CAMPUS PROFILE

(Meadville, Pennsylvania) 

Lauren Paulson, Associate Professor of Psychology, and David Roncolato, Director of Civic Engagement, are serving as Co-Project Directors for this project. They are working in partnership with Michael Williams, Director of the Allegheny Gateway Network. The Gateway Network is an initiative to connect businesses, government agencies, nonprofits, and other entities to Allegheny students, faculty, and staff to jointly tackle pressing community issues while providing meaningful learning opportunities for Allegheny students. The Allegheny College Bonner Community-Engaged Learning Initiative extends the school’s efforts to encourage and support the integration of faculty as allies and leaders in strengthening our community-engagement projects.

The 2019-2020 Bonner Community-Engaged Learning Initiative focused on studying and communicating best practices in the discipline of civic-engaged learning. In 2020-2021, the focus is on faculty and community partner skill development and implementation.

Three community partners have agreed to serve in an elevated role in the planning and delivering of the program: Hannah Fuller, Operations Director, Meadville YMCA; Bruce Harlan, Executive Director, Women’s Services; and Eileen Mullen, Program Coordinator, Crawford County K-12 Career Education Alliance. Three veteran faculty Bonner CEL team members are leading efforts with the Civic Engagement Office to effect institutional change.

• Associate Professor of Political Science Shanna Kirschner and Olivia Lang, Associate Director of Civic Engagement, co-teach upper-class Bonner students to integrate Bonner Capstone experiences with academic work. They are shepherding these students through their capstone projects during their senior year.

• Alexis Hart, Associate Professor of English and Director of the First-Year 8 Experience, is providing leadership and support to faculty involved in second-semester first-year seminars (FS 102s). The design is for select FS 102 sections to serve as one possible first step in our scaffolded academic civic engagement effort.

• Emily Yochim, Associate Professor of Communication, Film, and Theater, who serves on the Faculty Review Committee, will partner with Dave Roncolato and Lauren Paulson in advancing recommendations that will bolster the Allegheny culture in support for faculty employing this pedagogy. For example, Emily is helping to create an educational resource for faculty who will assume positions on Allegheny’s Faculty Review Committee. This resource will explain to faculty in the tenure and promotion process ways that community-based learning can be documented for faculty advancement. 

The structure of their effort this year includes monthly 1.5 hour workshops and a culminating half-day showcase in May. To date, they have eight new faculty participants who applied and were accepted to the cohort. Each agreed to create or modify an existing course to include a community-engaged component. The community partners who have joined the cohort will also produce outcomes and deliverables through partnering with the college. It is worth highlighting this innovative model that invites partners and faculty to produce deliverables. 

Lauren Paulson, in collaboration with others, has created the agenda for the workshops. Here are the links to the agenda and the outlines of their February and March workshops:

February Workshop & March Workshop 

Among the highlights thus far is the designing and delivering of the March session by the core community partners. The partnership with the Gateway Network has made it possible to offer equitable financial incentives to community partners that have joined this work. Partners receive the same stipend amount as the new faculty. 

Allegheny also hosted a College-Community Collaborative Project Training in May 2020. Designed by a 12-member working group that includes community partners, Allegheny faculty, staff, and students, the goal of the training was to develop skills and knowledge for college-community collaborative projects for the betterment of our resilient community. More information about the training, including the schedule, pre-recorded webinars, and readings, can be found here.

Alongside the work on this Bonner Community-Engaged Learning initiative, Lauren Paulson is conducting her own research on community partner perspectives, motivations, concerns, attitudes and issues in relation to the academic Community-Engaged Learning. Twenty-three partners participated in the research. Her findings will be incorporated in our Bonner CEL training sessions this semester. A recording of Lauren's presentation on her research for a faculty research series, found here: https://youtu.be/Wbo1UPkZAcY.