Grand Valley State University
EN-13: Community Stakeholder Engagement

GVSU’s strategic plan for 2016-2021 includes community engagement as one of five outcomes, along with a number of objectives that specify outcomes of our work in this area. Many offices across campus support this work, including the Faculty Teaching and Learning Center, Office for Community Engagement, Community Service Learning Center, the Office of Sustainability Partnerships, and others. In this context, the University is now developing a Civic Action Plan that will achieve essentially 3 things: prepare faculty and students for community-based work; align our GVSU/community initiatives with community interests; and reconfigure internal GVSU infrastructure to support our community and civic engagement. Each of these helps us fulfill the Campus Compact President’s Declaration President Thomas Haas signed in 2016.

GVSU continues to engage in challenged neighborhoods in proximity to our campus and to connect our existing partners in a more integrated and interdisciplinary fashion. One of these neighborhoods, the Westside, has been chosen as a location to pilot GVSU’s role as an anchor institution. As part of our Civic Action Plan, a place-based Institution team with 24 people, half of whom are from the community, are working to align community and university interests in with a commitment to reciprocity and mutual benefit. Representatives from Grand Rapids Public Schools, the police department, two neighborhood organizations, small and large businesses, the community foundation, and various nonprofits have joined us to develop a plan that focuses on K12 education, safety, health, and economic development. Each section of the plan has identified outcomes and action steps that advance racial equity.

In general, our stakeholders include the City of Grand Rapids and other municipalities in our area, neighborhoods—especially in the City of Grand Rapids—nonprofit and philanthropic organizations, businesses and industries with which we actively partner, public school systems, and legislators. In addition, we collaborate with other institutions of higher education in our region.

We have hundreds of examples of outcomes in areas of education, economic development, sustainability, healthcare, infrastructure, and social services. Most of our efforts in the past three years have been individually implemented. Examples include GIS documentation of housing in urban neighborhoods, watershed restoration, support for refugee acculturation, increased access to local and healthy food in inner-city areas, improved information literacy, math, and reading in urban schools, and development of small businesses and entrepreneurial initiatives.