Staff and faculty from across the network posed with special guests Bobbie Laur (Campus Compact) and Rachael Stowe (National Partnership for Student Success).
Each autumn, staff and faculty from across the national Bonner Network gather to build community, share strategies and best practices, engage in professional development, and provide support to each other in our work to advance community engagement at our institutions and within higher education. From November 10 to 13, 2024, over one hundred administrators and faculty representing their Bonner Programs at sixty colleges and universities convened once again at the Claggett Center in Adamstown, MD.
Staff and faculty shared reflections on their program, center, and campus work and its challenges.
As we move towards next summer’s 35th Anniversary of the Bonner Program, we reflected on the value and impact of our collective work on student development, campus-community partnerships and impact, and changing campuses.
In an all group session entitled “Celebrating Our Call to Serve: Our Shared Stories,” we invited staff and faculty to share program, center, and institutional history and milestones, building a collective timeline of our work. This work will grow throughout the year and be featured as we gather in June for the 2025 Bonner Summer Leadership Institute at the University of Richmond.
We were grateful to be visited by Dr. Amy Cohen, Assistant Provost and Executive Director of the Honey W. Nashman Center for Public Service and Civic Engagement at George Washington University and former Director of Learn & Serve America. Dr. Cohen shared her perspectives on the important ways that individuals and networks have helped spark the growth of community engagement and service-learning.
Additionally, in "Everybody, Everyday: Lessons Learned,“ we engaged in a collective analysis of program and center strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This reflection was situated within the larger context of changes and challenges facing higher education and our nation as we work to find and implement effective solutions to pressing community problems.
Staff and faculty especially discussed the ways that student leadership is essential to our sustained relationships within local and place-based communities. We identified ways that we have made progress in building more fully engaged campuses but are now wrestling with broader institutional challenges, such as enrollment, mental health, and fiscal constraints. Bobbie Laur, President of Campus Compact, shared interrelated themes from Compact’s 2025-2030 strategic plan and ways that our networks can support each other.
In strategy and all-group sessions, campus teams developed plans for action back home.
At the meeting, the Foundation also launched innovative new initiatives that renew our call to service and action. These include strategies that especially empower centers to address fiscal and institutional challenges, including limited staffing.
During the meeting, campus teams selected from strategy sessions including Career Connections, Student Leadership in and Beyond Bonner, and Streamlining Operations. Each of these ties to current Bonner Foundation initiatives and funding opportunities. Through these sessions, campus teams sharpened their priorities within these areas.
Additionally, attendees chose from eight elective workshops showcasing models and best practices led by staff and faculty across the network and national partners. Dr. Daniel Fidalgo Tomé, Director of Community Engagement in the Division of Diversity, Inclusion, and Community Engagement at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey – Camden and Federal Work-Study (FWS) Fellow with the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge at Civic Nation, along with colleagues Dr. Allison Schultz, Director of Academic Community Engagement at Siena College and Taylor Hibel, Assistant Director of Community Partnerships and Bonner Program at Stetson University, led a workshop on leveraging work study.
Dr. Marina Barnett (Widener University) and Rachael Stowe (National Partnership for Student Success) shared ways that institutions in the network could respond to the national call for action to address gaps in P-12 education by mobilizing student volunteers.
Rachael Stowe, Graduate Assistant at National Partnership for Student Success, and Dr. Marina Barnett, Assistant Provost for Civic Engagement at Widener University, shared resources and strategies for worked with the National Partnership for Student Success (NPSS). NPSS is a public-private partnership between the U.S. Department of Education, AmeriCorps, and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University. The NPSS has grown to a network of 200+ local, state, and national partners, including 50 higher education institutions, leveraging cross-sector collaboration to deploy evidence-based P-12 student supports across the country.
Other workshops addressed topics like accountability, admissions and recruitment, committee-based leadership, student voice, writing and scholarship, and community development and rebuilding in the wake of this year’s devastating hurricanes.
You can find the program and workshop materials on the Meetings Archive page on the Bonner Wiki and meeting photos taken by Ryan Vaughan ‘25, Emory & Henry University Bonner Scholar.