TRINITYADVANCE
10
Looking back, looking
Five years in Written by Mark Jackson, Professor & Chair of Children, Youth & Family Studies and Director, Center for Community Engagement
“We’re so glad you’re here.” This is perhaps the most common phrase I hear from Everett’s community leaders and residents when I introduce myself as a professor at Trinity Lutheran College. As we near the end of our fifth academic year in Everett, our reception in the community, indeed, continues to be warm and inviting. We are becoming known as our students live downtown, volunteer in local nonprofits and churches, shop in stores, eat in restaurants and get hired as employees in local businesses. We frequently appear among the pages of the Daily Herald (Everett’s newspaper), including a May 2011 editorial about Trinity’s positive impact in downtown Everett. Mayor Ray Stephanson graciously welcomed Trinity to his city at the October 2008 campus dedication and returned in 2010 to welcome President John Reed at his inauguration. It’s great to be known as we continue to make our home here. Our welcome, in part, might be attributed to Trinity’s posture for relating to our new neighbors. One danger of a collegecommunity partnership is that a college can drive the agenda. It’s not uncommon for communities to hear from a college “We need business internships … We will provide this training … We want that grant ... Here’s what we expect.” Instead, Trinity’s approach has been to listen to the expressed priorities, needs, concerns and opportunities of our community partners and discover what it is we might do together. This approach takes time. There are two community coalitions I have met with regularly for two years where my involvement has largely been to understand what’s happening in local
neighborhoods and how Trinity might become involved (or not) in the future. I’ve found that agency leaders find this a refreshing approach, as we come to the table with open ears and open minds, not with an agenda or an ill-conceived list of assumptions about what the community needs. At one particular meeting, I shared that after several years we (meaning Trinity) were still trying to find our role within the community, to which an established nonprofit agency leader replied, “So are we, and we’ve been here for decades!” We’re evidently among good company when it comes to determining how we might best serve our community.
Connections become contributions Many professors and administrators have made connections in their respective circles and slowly, but surely, relationships have developed, partnerships have formed, and we’ve started making contributions to Snohomish County: •
Students in Service Learning Practicum courses last year completed over 1,700 hours of community service through local churches, agencies, schools and other nonprofits. The Everett YMCA, just a block from campus, hosts about six students working in their child and youth programs and Volunteers of America’s most recent newsletter featured a “volunteer spotlight” on a senior business major.