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Community-Campus Partnerships
McLean Institute spotlights CEED student research
T
he University of Mississippi’s McLean Institute leads the way in student-led engagement research in Mississippi. Albert Nylander, McLean Institute director and professor of sociology, directs honors theses for the Catalyzing Entrepreneurship and Economic Development, or CEED, students whose final product in the program is to conduct a fully developed business plan or academic research paper. The following students worked with communities to address local challenges. Their research included workforce development, tourism and youth education.
Elena Bauer, a University of Mississippi law school student, researched the sociological and economic factors that affect workforce development in low-income communities in Mississippi. Through an in-depth study of African American male respondents who were participants in a job-training program in a Delta community, her findings demonstrated that job-training programs, which operate in regions with persistent and deep poverty, must consider strategies beyond the traditional workforce development techniques to have success. A workforce development program that intends to transition participants into full-time employment must address both the sociological and social psychological factors affecting participants in order to create a sustainable effect on the participants and in the community. The respondents and community leaders identified transportation, inadequate wages, housing, affordable child care, poor educational resources and lack of resources as structural impediments for trying to get out of poverty. Structural forces developed negative attitudes such as lack of motivation, hopelessness and lack of trust in authorities. The attitudinal concerns enhanced the realities of unemployment, increased delinquency, disrespect for authority and lack of commitment. Thus, these factors contributed to the reasons that young adults in impoverished communities remained unemployed. “The patterns reflected more broadly community brokenness, describing many communities throughout the Delta,” Bauer said. Effective workforce development programs must understand the cause and effect of the larger community forces. Sam Russell worked with the McLean Institute for two years to research revitalization efforts of tourism in the Mississippi Delta. He explored how community-campus partnerships lead to stronger economic development for Mississippi communities. His findings demonstrated that communities and universities can create partnerships to assist in bringing needed jobs and resources to an impoverished region. “The CEED initiative at the University of Mississippi has shown me a new side of the Mississippi Delta, and has given me a vision of Delta revitalization through community and university engagement and tourism,” Russell said. Russell is working as a digital programs coordinator at the Society for Neuroscience in Washington, D.C.
SCHOLARSHIP & ENGAGEMENT FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD: Community Engagement at the University of Mississippi
