Community-Campus Partnership Showcase
Community-Campus Partnership Showcase
Iowa Campus Compact 1111 9th Street, Suite 225 Des Moines, IA 50314 515.505.3670
Volunteer Iowa 200 E. Grand Ave. Des Moines, IA 50309 800.308.5987
Office of Community & Civic Engagement 1220 1st Ave. NE Cedar Rapids, IA 52402 319.399.8260
Iowa Campus Compact strengthens the capacity of colleges and universities to prepare all students to become engaged citizens. Through the strength of our coalition, Iowa Campus Compact provides leadership for the civic mission of higher education.
AmeriCorps is a network of national service programs, made up of three primary programs that each take a different approach to improving lives and fostering civic engagement. Members commit their time to address critical community needs like increasing academic achievement, mentoring youth, fighting poverty, sustaining national parks, preparing for disasters and more.
The Coe College Office of Community and Civic Engagement acts as a resource for the community facilitating stronger connections between Coe and the greater Cedar Rapids area.
Course-Based Partnerships Course-based community engagement can take a lot of different forms. The following are some recent examples. Liberal Arts Beyond Bars & Capstone Seminar in Sociology
Katie Rodgers (Coe College), Kat Litchfield (LABB), Heather Erwin (LABB) and Aliza Fones (LABB) In this class, senior sociology majors at Coe and students in LABB, a college in prison program, worked collaboratively on a qualitative research project focused on education. They specifically focused on the educational goals and obstacles of students from both institutions. This is the first part of a larger project that will seek to better understand the obstacles to attaining higher education for those leaving incarceration.
Harmony School of Music & Professional Writing
Jane Nesmith (Coe College) and Jessica Altfillisch (Harmony School of Music) Students in this Professional Writing course partnered with Harmony School of Music to create new promotional materials, including newsletter stories, a fundraising letter and press releases for upcoming events.
Catherine McAuley Center & Topics in International Studies: Forced Migration John Chaimov (Coe College) and Anne Dugger (CMC)
As a longtime partner for this class and others like it, the Catherine McAuley Center connected Coe students with transnational experts who shared their experiences as refugees and asylum seekers. Students also had the opportunity to conduct small-group interviews with members of immigrant communities.
Matthew 25 & International Studies Colloquium
John Chaimov (Coe College) and Clint Twedt-Ball (Matthew 25) Matthew 25 partnered with Colloquium in an effort to utilize their event space, Groundswell, to connect immigrant communities with locals who do not often get the chance to socialize with immigrants. Matthew 25 provided the kitchen and dining space and invited community members to attend; students invited immigrant chefs, took them shopping, advertised the event and served as hosts.
Metro High School & Poetry Workshop
Nick Twemlow (Coe College), Mary Vizecky (Metro High School) and Sarah Collingsworth (Metro High School) Students from Metro High School came to Coe’s campus to work with students in the Poetry Workshop as part of a semester-long mentoring project, with poetry serving as the bridge.
His Hands Free Clinic & Health Psychology
Scout Kelly (Coe College) and Jennifer Lopez (His Hands Free Clinic) Students in Health Psychology partnered with His Hands on three projects. One group shared mini-workshops about psychology and health promotion with patients and visitors to the clinic as part of Psychology & Health Days. Another worked with the clinic to identify and revamp valuable health materials in need of improvement (e.g., reading level, effectiveness, aesthetics). The third group created a research report, assisting His Hands with summarizing, organizing and interpreting data from the clinic. Each project included meeting with His Hands staff, conducting background research, pitching a proposal, developing and implementing the final product and presenting on the experience to the clinic and the class.
Young Parents Network & Developmental Psychology Kara Recker (Coe College) and Crystal Hall (YPN)
YPN offered Developmental Psychology students the opportunity to observe group meetings geared toward young parents and their children. Coe students also provided child care of infants, toddlers, preschoolers and school-aged children while parents were attending these meetings.
Willis Dady Emergency Shelter & Ethnographic Methods Julie Fairbanks (Coe College) and Phoebe Trepp (WDES)
Students from the Ethnographic Methods course in the Anthropology Program worked with the Willis Dady Emergency Shelter (WDES) on two occasions. During the first semester of the partnership, students created a questionnaire to examine factors related to homelessness and then conducted focus groups with clients of the shelter to evaluate the results. On the second occasion, a new group of students transcribed client interviews previously recorded by Iowa BIG students and interviewed landlords to understand their perspectives on homelessness prevention. The same class compiled research on focus groups to support the work of WDES in conducting groups aimed at empowering participants.
Willis Dady Emergency Shelter & Social Practice Jennifer Rogers (Coe College)
Social Practice is an interdisciplinary art form that uses social engagement to invite collaboration with individuals, communities and institutions in the creation of participatory art. The genre explores social forms such as dinner parties, conversations and projects that intervene or intersect with real-world systems. The Social Practice class partnered with Willis Dady to make and serve a Sunday meal, build shelving for the donation space and complete independent projects that included gathering school supplies and creating personal hygiene kits, making cookbooks, building a resource website and making ceramic dinnerware sets for families transitioning into new housing.
Catherine McCauley Center & Language in Community Seminar
Joyce Janca-Aji (Coe College), Devan Baty (Cornell College) and Shana Kargbo (CMC) The intensive 10-day Language-in-Community Summer Seminar, a collaboration between Coe College and Cornell College, offered specialized language, translation, interpretation and intercultural training to upper-level students in French and Spanish interested in working with immigrants and refugees in Cedar Rapids. Organizers partnered primarily with the Catherine McCauley Center for workshops on working with refugees, tutoring English, job coaching and transportation mentoring. The program also included guest speakers from Justice for Our Neighbors to inform participants about immigration law, the process of applying for asylum and citizenship and effects of the current political crisis on the local community.
Abbe Health/Aging Services and Care Pro & Cognitive Psychology
Renee Penalver (Coe College), Lindsay Glynn (Aging Services) and Katie Dostal (Care Pro) Students in Cognitive Psychology worked collaboratively with Aging Services of Abbe Health, an affiliate of UnityPoint. Students were grouped with individuals suffering from dementia to create a digital story of their lives for them and their loved ones to enjoy. Dementia is a progressive disease that causes varying levels of cognitive decline in attention, learning, memory, language, personality and general understanding. Students were able to engage with and apply class knowledge toward the community in a meaningful way. The videos will provide an additional memory cue for participants in helping them to retrieve important memories.
Internal Partnership: Visual Rhetoric & Coe College’s Office of Marketing Theresa Donofrio (Coe College)
Students in Visual Rhetoric worked collaboratively with Coe’s marketing manager and other colleagues on campus to study the images that define and shape communities. Throughout the term, students heard from a variety of speakers and studied different visual artifacts to better understand the visual dimensions of Coe’s campus. With this information, students delivered presentations to the marketing manager containing their ideas for new and innovative ways of depicting the campus community and its connections to Cedar Rapids.
Iowa College AmeriCorps Program (ICAP) Past and current position descriptions
The Iowa College AmeriCorps Program (ICAP) was created to increase levels of volunteerism among college students in Iowa as part of their academic experience, while engaging them in their local campus community. Students serve at least 300 hours building capacity for campus and community partnerships and receive a national service education award.
Coe College I’m First: Program Development The purpose of this position is to develop I’m First, a recently established student group at Coe College focusing on supporting first-generation college students’ transition to life in college by creating opportunities for leadership, mentorship and fellowship and providing an avenue for educating others on campus about the strengths and struggles of first-generation college students.
City of Cedar Rapids Civil Rights Commission: Education and Outreach The purpose of these positions is to increase community outreach activities to educate the public about areas of protection and protected classes covered by the Cedar Rapids Civil Rights Municipal Code, fair housing rights and the Civil Rights Commission including its history in Cedar Rapids and services it provides.
His Hands Free Clinic: Volunteer Engagement The purpose of this position is to increase volunteer engagement that will build the capacity of the organization to provide free medical, chiropractic, women’s health, mental health, physical therapy, prescription assistance, patient advocacy and dental services to the uninsured and underinsured in Cedar Rapids.
His Hands Free Clinic: Marketing and Administration The purpose of this position is to improve internal and external communication to increase the organization’s capacity to provide health care to under- and uninsured community members.
Aging Services: Program Development and Volunteer Engagement The purpose of this position is to build the capacity of Aging Services to utilize volunteers to increase engagement and retention of senior citizens in the Witwer Healthy Aging programs.
Matthew 25: Neighborhood Building and Program Development The purpose of this position is to gather literacy information from families with children in the Taylor neighborhood and use that information to create family profiles that will enable Matthew 25 to identify community assets on which to build programs and partnerships.
Catherine McAuley Center: Education and Outreach The purpose of this position is to assess student needs, develop curriculum and raise awareness within the community to create an optimal learning environment for adult ESL students in Cedar Rapids, which contributes to Catherine McAuley’s mission of offering hope and opportunity through educational and supportive services that promote stability, skill-building and connection.
Additional partnership opportunities for students Community-Based Practicum A Community-Based Practicum is an opportunity for students to work with a nonprofit organization in Cedar Rapids under the supervision of a faculty member on a project designed by the student and the organization together to meet a community need and strengthen a student’s skills and understanding of their discipline in an applied learning environment. Students will learn about the issues, problems and techniques associated with developing projects that address real-world problems, as well as apply the skills they have gained through academic study to provide services to community partners.
Off-Campus Federal Work-Study
Off-Campus Federal Work-Study is an opportunity for eligible Coe students to earn a set amount of financial aid money through working regularly at a community nonprofit organization. Students work with the Office of Community and Civic Engagement to find opportunities and are referred to community organizations to obtain positions. Tasks and responsibilities vary, but students have reported gaining important professional, technical and social skills as a result of their federal work-study position and the opportunity to gain experience outside of Coe.