizes each campus’s partnerships with its larger communities for the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources.
Learn and Serve America is the federal program that supports service-learning in schools, higher education institutions and community-based organizations across the country. Learn and Serve America is administered by the Corporation for National and Community Service, the federal agency that also oversees Senior Corps and AmeriCorps.
Commonwealth College is the honors college at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Characterized by small classes and close interaction with faculty, Commonwealth College enriches the education of academically talented students pursuing any of the undergraduate degrees offered at UMass Amherst. The college offers a rigorous interdisciplinary curriculum that provides extensive opportunities for analysis, research, and community engagement. This year the college celebrates a decade of excellence, marking the tenth anniversary of its first incoming class.
August 20, 2009.
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