Conclusion

Rationale: Regular school attendance is a critical step for academic achievement. It is an area where simple and low-cost interventions can have a significant effect on student achievement by stabilizing attendance.

Tactic: Each School should “adopt” one of the schools in the surrounding neighborhood. Working together, the UM School and the neighborhood school administration or parent teacher organization should develop a plan for incentivizing student attendance. Potential incentives could include a special visit to the School, reading times with the UM School students, or inhouse field trips by the UM School faculty and students to provide enrichment activities.

The University of Maryland is currently in a unique position regarding urban renewal, with strong potential to strengthen the relationship between its downtown Baltimore campus and the surrounding community. While the UM community already engages in service and partnership to the local community, these relationships could be more fruitful by coordinating efforts of the different schools and increasing transparency about the available programs.

By increasing focus on the targeted areas of (a) safety, (b) green space and recreation, (c) economic and commercial development, (d) residential development, and (e) education, UM can collectively address the concerns of both the UM campus and the greater community. Both the tangible recommendations within each of these subject areas coupled with the overall recommendations to create a center for community engagement with accompanying interdisciplinary student-run clinic provide steps to further urban renewal surrounding the UM

campus.