From mentoring local high school students to cultivating urban farms in food-insecure neighborhoods, public universities across the U.S. are finding creative ways to engage with their local communities.
Some experts say local outreach such as this, which can make a meaningful impact on people’s lives, could be key to restoring Americans’ trust in the higher education system, which is at a low. A 2023 Gallup survey found that just 36% of Americans have confidence in higher education. That number has been declining for years – Gallup reported a confidence level of 57% in 2015 and 48% in 2018.
“A lot of folks will have a very positive experience and positive relationships with individual faculty members – I don’t know how often the trust that’s built there translates to the brand of the university as a whole,” says David Meens, director of the office for outreach and engagement at the University of Colorado Boulder.
University-community partnerships, service learning and other means of local community engagement have gained traction at colleges in recent years.
According to a field guide from Thriving Cities, housed in the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, various coalitions dedicated to harmonizing relations between universities and their cities formed in the 1980s and 90s. That spurred “a revival of civic purpose and public service among institutions of higher education” that has since “evolved into a burgeoning movement of university-community partnerships nationwide.”
Today, offices dedicated to local outreach and community service are common on college campuses. By creating enduring partnerships with community members and organizations, experts say, college campuses can renew folks’ faith in higher education.
“We keep showing up, we keep asking, we keep listening, and we keep allowing ourselves to be changed. I think that’s how you build trust. We’re committed to doing that and learning how to do that better all the time,” Melody Porter, director of civic and community engagement at William & Mary in Virginia, wrote in an email.
Here are some ways public universities across the U.S. are engaging their local communities.
Volunteering and Community Service
Community organizations, schools and nonprofits often come to college campuses in search of eager volunteers who can help them out.
During the 2022-2023 academic year, Porter says, 550 students at William & Mary participated in the civic and community engagement office’s programming. That includes a wide range of volunteer opportunities to get involved in the local community: helping out at a local food pantry, mentoring elementary school students and more.
The office also funds internships, allowing community organizations to expand their capacity by hiring student workers.
“The result is that community partners gain resources to contribute to their goals – students’ energy, ideas, and hard work, funding for projects they want to do,” Porter says. “Students learn more about their community, their role in it, how to build community with others and critically reflect on what they learn, and prioritize and center community in their values and actions throughout their lives. And we all benefit because we’ve worked together to co-create a community that’s better for all of us.”
Vernette Doty, director of the community engagement center at the University of California, Merced, says her office works with 25 to 40 community organizations each year, providing student, faculty and staff volunteers. Many of these organizations are local elementary, middle or high schools seeking tutors and mentors for their students.
Doty says one notable initiative is the school’s Lift While You Lead program, in which undergraduate students provide mentorship and support to students taking a women’s studies course at two local high schools, emphasizing topics like leadership and academic success.
UC Merced is a relatively young campus, graduating its first full class in 2009. Doty says its outreach and collaboration play an important role in helping the local community trust an institution that’s new to the region.
“When our students are out in the community and people are able to engage with them, it does two things: The students realize, ‘These are people who are just like me,’ while the community recognizes the same thing,” she says.
At Western Washington University, students can do work-study jobs on farms operated by the Center for Community Learning. Travis Tennessen, the center’s director, says it’s a good opportunity for students to learn more about food systems while providing local residents with a valuable resource: fresh produce.
This is especially important for residents of the Birchwood neighborhood in Bellingham, where the center’s City Sprouts Farm is located. The neighborhood became a food desert following the closure of its only local grocery store in 2016. Tennessen says students grow and harvest food, which they distribute at a free farmers market and donate to a local organization working to combat food insecurity.
“People need to feel like an organization makes a difference in their lives,” Tennessen says.
Dialogue and Education
It’s also common for universities to organize town halls and workshops that allow community members to learn and be heard.
Tennessen says his team organizes a regular forum for Bellingham residents to talk about the future of their city and how the university can play a role in shaping it. At the forums, residents have talked about many topics, from programming and resources for Indigenous people in the area to how the community can use neglected spaces in the city more effectively.
Meanwhile, CU Boulder’s Office of Outreach and Engagement is in its second year of hosting a program to educate Coloradans about civics and democracy, a topic that Meens says is particularly important in light of some groups questioning the legitimacy of the 2020 elections. Through the Faculty Fellows for Higher Education and Democracy program, the university has convened Coloradans to talk about contentious issues in a civil manner, Meens says.
Tennessen says creating spaces where community members can connect with one another and voice their thoughts helps the university form meaningful relationships.
“It makes a real difference to them,” he says, “to see that the people from the university are not up on the hill in their office, thinking big thoughts and serving people from elsewhere – they’re thinking about us.”
