Utah State University
EN-10: Community Partnerships

Under-represented groups are brought into decision making whenever possible, dependent on projects. One example of this occurred as a Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning class worked with the city to identify possible land use options for a downtown space. The class attended neighborhood meetings and engaged the local Hispanic population, as development of this space would have directly impacted that community. In this way a population that otherwise might not have participated was brought into decision making. The Community Bridge Initiative (CBI) program piloted in 2015, connects classrooms with community leaders to address need defined by the community. Based off of the University of Oregon’s Sustainable City Year Program, CBI builds a multi-year, ongoing partnership with local governments and community agencies to provide students with hands on experience, in a place-based service-learning model. All proposed projects must have a sustainability, social justice, or economic development focus, and work towards increasing the livability of the local community. During the pilot year, USU partnered exclusively with the City of Logan, and completed projects in issue areas including: Community agencies receive multi-disciplinary assistance on their proposed projects, while students gain professional skill sets, and faculty built networks and research opportunities. This program is based in reciprocity, building collaborative partnerships where community leaders and employees are co-educators for students. Although still a relatively new program, CBI has been transformative to the education of students, access to resources for the community, and for the local community. The CBI pilot year led to a restructuring of all community partnerships for both curricular and co-curricular engagement. New community partners are being brought into this model, and the Provost’s office is working closely with Service-Learning to identify courses that might be able to partner with the community to offer student support. In this way, relationships are being developed for both curricular and co-curricular student engagement in sustainability, social justice, and livability community-based projects.