Campus Community Collaborations
Examples & Resources for Community Colleges

Mesa is a community of more than 350,000 residents in Maricopa County, an area of about two million people with Phoenix at its core. During the 1970s and 1980s, Mesa was one of the fastest-growing communities in the country, nearly tripling in population. The area is characterized by sprawling urban housing development, abandonment of old neighborhoods in favor of new housing development, little sense of community and, until recently, almost no neighborhood organization. The new, more complex challenges presented by the rapid growth of the city have raised concerns about declining public participation and, as a consequence, the difficulty of developing effective community leaders.

Mesa Community College (MCC), the largest of ten Maricopa County community colleges, has always been active in community affairs. However, recognizing the many new challenges facing our communities, MCC, led by President Larry Christiansen, has stepped up its efforts to be more fully involved in community life. One of the steps taken was to create the Center for Public Policy and Service (CPPS), which opened its doors in the spring of 1992, offering internship-style service-learning courses to students. At this time, internship-type courses are offered in twenty-two disciplines, through which approximately fifty students per semester contribute an average of five thousand volunteer hours. Building on the success of these courses, the CPPS began integrating service-learning into existing classes in the fall of 1993. Mesa Community College has twenty-five faculty offering service-learning as part of an existing course, which gives the community 2,500-3,500 hours of volunteer assistance per semester. The disciplines represented by these figures include nontraditional service-learning disciplines, such as Geography, Biology, and Computer Science.

In addition to promoting service-learning, the Center for Public Policy and Service contributes to community collaborations by providing staff support for the Mesa Community Roundtable, the Mesa Action Committees, and the Building a Healthier Mesa program. These activities have contributed to more extensive ties between Mesa Community College and the business community, as detailed on the following page.

The Mesa Chamber of Commerce's primary mission is to promote the success of its members' businesses. However, Chamber members, recognizing that business success is enhanced by a vibrant community, have used the Chamber as a vehicle to participate in community affairs. Historically, the Chamber contributed to the community in three primary ways. First, the Chamber is directly involved in public policy, especially issues that impact economic development, such as tax policy and zoning. Second, the Chamber has helped finance and shape social services by encouraging Chamber members to support United Way fund-raisers in their businesses and to participate on United Way committees. Third, to meet the need for informed community leadership, in 1981 the Chamber began its Leadership Training and Development program, which provides participants with an overview of important community issues and provides them with access to key community leaders.

By the late 1980s, many civic leaders were concerned that rapid growth was changing the small-town, family-friendly atmosphere of Mesa. They saw a need to respond to the new challenges facing Mesa and to better anticipate and shape future development. To promote greater civic responsibility and activism, Vision Mesa, a citizen-driven community development effort, was launched in 1990. Committees were created to develop visions of what Mesa will be in the year 2015. Each committee dealt with a specific issue area, such as economic development and education. These Vision committees met periodically for several months, finalizing their visions in the spring of 1993. Vision Mesa was supported by the Chamber and many of its members were active in the process.

Vision Mesa was a great success. As detailed below, it led to the creation of the Mesa Action Committees and the Mesa Community Roundtable. These and other endeavors have led to a stronger, more productive relationship between Mesa Community College and our business community.

Mesa Community College began working more closely with the Mesa Chamber of Commerce on community affairs in the spring of 1993. The Chamber sponsors a yearly public policy gathering called Mesa Speaks. Prior to 1993, Mesa Speaks was held out-of-town as a retreat for Chamber members. In 1993, the Chamber decided to hold Mesa Speaks locally, open it to all Mesa residents, and to use the meeting as a culmination for Vision Mesa. The Chamber held Mesa Speaks at MCC to take advantage of the meeting facilities and to capitalize on MCC's role as a familiar community asset, open to all.

The primary goal of Mesa Speaks '93 was to discuss action items produced by the Vision Mesa committees, have participants prioritize the action items, and, finally, to create citizen action committees to implement the priority actions. At Mesa Speaks and in the following weeks, eleven Mesa Action Committees were created, as listed in Table 1.

Another major recommendation that emerged from Mesa Speaks '93 was the request that a Mesa Community Roundtable be established. The Roundtable serves two functions. First, it provides a regular forum to bring together representatives of major civic institutions in Mesa to enable greater cooperation on citywide issues. The institutions that participate are the Mesa Chamber of Commerce, Mesa Community College, Mesa Public Schools, the City of Mesa, the Mesa United Way and the Mesa Action Committees (see Table 2 for membership). Second, the Roundtable also holds public forums. These public forums are designed to promote discussion of public policy, to bring together fragmented efforts to deal with particular issues, and to give ordinary citizens access to institutional leaders.

The Chamber and MCC collaborate on the Roundtable and support the Mesa Action Committees in several ways. First, the institutions now meet regularly through the Roundtable meetings. The Center for Public Policy and Service at MCC provides staff support for the Roundtable and the Mesa Action Committees, arranging meetings and taking minutes for the steering committees of each group. Additionally, the Roundtable public forums are held at MCC and coordinated by the CPPS. Among the topics that have been addressed at the public forums are neighborhood organizing, education, transportation and Kids Voting.

MCC and the Chamber also collaborate on the production and distribution of Action Mesa!, a newsletter published by the Mesa Action Committees and the Roundtable. Action Mesa! is written by a CPPS staff member who maintains a database of citizens that receive a direct mailing of the newsletter. One Chamber member provides the copying expense for the newsletter, another provides postage for the direct mailing, and the Chamber both distributes the newsletter with its monthly member mailing and uses its bulk mail permit for direct mailing. The circulation for this newsletter has grown from an original base of a few hundred to a total of more than two thousand at this time.

MCC's collaboration with the Chamber for Mesa Speaks has also continued. Mesa Speaks has been held at MCC since 1993, with the last three meetings devoted to neighborhood organizing, transportation, and neighborhood economic development. A growing number of MCC faculty and staff participate in Mesa Speaks. For example, at this year's gathering, more than a dozen MCC personnel participated, with three faculty volunteering as facilitators for breakout sessions.

There is extensive faculty involvement in our collaboration with the Mesa Chamber of Commerce. First, as mentioned previously, many faculty participate in the Mesa Action Committees. For example, four faculty served on an education committee that wrote a proposal for the development of business-education partnerships and sponsored a "principal for a day" business exchange program. This committee actually grew out of a Chamber education committee, and a faculty member was instrumental in combining the two groups into one.

Second, ten faculty have participated in visits to Roundtable-related community sites. These site visits have allowed faculty to better integrate service-learning opportunities for their students into their regular classes and to begin to build trusting relationships with the site supervisors.

Third, as mentioned previously, many of our faculty have participated in the annual Mesa Speaks meetings.

Finally, faculty also lend support to Mesa Community Roundtable public forums. Many faculty who hold classes at the same time as the public forums bring their classes to these forums when the subject matter is relevant to their course work. Additionally, faculty have offered alternative assignments or extra credit to their students for attending and reporting on these public forums.

The collaboration between Mesa Community College and the Chamber has already produced dramatic community benefits. First, as noted previously, MCC and the Chamber were two of the key players in creating the Mesa Community Roundtable. To our knowledge, Mesa is the only large community that has regular meetings of the executives of their key civic institutions (see Table 2). The Community Roundtable has led to unprecedented levels of collaboration among these institutions. Furthermore, the Roundtable has also promoted greater citizen activism because of the access to civic leaders that the Roundtable public forums provide. At least fourteen citizen groups have participated in Roundtable forums.

Building a Healthier Mesa (BHM), a community organizing program, has benefited greatly from MCC and the Chamber. For example, Mesa Speaks '94, organized by the Chamber and hosted by MCC, was devoted to BHM. At that time, only one Mesa neighborhood had been organized as a pilot for the program. It was hoped that through Mesa Speaks, four or five more neighborhoods might begin to organize. Instead, ten additional neighborhood organizations were initiated during Mesa Speaks.

There is both a great need and great promise for replicating this collaboration in other communities. It is critical that community colleges cooperate with business institutions, especially grassroots business groups such as chambers of commerce. This collaboration offers many mutual benefits beyond the obvious ones of business providing finances and colleges offering worker training. MCC's collaboration with the Mesa Chamber of Commerce has encouraged both institutions to increase their community service and, thereby, has increased the number, diversity and quality of service-learning opportunities for MCC students.

An important point reinforced by our collaboration with the Chamber is the need for constant renewal of relationships and the necessity to adjust to change. For example, some Chamber members are questioning whether or not the Chamber is exceeding its role. They argue that the Chamber should restrict its activities to those which directly improve its members' profitability. As a partner with the Chamber, MCC has the opportunity to

encourage Chamber members to keep their organization involved in the community by

helping to draw the connections between community health and business success. MCC can also help to reward the Chamber by helping to publicize its community contributions both in school publications and in the local press.

As the city grows and changes, MCC's relationship with the Chamber will also change. We are confident that the many benefits derived from this positive relationship will continue to make it flourish.

Jesse Chanley is the Assistant Director of the Center for Public Policy and Service at Mesa Community College in Arizona. At the CPPS, he promotes the integration of service-learning into MCC's academic curriculum and also assists with public policy formation and community development. The CPPS provides staff support to Action Mesa!, a new citywide network of citizen activists and civic institutions, and also works closely with a United Way neighborhood development program. Jesse's primary areas of interest are environmental and educational issues. In recent years, he has been a candidate for office in the state legislature.

Bicycle/Pedestrian Amenities Mesa Family Entertainment Center

Business/Education Partnerships Public/Private Partnerships

Community Information System Seniors

Economic Development Solar Research and Development

Ethnic/Cultural/Age Diversity Transportation

Joint School/Community Center Usage

Mesa Community College Mesa Chamber of Commerce
Larry Christiansen, President Dave Wier, President
Sue McAleavey, Director, CPPS Charles Deaton, Director

City of Mesa Mesa Public Schools
Farrell Jensen, City Council Member James Zaharis, Superintendent
Michael Hutchinson, Assistant City Manager Beth Coons, School Board Member

Mesa United Way Action Mesa Committees
Debra Duvall, Chairperson Connie Gullatt-Whiteman, Chairperson
Dan Duncan, President Rotating Committee Chairperson

January 1992

Vision Mesa

January 1993

May 1993 5/93 Mesa Speaks '93 - Vision Mesa
Culmination of Vision Mesa
Mesa Action Committees Created
October 1993 10/93 Roundtable Public Forum - Mesa Action Committees

January 1994 1/94 Roundtable Public Forum - MESA LINK, Downtown
May 1994 5/94 Mesa Speaks '94 - Building a Healthier Mesa
June 1994 6/94 Roundtable Steering Committee Retreat
September 1994 9/94 Roundtable Public Forum - BHM Update, Election Issues

January 1995 1/95 Roundtable Public Forum - Transportation
April 1995 4/95 Roundtable Public Forum - Education, Bond Election
May 1995 5/95 Mesa Speaks '95 - Transportation
June 1995 6/95 Roundtable Steering Committee Retreat

January 1996
February 1996 2/96 Public Forum for Kids Voting Mesa
May 1996 5/96 Mesa Speaks '96 - Neighborhood Economic Development

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