Abstracts - 8.4 - Community Outreach
Evaluating Community Outreach Partnership Centers as Complex Systems: In Search of the "COPC Effect"
Victor Rubin, James J. Fleming, and Judith Innes
Inherent in the philosophy behind COPC programs and university-community collaboration is flexibility in instituting models, strategies, and solutions for those partnerships. Evaluating collaborative efforts, however, is difficult because each collaborative project differs according to university/community need, resources, and goals. One view of the challenge of evaluating such diverse programs is discussed.
Cluster Analysis: A New Tool for Understanding the Role of the Inner City in a Regional Economy
Rob Melnik, Mary Jo Waits, and Tom Rex
Research in two inner city areas of Phoenix and surrounding suburbs documents the importance of analyzing a metropolitan area's economy from the perspective of industry clusters before determining economic development policies and strategies for urban revitalization. In addition, the project reveals lessons about the role of universities in urban economic revitalization.
Positioning a University Outreach Center: Strategies for Support and Continuation
Kristen D. Skivington
A strong case can be made for supporting outreach as a value-added function in a university. The author describes specific strategies for positioning outreach through developing a power base. From this base of power outreach activities can be designed to assist relevant constituents in meeting their needs.
Education for Empowerment: Creating a Community Action Scholars Program
Daniel Folkman, Stephen L. Percy, and Kalyani Rai
The Community Action Scholars Program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee provides education and training in organizational design and leadership to grassroots organizations and neighborhood residents. Insights drawn from lessons learned about university-community collaboratives during this experience have an ultimate goal of empowering community residents.
Memphis Maps
Stanley Hyland, David Cox, and Cindy Martin
The Memphis Maps program trains local students in Geographic Information Systems technology, and also provides the community with valuable community demographic and assessment information. The collaboration is symbiotic in that through a program of information, training, education, and collaborative use of resources, beneficial and sustainable interdependencies have been developed for both the neighborhood and the university. This article describes the program and identifies factors that contributed to its effectiveness as a neighborhood/university collaborative.
Level of Partnership
Hugh Sockett
Partnerships can be described as having four levels based on a philosophical analysis of trust. The analysis of two major partnership projects in this article leads to rules and principles of procedure as ways of building coherent partnership.
The Importance of Changing Our Universities through COPC Project
Paige Mulhollan
Note: Paige Mulhollan was asked to give remarks at a plenary session of the COPC conference because of his strong support in rewarding professional services when he served as the Provost of Arizona State University (1978-1985) and as President of Wright State University (1985-1994). Specifically, Dr. Mulhollan spoke about university institutionalization of the COPC type of work. However, we also wish to note that he was a key academic administrator/leader responsible for creating the metropolitan universities movement and founded, along with Ernest Lynton and Charles Hathaway, the Metropolitan Universities journal.
Expanding and Sustaining Partnership
Judith A. Ramaley
The Community Outreach Partnership Centers (COPC) Program requires adaptations in the university environment. We must examine and reinterpret (1) the roles and responsibilities of faculty; (2) the design of the undergraduate curriculum; (3) the structure of the university that creates the capacity and support to sustain different working relationships with the community; and (4) our definitions of success and quality.
