Smart Communities: Reuniting Town and Gown: Partnerships that Matter

March 25, 2005

Reuniting Town and Gown: Partnerships that Matter

There is an age old, well-documented tension between institutions of higher education and the towns or cities that house them. However in places where there has been the trust and foresight to build on the geographical relationship rather than run from it, the results are very encouraging. Just this week I spent a day on the campus of Mansfield University in upstate Pennsylvania. The smallest institution in the Pennsylvania system, Mansfield has among its claims to fame excellent academics, a world-class music program, and the distinction of being the first school to "light" a football game. But perhaps what impressed me most was a decade-long partnership with volunteers, nonprofit organizations, and citizens called the Tioga County Partnership for Community Health. Not only has the partnership been enormously successful in increasing access to services but it has also mounted an issue research and dissemination program that is as good as any I have seen. There is no excuse for anyone living in Tioga County, PA, not to know the health issues facing the community.

All of this gets back to partnerships in the end. Mansfield University took a lead with other founding partners to make a difference in their own community. The title of my talk Wednesday afternoon was "Changing the Odds for Success: Communities and Universities Working Together." These kinds of town/gown partnerships do change the odds—for everybody. We must cultivate them and nourish them if we are ever to see the changes that are so needed in our society. Three things can make this happen: first, by applying faculty and student intellectual capital to directly address community issues; second, by developing and fostering skills and attitudes that will enable our students and those of us who teach them to lead lives of civic responsibility; and third, by cultivating an action-oriented approach that allows the college or university to join with others in the community to actually solve problems. This all goes beyond just "heart" to a design and a commitment that is strategic, pervasive, and integrated into the core functions of teaching, research, and service.

The Pew Partnership has had significant experience with higher education-community partnerships through its Solutions for America project. We have two publications that will help any college or university looking for ways to get more involved in their community. Available on our website in PDF are University + Community Research Partnerships and New Directions in Civic Engagement: University Ave Meets Main Street.

There is also a section of Housing and Urban Development dedicated to this brand of collaboration, these folks are known as the Office of University Partnerships (OUP) and have been working in this area since 1994. The OUP has a great website with a long list of publications related to university-community partnerships which should prove a valuable resource to anyone interested in the question of how universities and their surrounding communities can better serve each other.

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