Campus Community Collaborations
Examples & Resources for Community Colleges

College Compact and Freshman Company is a leadership and citizenship-building program in which college and urban high school students come together in a mentoring partnership. College student mentors learn a proven leadership model, the American Youth Foundation's Team Formula for Effecting Change. The college students receive training concerning the model during four three-hour training sessions and then teach it to their partnered high school mentees during a weekend retreat. Leading by example, the high school participants then utilize the model to positively impact and change their high school and surrounding community in the four priority areas selected by the Corporation for National Service: environment, safety, health, and education. Together the mentoring partners develop and implement action plans that include their immediate community, emphasizing that the high school students are important contributing members of the community who can proactively bring about change in their urban environment.

By fostering capacity-building skills in at-risk students, college student participants practice valuable leadership skills, such as consensus building, program planning and interpersonal communication techniques. The implementation and integration of these skills in the mentoring relationship in both partners leads to service-learning projects based on the four priority levels identified by the National Corporation for Service.

Approximately 260 public school students participate in the program each year at the freshman level. A continuation and expansion of the program is being developed for returning sophomores and includes recruitment of Freshman Company participants.

The partnership program between the colleges and high schools began in 1992 and includes participation by the American Youth Foundation. The foundation provides an indoor camp facility where the college mentors, high school mentees and staff advisors from the high schools and colleges attend an overnight retreat in a rural setting to promote team building while teaching the capacity-building skills and leadership. Two colleges and their two partnered high schools attend on separate weekends due to the large groups involved. It is at this site that the forty participants from each school break into teams of ten, with two college mentors per team, and design their service-learning projects in one of the four targeted areas. In this format, each school has one project that addresses the environment, safety, health, and education.

Through College Compact and Freshman Company, four colleges and universities in the Grand Rapids area partner with one of four city high schools. While Grand Rapids Community College is the only community college currently involved, the model provides a leveling effect in that all the partners have equal access to the training procedure and resources (that is, the retreat site, handouts, etc.). Ten mentors from each college, called The Compact, train and facilitate the development and implementation of visions, goals, and action plans that are designed by forty at-risk freshmen from each high school, called The Company. Environment, safety, health, and education are the four priority areas targeted by the National Corporation for Service and addressed by the projects the high school students design. Through implementing their action plans, both the freshmen and the college mentors develop a greater willingness to address community problems, as evidenced through preactivity and postactivity surveys. The students also provide role modeling and networking opportunities throughout the educational communities involved.

Additionally, the freshmen experience community and group-building models, both interscholastically and intrascholastically, that have led to empowerment outcomes, including observable positive changes in overall freshman participation in school activities.

Funding sources for the program include the National Corporation for Service, the Michigan Community Service Commission, the Brunswick Foundation, and the Michigan Campus Compact.

Laura Bridges is a Psychology faculty member at Grand Rapids Community College (GRCC) in Michigan. She earned her master's degree in Psychology from the University of Georgia. During her first year at GRCC, she was introduced to service-learning and now integrates service into all of her psychology classes: General/Introduction, Child Psychology, Abnormal Psychology, Life-Span Human Development, and Statistics. She also is dedicated to assisting faculty at GRCC and other institutions with integrating service into their classes.

Laura serves on a Michigan Community College committee whose focus is to integrate service-learning into the college curriculum. She works with the GRCC Freshman Company and is a member of the Southern Gerontological Society. She is currently assessing ways to combine gerontology and service-learning.

Martha Cox was Personnel Technician for Grand Rapids Public School prior to joining Grand Rapids Community College. As a campaign coordinator for the United Way, she achieved successful fund-raising results during a time of economic crisis. She is an interpreter for Spanish-speaking families at the Ronald McDonald House, previous co-chair of the Mexican Patriotic Committee, and volunteer for Festival 92-96 (one of the largest festivals in the United States). She is very active in her church, serves on the board of directors for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, and is a past member of the Grand Rapids Jaycees.

Martha's current position is Coordinator of Service-Learning at Grand Rapids Community College since 1993.

		Service-Learning Collaboration with Four-Year Institutions
		Service-Learning: A Synergistic Model
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