Projects > Overview

Each of the four university-community partnerships in the Engaged Institutions cluster has crafted a unique approach that includes a variety of university and community participants. Despite their diversity in methods and approaches, the partnerships all seek to accomplish the same primary objectives: to improve outcomes for children and youth and to strengthen the overall commitment to community engagement within their host universities.

University of Texas at El Paso
 
The Engaged Institutions project at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) focuses on deepening and strengthening its service learning infrastructure, which fosters connections between UTEP students and faculty and local nonprofit organizations working to improve conditions in the El Paso - Ciudad Juarez border region. Since 1998, the Center for Civic Engagement, a community partnership center based at UTEP, has worked to develop university-community relationships with the goals of identifying solutions to community problems and developing educational opportunities for UTEP students. The Center is using its grant resources to work closely with two nonprofits, the Nonprofit Enterprise Center and AVANCE-El Paso, to improve their programs and their organizational capacity through student placements.
 
Pennsylvania State University
 
Penn State's project, Forming Outreach Community University Systems for Engagement (or FOCUS), pivots around the development and implementation of an early childhood school readiness research project in three diverse Pennsylvanian communities: suburban Lancaster, urban Harrisburg, and rural Miflin County. Faculty researchers and outreach specialists are collaborating with three community teams to develop and deliver a parent outreach intervention (based on parent-child reading activities) to support the school readiness of “at risk” kindergarteners. Through the research project, the FOCUS team seeks to build community capacity and develop a model for how Penn State can integrate its research and community engagement activities.
 
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
 
The Minnesota Youth Community Learning Initiative (MYCL) is a university-community partnership project between the the Konopka Institute for Best Practices in Adolescent Health at the University of Minnesota and community coalitions located in seven diverse Minnesota communities: Worthington, Mapleton, Faribault, North Minneapolis, McGregor, Cass Lake, and Fergus Falls. The goal of the initaitive is to help disconnected youth finish their schooling. With support from the Konopka Institute, the coalitions are re-engaging students who are disconnected from learning and school through skill-based mentoring programs, parental support education and assistance, and community capacity building efforts.
 
University of California, Santa Cruz
 
At UC Santa Cruz, the Engaged Institutions project, "Building Partnerships to Improve Social, Economic, and Educational Outcomes in Communities across California and the Nation," focuses on issues of educational equity in the state of California and nationally. The grant supports the activities of two campus institutes: The Center for Justice, Tolerance, and Community (CJTC) and the Bridging Multiple Worlds Alliance (BMWA). Each of these organizations conducts community-based research and provides services to community-based organizations. CJTC is using the funding to provide research, data analysis, and capacity building resources to three nonprofit organizations. BMWA is using the funding to develop its collaboration with the Cabrillo College Advancement Program, which seeks to enable low-income students obtain advanced degrees, and to work on statewide curriculum alignment policy.