About Us
History
Synopsis
The Engaged University is a democracy and justice group that connects our University with its surrounding community. We’re the acknowledged local relationship builders and the glue. Part of the University of Maryland College Park, our purpose is to create and catalyze opportunities for the University and its surrounding communities to engage in mutually beneficial research, learning & action. We began in 2002 as part of a think tank on democracy. In July ‘06, the Provost & the VP of University Relations took steps to assure EU’s autonomy and to facilitate joint ventures. EU recently launched a seed fund to stimulate community-university partnerships. We also conduct a wide array of hands-on community capacity building, leadership, civic engagement, adult education, and youth development activities. These include the design and administration of after-school and summer programs at two middle schools, the development and teaching of local oral history & asset mapping courses at a local high school and a series of parent involvement classes in Spanish for elementary school parents. We have run financial literacy classes, installed community gardens and started gardening clubs at area schools, taught area teachers to integrate nutrition into the curriculum, designed and funded community murals & other arts projects, and host a number of university/community day-long events, like a Brown v. Board of Education Commemoration with the Philip Merrill College of Journalism addressing the decision’s local impact, that was taped & televised. EU’s activities focus on needs identified through community based research & action. At dozens of meetings & listening sessions, we brought together over 1500 University & community members. We heard of the absence of non-profits with capacity to meet the wide range and magnitude of community needs; few opportunities for civic involvement; and the need for a dedicated and accessible place for groups & individuals to gather, learn, & problem-solve together.
First Steps — the University
In June 2002, a University of Maryland think tank on democracy hired experienced educator, community activist and local resident, MargaretMorgan-Hubbard as its Associate Director for Organizing and Outreach.Her assignment was to more fully engage the University with the local community.
Morgan-Hubbard’s first steps were to determine the level of engagement that already existed at the University-- who was doing what, where, how and why. With 35,329 enrolled students and 12,478 University employees (faculty and staff), this was a daunting task. Morgan-Hubbard conceptualized the University as a small municipality, with a system of connections to untangle, a geographic terrain to map, an ecosystem to explore. She systematically conducted a series of one-on-one and small group conversations across campus to build relationships.
Within a few months, Morgan-Hubbard began to appreciate the richness of resources, facilities, expertise, skills and technologies at the University that might be coalesced to address immediate and longer term community needs as well as more systemic issues. She discovered a wealth of pent up enthusiasm amongst tenured and new faculty, university staff, graduate and undergraduate students for developing and executing a research and action agenda in conjunction with Prince George’s County.
During this first semester, hundreds of individual and small group meetings were held with members of more than 30 University Schools, Departments and Offices--
including African American Studies, Agriculture and Resource Economics, American Studies, Anthropology, Astronomy, Business, CIVICUS, the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, the Center for Smart Growth Research and Education, Civil Engineering, the Committee on Political Economy for the Good Society, Computer Science, College Park Scholars, the Consortium on Race, Gender and Ethnicity, Criminology, the David Driskell Center for the Study of the Africa Diaspora, Educational Policy and Leadership, English, Family Studies, the Gemstone Program, Government and Politics, History, Human Resources, Journalism, Latin American Studies Center, Mathematics, Natural Resource Sciences and Landscape Architecture, Nutrition, Public Affairs, Public and Community Health, Service-Learning, Spanish and Portuguese, Sociology, Urban Studies and Planning, and Women's Studies.
Mirroring the Base in the Community
Morgan-Hubbard embarked on a parallel process in the community -- meeting and connecting people and organizations just outside the University’s doors. She began to find a number of natural constituents and likely allies for an engaged university initiative amongst members of the County’s not-for-profit infrastructure, its elected and appointed government, other educational, religious and training institutions, community development corporations, service agencies and businesses.
Included were such committed County individuals as Desiree Griffin-Moore of the Prince George’s County Community Foundation, Glenn Ivey, the County’s District Attorney, David Harrington, Peter Shapiro and other members of the County Council, William Ritter and a host of public school teachers and principals, Darius Stanton and others from the Boys and Girls Club, Mosi Harrington of the Housing Initiative Partnership, Carlos Gimenez and Marietta Ulacia of the Latin American Folk Institute, Brooke Kidd of the World Arts Focus/Joe's Movement Emporium, Sam Parker of the National Capital Area Parks and Planning, Tom Hucker and others from Progressive Maryland, Eric Olsen from College Park City Council, Daniel Jones of the Young Latino Leadership Council, Jennifer Freedman and others from CASA Maryland, Lori Kaplan from the Latin American Youth Center, Delegate Justin Ross, Senator Paul Pinsky, Sharon Starling of Shalom After-School Arts Program and many others.
Creating a Culture of Participation
The surplus of long-distance commuters in the County and in the University makes engagement a challenge to promote and maintain, because commuters tend to have very little time for participating in community development. To achieve her goals, Morgan-Hubbard knew it was important to help create new habits of participation in such a large and decentralized University and County. She began to challenge people to act on their common interests and invited them to participate in campus and community events and discussions that might in some way advance collaboration.
As people began to discover shared understandings and concerns, they also felt more empowered and more willing to devote personal resources and capacities to collaborative work. The networks began to grow and take shape, and new relationships emerged into a collective body that was larger than the sum of its disparate parts. People began to contact Morgan-Hubbard to learn of meetings and propose ways to work more effectively together.
Second Step: Identifying Key Issues and an Action Agenda
Through mining the content of many meetings and exchanges, Morgan-Hubbard discovered overlaps and patterns. An incipient research agenda and various action strategies began to emerge from these initial investigations. Three key areas of concern to both the campus and the community emerged:
- quality university-assisted community schools;
- equitable and inclusive local economic and community development; and
- the advancement of cultural democracy.
In the summer of 2003, a number of graduate students were hired to work with campus/community partners to find and promote research and practice in these three areas. Marie Troppe — PhD candidate in English specializing in 19th Century African-American Literature — became the Engaged University's first Assistant Director. Troppe is an acknowledged expert on service-learning and community-based research, and helped focus the Engaged University team on strategic planning and implementation.
Community / University Assessment
Graduate students Jared Ball (Journalism), Leticia Williams (Education), Mia Reddy (American Studies), Gisele Mills (Ethnomusicology), and Patrice White (Criminology) worked to gather information about the structures, history and cultures of the State, the University and the County. Together they began to amass the raw material --articles, publications, relevant models and data about the assets, needs and concerns of the University and the County that are vital for a systemic analysis.
As part of this process, Morgan-Hubbard co-taught an Asset Mapping class for youth at the local public high school-- Northwestern High School in Hyattsville, Maryland. The Asset Mapping project was conducted in partnership with Peter Levine and Carrie Donovan, both of the School of Public Affair’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE). Together they worked with students to assemble an information commons website -- http://www.princegeorges.org/ --as a tool for information sharing and networking on the history, culture and assets of the County.
Third Step: ”Engagement Parties“
A third step in the organizing process was to deepen shared understandings and the possibility of collaboration by creating opportunities for people to deliberate with one another about their circumstances. It was important to be able to provide feedback to allow them to reinterpret these circumstances in ways that open up new possibilities for action, and to develop strategies and tactics that make creative use of the University and County’s resources and opportunities.
In December of 2002 Morgan-Hubbard organized the first in a series of seven day-long community/university meetings with 100 attendees equally drawn from the campus and the County, for group reframing, joint envisioning and collective planning. The agenda that emerged from this series of seven ”engagement parties“ over the course of 18 months formed the basis of the Engaged University's present community work.
Undoing Racism and Dismantling Its Enabling Structures
In the planning of all Engaged University meetings, in the conduct of collaborative deliberations and in the execution of all EU projects and programs, Morgan-Hubbard sought to consciously highlight the leadership, accomplishments and wisdom of women and people of color, and to create diverse multicultural and cross-disciplinary groups that minimize hierarchies and prohibit any one person, approach, group or gender to dominate the discourse or its outcome.
Morgan-Hubbard encouraged participants to collaborate to design collective solutions across the boundaries of race, gender, ethnicity, class and other differences, so as to consciously alter established power balances and to allow new power bases and affiliations emerge.
Current Structure of the Engaged University
In April 2006, then University Provost William Destler, Vice President of University Relations Brodie Remington and AGNR Dean Cheng-I Wei supported the Engaged University’s transfer to the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources (AGNR), as a step toward the greater institutionalization of community-university partnerships at the College Park campus.
In July 2006, The Engaged University became a division of Maryland Cooperative Extension (MCE). An Advisory Board was formed, headed by University trustee and EU supporter Jane Brown. The Engaged University was asked to administer the new Community Partners Program, a five-year $400,000 effort to connect and fund community-university partnerships.
In August 2007 the Engaged University moved to the Center for Educational Partnership building in Riverdale, Maryland.
See What We Do for more information.