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Community Collaborative Grants

Achieving the Dream: Creating Worlds with Words
Saint Joseph's University and Our Mother of Sorrows Middle School
This project links the St. Joseph's University (SJU) Writing Center with students at Our Mother of Sorrows (OMS) Middle School in order to provide writing tutoring to OMS students.  The project enables SJU writing tutors to perform ethnographic studies of the writing process by observing OMS students.  We empower OMS students to envision the possibilities and challenges of a college education, and we provide SJU students with experience of teach in an urban setting.  OMS students will become "writing partners" through weekly letter exchanges between the two groups.
Contact: Dr. Ann Green, agreen@mailhost.sju.edu

American Reads and America Counts
Bryn Mawr College and Ardmore Avenue Community Center
This collaboration employs BMC Work-Study students as tutors for children from the economically exploited community of southern Ardmore.  The partnership has evolved significantly and outgrown its current organizational structure.  The PHENND grant will: facilitate the evaluation and reorganization process; provide for a training, coordination, and planning summit for BMC tutors and AACC Counselors; and allow them to develop America Counts in conjunction with the BMC Math Department, filling an expressed community need for math tutors; and enable them to expand their semester Family Literacy Night to the summer program.
Contact: Jennifer Nichols, jnichols@brynmawr.edu

A Cooperative Project in Service-Learning
Philadelphia University and Lower Merion Conservancy
Students in Philadelphia University's Environmental Science Program will participate in mutually beneficial service learning projects in partnership with Lower Merion Conservancy (LMC).  The collaboration will lead to the furtherance of the University's mission to provide students with a solid academic foundation and an understanding of the larger professional context in which students will practice.  Similarly, the partnerships will also help LMC in pursuing its mission to protect natural and historic resources, open space and watershed in Lower Merion Township.  As part of Philadelphia University's service learning program, student swill help create web pages for the Conservancy's Stream Watch program and complete data entry for early 2000 Stream Watch data.  During the spring and summer, two upper-level students are taking on the responsibility of entering past data - from the 1970s and 80s - and replicating a stream corridor study complete in 1974.  The data gathered through the work of these two students will be invaluable to the Conservancy, the community, the local government and their consultants when planning the future of the watershed.
Contact: Dr. Godlove Fonjweng, fonjwengg@philau.edu

Enhancing Community Collaboration in Chester County Chicana/o Culture, Politics, Practice
Swarthmore College and Friends of Farmworkers
This seminar, now a part of regular course offerings, has included a service-learning component with the Alianza Cultural Latina, Kaolin Farmworkers Union, La Mision Santa Maria, and the Mexican children's dance group, Danza Tenochtli.  The collaborations will be enhanced through strengthening the service-learning component of the course and developing closer contacts with other colleges and universities in the region, including organizing a conference on low-wage migrant and immigrant rights with community groups and faculty at Saint Joseph's University.
Contact: Dr. Miguel Diaz-Bariga, mdiazba1@swarthmore.edu

Girl Talk
University of Pennsylvania, Congreso de Latinos Unidos, and Edison/Fareira High School
Three partners are working together to provide a forum to discuss issues that are of concern to women.  The primary goal of Girl Talk is to create a safe environment for women at Edison High School to dialogue, with each other as well as with Penn students, about the problems they face daily .  In addition, it offers high school students a chance to pay attention to their female peers and forge relationships.  Penn and Congreso women facilitate discussions as well as expose the Edison students to activities and modes of expression that they may never have encountered.  What is most important is how the Penn, Edison High School, and Congreso participants relate to one another as women.
Contact: Brooke Chidester, chideste@sas.upenn.edu

Literacy and Computer Program
Urban Bridges at St. Gabriel's, Central East Middle School, and Cabrini College
Using experience from last year's pilot collaboration with Central East Middle School and Cabrini College, the Literacy and Computer Program will provide tutoring and mentoring training that incorporates critical thinking and problem solving techniques.  The focus will be children who are scheduled for "social" graduation and eighth grade students performing below grade level.  The goal is to decrease the likelihood that these students will drop out of high school before graduation.  The college will benefit by participation in a reality based service project.  The community will benefit if the project results in students who become members of the community.
Contact: Felice Simelaro, urbanbridg@aol.com

Social Work Consultation Services
Widener University and Chester Education Fund
Social Work Consultation Services (SWCS), is a collaborative partnership among educational and community-based service organizations which seeks to expand the capacity of the human service sector to meet critical service needs of the City of Chester and its surrounding communities.  This partnership, which includes Widener University Center for Social Work Education, the Chester Education Foundation and six partner agencies (Chester YouthBuild, the Domestic Abuse Project, Delaware County Legal Assistance Association, Concord Day Care Center, Chester Healthy Start, and United Way of Southeast Delaware County) will use the resources of Chester Education Foundation and Widener University Center for Social Work Education student interns and faculty to enhance the social service capacity of the partner agencies.  This unique collaboration will not only extend the range of expertise and resources available to partner agencies, but will help bolster the social service infrastructure by stimulating opportunities for joint initiatives, sharing of resources, and maximizing existing community resources. 
Contact: Dr. Paula Silver, paula.t.silver@widener.edu

TechServ
Temple University and various community partners
This project seeks to coordinate all of Temple's community service work-study, service learning, unpaid internership and volunteer initiatives involving computer technology by creating a sanctioned student organization on Temple's main campus.  The student organization, TechServ, will provide technical support in the form of web development, computer hardware/software training, technology grant writing assistance, and compter repair/maintenance to schools and community-based organizations surrounding the University.  TechServ membership will be open to all graduate and undergraduate students, staff, and faculty with sufficient computer skills to be of assistance and a willingness to serve the community.
Contact: Laurie Shteir, laurie@astro.ocis.temple.edu

Theory and Practice of Service-Learning in the First Year of a Master of Public Health Program
MCP-Hahnemann University and various community partners
This project seeks to bridge the intellectual and personal aspects of social justice work through Service-Learning among first year graduate students in public health.  The proposed endeavor will be instituted through a multi-faceted Service-Learning framework consisting of: 1) interactive community site visits designed to highlight the assets and challenges found in communities; 2) a speaker series led by local lay community leaders committed to social justice; and 3) a collaborative with not-for-profit agencies and organizations working to enhance the public health needs of populations. 
Contact: Dr. Toti Villanueva, av28@drexel.edu

Urban America: Anthropological Perspectives
Temple University and various community partners
This course offers undergraduates an opportunity to collaborate with a community-based program or agency and to explore how anthropologists work in applied settings.  They are required to spend an average of four hours a week in their field settings.  The purpose of this class is to connect students' service experiences with ideas and readings from the academic perspective of anthropology, with a particular focus on the issues facing community-based organizations in the present social, political and economic context.  All of the placements are in economically distressed neighborhoods in Philadelphia.
Contact: Dr. Susan Hyatt, shyatt@nimbus.temple.edu

Branching Out Through Science
Saint Joseph's University, Overbrook Education Center, Shoemaker Middle School
The Urban Tree Connection and St. Joseph's University Biology Department will continue developing after-school enrichment programs for 4-6 students from Shoemaker Middle School and Overbrook Education Center.  Middle school students will work for one and one-half hours a week with Biology college students assisting with ongoing experiments and developing experiments unique to their classroom curriculum which will support service-learning activities supervised by the Urban Tree Connection.  The students, selected as a reward and encouragement for outstanding classwork, will be resources and role models in their classes.  The SJU students will reinforce their learning through teaching their young charges.
Contact: Dr. Karen Snetselaar, ksnetsel@sju.edu

Expanding Service-Learning in Environmental Science at Philadelphia University
Philadelphia University and various community partners
The mission of Philadelphia University is to train effective leaders by providing both a solid academic foundation and an understanding of the larger professional context in which students will practice.  As part of implementing this mission, college faculty seek out opportunities for students to have hands-on experiences in their future profession.  The goal of this proposal is to develop support curriculum materials for meaningful, environmental applied research project for faculty and non-science freshman to produce relevant management options in collaboration with several partner agencies in the City of Philadelphia.  The materials will be developed during the summer of 2000 to be used in a freshman environmental science course for the Fall 2000 semester.  The projects will directly benefit the participating agencies, park users, adjacent neighborhoods, elementary through high school students from the King Cluster, as well as Earth Yes participants through increasing environmental awareness, restoring art structures and woodland and developing collaboration among institutions and residents.
Contact: Dr. Godlove Fonjweng, fonjwengg@philau.edu

First-Year Writing Program Service-Learning Seminar
Temple University and various community partners
This will be a six-week summer seminar for Teaching Assistants in the First-Year Writing Program who are interested in developing service learning courses for the fall semester 2000.  The seminar would be conducted by Dr. Michael Donnelly, Associate Director of the First-Year Writing Program, and Hannah Ashley, a doctoral candidate in the Interdisciplinary Urban Education program and Program Coordinator of Project WRITE (Writing and Reading through Intergenerational Teaching Experiences).  Each of the three Teaching Assistants participating in the seminar will produce a syllabus for a service learning composition course, which will be implemented in the fall semester.
Contact: Dr. Michael Donnelly, 

Introduction to Peace and Justice
Villanova University, Project H.O.M.E., and Urban Bridges
Introduction to Peace and Justice seeks to assist students in understanding, critically reflecting upon and understanding contemporary social justice issues and examining what it means to be socially active and responsible citizens.  The Service-Learning component will be done in partnership with Project H.O.M.E. and Urban Bridges.  The objective of the service experience is two-fold 1) to meet the needs of those served by these agencies, particularly at-risk children and youth who participate in their programs and 2) to understand and engage in the work of social justice partnership with these agencies.

A Sophomore Honors Service-Learning Community
Villanova University and Urban Bridges
The Sophomore Honors Service-Learning Community is a two-semester project involving two courses: Ethical Traditions and Contemporary Life and Christianity Traditions and Transitions.  This Honors Service-Learning Community will partner with Urban Bridges which provides education service to a variety of community members (children and adults) in the Olney School Cluster of Philadelphia.  The community will be part of the planning and implementation of this project that will involve the tutoring of 40-50 middle school children at Cook Middle School in the Olney Cluster.  Villanova students will provide this service and simultaneously be introduced to the skills of needs assessment, community organizing and evaluation.
Contact; Dr. Mark Doorley, mark.doorley@villanova.edu

Unhealthy Urban Environments: Healthy Solutions
La Salle University Neighborhood Nursing and Hill Creek Community
This new course explores environmental health threats facing inner city residents.  Integrating the fields of earth sciences, health science, environmental science, and public health, students will examine urban communities as complex physical and social systems.  The environmental problems studied in this course include chemical, infectious, physical and psychological hazards.  Indoor and outdoor air pollution and the adverse health effects caused by these entities will be a focus.  Students explore a local neighborhood identified as high risk for disease because of environmental pollutants, social, economic, geographic and climate problems.  Student developed Public Service Announcements addressing local environmental health problems, broadcast on a local cable TV station, provide awareness and education to community residents.  A community workshop provides a forum for students, public health experts and community members to share environmental concerns and propose topics for future urban health research.
Contact: Ann Walker, walkera2@lasalle.edu

Writing and Rape: Using Language to Educate and Prevent Violence
Temple University and Women Organized Against Rape
How can the written word gain the power to prevent rape?  This course will attempt to answer this question with writing that engages students' applied and scholarly skills.  The course is geared to wear many faces: composition, women's studies, and community service.  Students will be developing college writing skills while studying the critical, quantitative, legal, and creative literature available on sexual violence against women.  Classroom work will be balanced by off-campus training for sexual violence prevention and education.  Students will produce an educational publication for distribution at women's shelters and organizations.  Further, at completion of training, not only will all students be qualified to work as interns in local sexual violence prevention centers, but they will put their training into practice, writing as a form of community service.  "Writing and Rape" is a course prepared to develop college composition skills while providing a non-profit organization with essential support.
Contact: Jessica Restaino, jrestain@astro.temple.edu

Bryn Mawr College
Swarthmore College
Villanova University
West Chester University