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Beyond the Campus: How Colleges and Universities Form Partnerships with their Communities
The role of the university and its relationship to the community has long been a highly debated topic among educators, administrators, and local business leaders. David J. Maurrasse offers a passionate appeal for community partnerships. Going further than a simple explanation of the problems at hand, Beyond the Campus offers a road map for both universities and local institutions to work together for the good of their communities.
- GenresEducation
224 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2001
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January 3, 2010
Mainly just a bunch of interviews with community partnership people at four colleges.
Still, the book does provide a nice background on how urban universities get involved with local non-profits. San Francisco State University established an independent "Urban Institute" to train and give grants to locals. UPenn offers renovation grants and mortgage guarentees to local residents. Xavier runs a development corporation to tear down dilapidated buildings and to run co-ops. Hostos Community College in the Bronx provides continuing education to local workers at the Hunts Point Terminal Market. All these colleges also have teachers in needy local schools and pass on grants from HUD's COPC program.
Unfortunately, its hard to tell where a lot of these HUD and university grants are going. The author describes many non-profit groups merely "as working to engage with their community" or "striving to establish local capital resources," and other such impenetrable grant-speak. Other groups seem to be run out of local politicos offices. It all makes me somewhat suspicious that some of these groups aren't really doing anything at all.
Some legitimate background research and fact-checking on these interviews would have immensely improved this book.
An odd side-note: I had not clue that HUD gave Tulane University almost complete control over the New Orleans Housing Authority in the 1990s after HUD judged HANO to be incompetent. But what does a university know about running a housing authority? Who decided this would be a good idea? How did it turn out? I'm going to look into this.
Still, the book does provide a nice background on how urban universities get involved with local non-profits. San Francisco State University established an independent "Urban Institute" to train and give grants to locals. UPenn offers renovation grants and mortgage guarentees to local residents. Xavier runs a development corporation to tear down dilapidated buildings and to run co-ops. Hostos Community College in the Bronx provides continuing education to local workers at the Hunts Point Terminal Market. All these colleges also have teachers in needy local schools and pass on grants from HUD's COPC program.
Unfortunately, its hard to tell where a lot of these HUD and university grants are going. The author describes many non-profit groups merely "as working to engage with their community" or "striving to establish local capital resources," and other such impenetrable grant-speak. Other groups seem to be run out of local politicos offices. It all makes me somewhat suspicious that some of these groups aren't really doing anything at all.
Some legitimate background research and fact-checking on these interviews would have immensely improved this book.
An odd side-note: I had not clue that HUD gave Tulane University almost complete control over the New Orleans Housing Authority in the 1990s after HUD judged HANO to be incompetent. But what does a university know about running a housing authority? Who decided this would be a good idea? How did it turn out? I'm going to look into this.
Displaying 1 of 1 review