Campus Community Collaborations
Examples & Resources for Community Colleges

Greater Spokane has a unique opportunity in that six colleges and universities have a major presence in our community. These colleges are Spokane Community College, Whitworth College, Gonzaga University, Washington State University, Spokane Falls Community College, and Eastern Washington University. Over the last nine years, these organizations also have been academically connected by the Joint Center for Higher Education that coordinates educational offerings in the area. This provides stimulation and rewards cooperation and collaboration for the institutions.

As a result of excellent presidential leadership, the six institutions have the strongest potential for collaboration efforts. This sets the stage for two- and four-year college collaboration in service-learning, and it has been productive.

Over the past six years, the city of Spokane has hosted three statewide conferences for Campus Compact of the state of Washington. By co-hosting the event (one college took the lead), the program has been a model for quality, completeness, and production and has been meaningful and well attended. At each event, at least eight college presidents attended and participated in the conference. That effort promoted attendance by other staff members as well. We will continue to do this.

More than six years ago, Community Colleges of Spokane initiated a program called Adopt-A-School. Grant Elementary School was chosen because it had some of the greatest human needs: low-income area; teenage dropouts; crime, diversity; a preponderance of single parents; etc. The goal was to develop a model program for providing multiple services to Grant to help children succeed in school. All the local colleges were invited to participate, and four played a role in the program.

During a five-year period, more than five hundred students, staff, and faculty participated in all kinds of activities: tutoring, mentoring, parent cooperative, parent workshops, carpentry projects, visiting colleges, a quarterly presidential luncheon for students who excelled, building a computer center, and twenty other related activities.

College service-learning coordinators met to discuss what the needs were, how they could be met, and who would take the lead. The result was a highly coordinated program that provided service to more than 70 percent of the students at Grant. The program was a great success. An evaluation process was utilized and the results were positive.

Three of the colleges collaborated to build a house for Habitat for Humanity. More than two hundred students participated in the construction process. The carpentry program at Spokane Community College took the lead in building the facility. Volunteers are still assisting other agencies that build houses for Habitat in Spokane. More than fifty students assist each year.

Other collaborative efforts include voter registration, developing youth community service programs in the Spokane school district, hotline to the Washington state legislature, working with Coalition Against Malicious Harassment, and shared AmeriCorps staff, to mention a few.

Many potential projects are under consideration:

• develop tuition waivers for transfer students who promote service-learning (under discussion)
• utilize work-study students to promote community service projects (already started)
• promote sabbatical leave for faculty to develop service-learning programs (one this year)
• develop home page and Internet service-learning in Spokane (committee formed)
• continue to promote joint funding projects (ongoing)
• conduct joint faculty meetings at colleges to promote service-learning (to be discussed this year)
• ask departments at different colleges to conduct joint meetings to write service-learning curriculum (one meeting already held)
• conduct joint college award ceremonies where we celebrate student/staff successes (to be discussed this year)
• develop strong and effective joint summer youth college for ages nine to fifteen (Spokane Falls Community College has been doing this for seven years and will take the lead)
• work out joint public relations/promotional campaigns (two colleges already involved)
• develop "impact statements" that tell how the six colleges/universities have accomplished activities in the community (discussion already started)

Strong presidential leadership is required for effective two-year/four-year collaborative efforts. Effective evaluation assists by showing the college community the effectiveness of the program. Recognition of outstanding efforts must be made. The programs need to be institutionalized to be effective on a long-term basis.

College presidents who are involved in service-learning need to recruit other presidents to get involved: Colleges/universities that have strong and effective service-learning programs have better students, better faculty, and a vision to succeed. Enthusiasm spreads and makes a difference.

Since 1987 Dr. Terry Brown has been the Chief Executive Officer of the Community Colleges of Spokane in Washington. He is one of the founders of the Washington State Campus Compact and a current member of the Campus Compact National Center for Community Colleges Executive Advisory Board.

Previously, he was the President of Western Wyoming College and Yakima Valley College (Washington). He also taught chemistry, mathematics and physics in K-12. His doctorate is from Oregon State University, and he earned master's degrees from Oregon State University and Pacific Lutheran University. Terry has demonstrated leadership on his campus and in his community by serving on various boards.

		Educational Partnerships with Business and Industry
		College Compact and Freshman Company
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