Baltimore community as service providers as part of their academic fieldwork, as volunteers in local schools and community projects, as residents, and as shoppers.
The area adjacent to UM contains notable Baltimore attractions, such as the Light Rail and MARC train for public transport, two major league sports stadiums, cultural and retail opportunities in the Hippodrome and the Inner Harbor, and new residential developments in the downtown area. Despite these bright pockets, poverty and crime are serious deterrents to the area’s sustained growth, particularly in Westside and West Baltimore, areas to the west of Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard (MLK). The scope of this paper includes the area from the Howard Street Light rail corridor to the University’s neighbors in Poppleton, Hollins Market, and Pigtown/Washington Village.
Recommendations The recommendations begin with the general need for coordination of efforts across disciplines, followed by the specific health-critical issue areas identified above: (a) safety, (b) green space and recreation, (c) economic and commercial development, (d) residential development, and (e) education.
University Center A Need for Greater Intercampus Coordination Accurate assessment of existing community outreach activities by the UM Schools was an important early goal of the President’s Fellows. There are no readily accessible compilations of UM’s community involvement to develop a comprehensive list of activities conducted by each school, a critical starting point to any assessment. Extensive searches of the UM website provided limited and out-of-date information, making it difficult to determine the current status of several programs. Campus community individuals involved in outreach were highly focused on specific project areas, but lacking knowledge of other types of UM-community interactions.
This limited collaboration among various community outreach activities is troubling. It reduces a program’s potential effectiveness from a student recruitment standpoint. This situation also
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