The Venture Consortium: Dialogues : Presentations


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> COOL - Idealist Conference

Date: March 12-14, 2004
Title: From Programming to Pedagogy: Educating Students for Social Responsibility
Presented by: Peggy Chang (Executive Director, The Venture Consortium), Kath Connolly (Senior Assistant Director, Swearer Center for Public Service, Brown University), Cathy Crimmins (Director, Office of Community Service and Volunteerism, Wesleyan University), Ken DeBlois (Program Coordinator, The Venture Consortium)

The following notes and excerpts are from Cathy Crimmins's portion of this presentation.

Partnering CRC (Career Resource Center) and OCS (Office of Community Service) to program together

Purpose: Demystify the corporate notion of a corporate career center

Examples:

Hosting Idealist on campus for workshop
Hosting several discussions/speakers geared towards public service - grant writing, social entrepreneur, foundation
Breaking down volunteer opportunities in a career oriented manner - if you're interested in social work - here are some great opportunities; if you're interested in public interest law - here are some opportunities.

Institutional Initiatives

Demonstrates to students that the institute itself is making efforts for socially responsible actions; sharing resources; mutually beneficial partnerships

Examples:

Center for Community Partnerships - combining of three offices ( Service-Learning Center , Community Service and Community Relations).
Green Street Art Center - the University has financially, administratively, and institutionally supported the creation of a community based arts center in the most impoverished area of Middletown . There will be many opportunities for students to get involved at the Art Center , both in volunteer capacities, service-learning and internships

Center for Community Partnership Work

Purpose:

The Center for Community Partnerships encourages and supports university-community collaborations through the combined resources of the Service-Learning Center, the Office of Community Service and Volunteerism, and the Office of Community Relations. We seek to serve the development of both the individual and the community, guided by principles of mutual respect and shared responsibility.

It is very important to stress the last piece that we truly believe that there is reciprocity in our relationship with the community. We do not go in and fix problems and leave. We learn from the community, just as the community learns from us.

We actually have an interesting set-up because the three directors have separate reporting lines. I report to the Dean of the College, Community Relations reports to the Vice-President's office and Service-Learning reports to Academic Affairs.

As a center we are proactively meeting with local organizations to talk about what their needs are, how students can become involved on a multitude of levels
Talking internally with appropriate offices - office of international studies, career resource center, university relations, academic affairs, student services - this way, we form allies and people know what we are doing. We want to keep lines of communication open across the University.
Act as a one stop shop for anyone (students, faculty, community members) that are interested in university-community issues.

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