2017-18 USD Changemaker Hub Annual Report

ANNUAL REPORT 2017-18

DEAR USD CHANGEMAKERS,

In 2017–18, the Changemaker Hub continued to sponsor or co-sponsor a variety of curricular and co-curricular opportunities for students, faculty and staff to practice changemaking. It is hard to believe that Ashoka designated USD as a Changemaker Campus seven years ago. Since 2011, USD has been a part of a vibrant learning community comprised of more than 40 institutions dedicated to institutional change. Throughout this time, the university’s commitment to the practice of changemaking has deepened and expanded in multiple ways. In 2017–18, Ashoka officially renewed USD’s designation as a Changemaker Campus after a yearlong review process. As part of a renewal process for this designation, the Changemaker Hub completed an extensive review of its structures and programs, which included a site visit consisting of Ashoka staff, change leaders from other universities and community members. The feedback USD received from Ashoka highlights the extraordinary dedication the entire campus has to promoting changemaking and social innovation. The renewal letter states that “[o]ne of the most important aspects of University of San Diego’s work in social innovation and changemaking is the depth and breadth of its numerous co-curricular and curricular offerings” and that they were “impressed to see multiple entryways into changemaking available for students, staff, and faculty….” In addition, the letter highlights “[t]he passion the students demonstrated in the work they are doing, and the quality of the programs they presented are both testaments to the strong culture and support system the Hub has in place to support student-led programs.” We are very proud of the strides we have taken as a university to promote social change and we know that these efforts will only expand and deepen through the Envisioning 2024 Strategic Plan.

This annual report provides a snapshot of how the hub empowers students, faculty and staff to use their knowledge and experiences to develop ways to address the world’s most pressing problems. Students learn how best to distill their ideas, immerse themselves into community, conduct research, effectively scale programs for the greatest impact, write business plans and turn their concepts into actionable solutions that create positive social impact locally and abroad. Our approach continues to focus on breaking down siloes, bridging theory and practice, and steering initiatives toward multidisciplinarity, all in the name of equipping new skills for social impact and positive change.

We look forward to 2018–19 as the hub continues to support and catalyze the practice of changemaking at USD.

Mike Williams ’92 Director, Changemaker Hub Professor, Political Science and International Relations

Juan Carlos Rivas

Associate Director, Changemaker Hub

At USD, we believe that everyone can practice changemaking. We encourage our community to commit themselves to be in the service of addressing social issues that matter to you and exploring new ideas that will have a positive social impact. “To be in the service of” means that we approach our changemaking pursuits with humility and that we understand that our efforts are linked to those who have pursued social justice in the past and those who will follow our own efforts.

+

Envisioning 2024 | sandiego.edu/practicechangemaking

“Action without learning is ignorance, learning without action is selfish.”

Daniela Papi-Thorton, Deputy Director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship

PRACTICE CHANGEMAKING

+

CHANGEMAKER STUDENT COMMITTEE

PHOTOS BY STEVEN ROSENFIELD

The CSC is a student team organizing, promoting and supporting a culture of changemaking and innovation on campus. In the 2017–18 school year, the CSC continued the tradition of holding their signature event, My Story. This is a storytelling event where our community members share and are met with empathy and open hearts. In addition, 2017 marked the third year of the What I Be Project at USD, a photography project created by Steve Rosenfield focusing on insecurities, vulnerability, and diversity featuring 75 students, faculty members, and staff. They also participated in a number of field trips to local social change organizations like Homeboy Industries, Kitchens for Good and Fair Trade Coffee Cafe Virtuoso. The team launched a series of new events such as the Career Impact Fair, a collaboration with the Career Development Center, which is the first student-run career fair at USD where students got to meet companies that can take their changemaking practice to the professional level.

+

What I Be 2018 | facebook.com/SteveRosenfieldPhotography

CHANGEMAKER CHALLENGE

The theme for the Changemaker Challenge this year was Access and Equity: Housing, Education and Healthcare.

There were a total of 91 entries and more than 260 students participating in the challenge, which sparked ideas for student entries on a variety of topics from storytelling as a medium to preserve culture in Barrio Logan to developing maps of our own community, Linda Vista, from the perspective of the children that live in it. The funding for this idea competition was made possible by the generosity of the AlcalĂĄ Alumni Fund. The top seven finalists competed on social media for a pool of money of $6,000. Based on the percentage of votes their videos earned, the teams received awards ranging from $2,200 to $200.

+ +

Awards story | sandiego.edu/changemaker/challengewinners Challenge page | changemakerchallenge.me

“I sometimes forget that change can begin on the smallest levels. It can begin with my better taking care of myself and those around me.�

CHANGEMAKER BLOCK PARTY

More than 300 students, faculty and staff came together in October 2017 to celebrate our seventh year being designated as an Ashoka U Changemaker Campus. Our block party featured campuswide opportunities to engage in social change. It included student-lead initiatives such as, Soulr Cart and Pee in Peace, as well as community partners like YALLA San Diego, a college preparatory program in California with a mission to use soccer to motivate refugee and immigrant youth to help rebuild their lives in the United States.

+

FEST story | sandiego.edu/CMfest

+

+

+ USD was well represented with a delegation of 16 students, faculty

ASHOKA U EXCHANGE

members and staff at the 2018 Ashoka U Exchange cohosted by Babson College in Boston, Massachusetts. They attended workshops, lectures and conversations about innovation and changemaking in higher education and beyond. In particular, Bridget Gramme, Director of the Center for Public Interest Law, participated in the first-ever law school section at the Exchange and alumnus Charlotte Vitak (2017) participated on a panel discussing her recently launched social venture, My Story.

The trip energized our community in many ways and increased collaboration between faculty and students on changemaking.

+

My Story at the Ashoka U Exchange | https://youtu.be/ePujKpsGPJA

changemaking projects and explore ways of addressing humanity’s urgent challenges. As part of the 13 SCC teams this year, 40 students received funding and guidance as they explored social issues and social justice while actively participating in a community-based or social enterprise experience. The range of projects included developing projects to increase sustainability, diversity and accessibility on campus, exploring ways to facilitate voter registration for homeless populations and families living below the poverty line and designing potential programs to support high school students in the Linda Vista community with applying to college.

+ +

Overview | sandiego.edu/socialchangecorps Meet the teams | sandiego.edu/sccteams

SOCIAL CHANGE CORPS

The SCC was created to support students with ideas for

45%

OF FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS CAME TO USD BECAUSE IT IS A CHANGEMAKER CAMPUS

70%

OF FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS WANT TO BE INVOLVED WITH CHANGEMAKING AT USD

Isabelle Ashraf ’19 Marketing

Reijer Den Dulk ’21

Industrial and Systems Engineering

FIRST-YEARS

40% INVOLVED WITH CHANGEMAKING AT USD

Aruna Gossai ’20 Economics

43% SENIORS

Madonna Connors ’21 Marketing and Finance

20

CHANGEMAKER HUB SPONSORED EVENTS IN 2016-17

Matteo Hernandez ’21 Mechanical Engineering

Olivia Devia ’21 Communications

1,255 STUDENTS PARTICIPATING IN CHANGEMAKER HUB SPONSORED EVENTS

CHANGEMAKER STUDENT FELLOWS

With the generous support of the USD Parents Association Board, the Hub’s team expanded this year. A total of $25,000 was donated to help hire a team of six student fellows leading changemaking efforts and planning Changemaker Hub initiatives. This year’s fellows were Dylan Valdivia, Riley Dean, Rachael Diaz, Julia Heaton, Julia Mahroos and Aruna Gossai.

The yearlong assignment helped the hub grow and create initiatives like the Changemaker Challenge, My Story, and the Humans of Linda Vista project, as well as increase our marketing and outreach efforts through updated social media channels, the newsletter and website.

This year, four undergraduate students — Isabelle Ashraf, Julia Heaton, Reijer den Dulk and Riley Dean — were named University Innovation Fellows through a program within Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. With the support of the President’s Office, the Fellows completed an experiential six-week online training program on design thinking, and in March 2018 they attended the Silicon Valley Meetup, where all 258 fellows from 64 higher education institutions in nine countries convened. The program empowers students to become agents of change at their respective schools. The work of our inaugural UIF cohort continues to advocate for lasting institutional change and create opportunities for students to engage with innovation, entrepreneurship, design thinking and creativity at their schools.

UNIVERSITY INNOVATION FELLOWS

Overview | sandiego.edu/changemaker/studentcommittee

CAMPUS COLLABORATION

At USD, we are proud of the fact that we are a community dedicated to changemaking. Over the last year, the Changemaker Hub worked with dozens of partners on campus to promote, sustain and catalyze changemaking.

Through our partnerships with Associated Students, Student Affairs, the Living Learning Communities, the Humanities Center and the Center for Educational Excellence, the hub cosponsored many events for students, such as My Story, What I Be, USD Votes and the incorporation of the USD Just Read program into the curriculum. In addition, the hub collaborated with Student Affairs and the Center for Inclusion and Diversity to launch the first-ever Dive Into Changemaking Day during OLÉ! Weekend, where every entering student participated in workshops demonstrating how students, faculty and staff practice changemaking at USD. The hub also partnered with the Provost Office, the Mulvaney Center, the Center for Inclusion and Diversity and the Center for Educational Excellence to offer an immersion experience in Linda Vista to all new faculty members. Finally, the hub codesigned the Impact Career Day Fair with the Career Development Center and offered the Envisioning 2024 Professional Learning Community with the Center for Educational Excellence and the Mulvaney Center. These collaborations highlight important ways in which USD continues to commit itself to its mission and values.

Maintaining a Changemaker Campus | sandiego.edu/cmpartners

IMPACT LINDA VISTA INITIATIVE

With the support of a generous grant received from U.S. Bank and the collaboration with the Mulvaney Center for Community, Awareness, and Social Action, eight faculty members and more than 240 students partnered with six community partners in Linda Vista in 2017–18. The overall purpose of ILVI is to bring USD faculty and students together with community partners to co-create and develop innovative and sustainable course-based collaborations in Linda Vista.

These collaborations can potentially extend across a wide range of disciplines and academic units on campus and across multiple sectors in the community and they collectively aim to create positive and meaningful social change. This year, the initiative was led by Dr. Kevin Guerrieri (faculty codirector) and Kim Heinle (community codirector) and included the following faculty and community partners: Drs. Evelyn Cruz, Marcelle Darby, Judy Liu, Jena Hales, Antonieta Mercado, Diane Keeling, Aarti Ivanic, Topher McDougal and Karen Macauley and Access Community Center, Montgomery Middle School, Linda Vista Teen Center, San Diego Police Department and San Diego Family Care. While USD has built a strong relationship with the Linda Vista community over many years, this initiative provided an opportunity for USD faculty and students to deepen their collaboration with many community leaders by highlighting their incredible work.

Impact Linda Vista | ilvisd.strikingly.com

CHANGEMAKER FACULTY FELLOWS

USD is proud of the many faculty members who are dedicated to the practice of changemaking. In 2017, the hub revised its Changemaker Faculty Champion program into one that provides faculty with more extensive professional development opportunities that focus on implementing changemaking through teaching and research. An unprecedented number of faculty members applied for this program and/or were nominated by their respective deans. Under the leadership of Dr. Aarti Ivanic, the faculty director for this program, the hub provided numerous workshops and immersion trips throughout year. Most notably, the hub was honored to recognize faculty from each of USD’s academic divisions, including, (pictured left to right, top row) Drs. Andrea Godfrey Flynn, Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, Christopher Carter, Divya Sitaraman,Eileen Fry-Bowers, Justine Rapp, Kate DeConinck, Marcus Lam, Joel Alejandro Mejia, Sarah Lyon, Christopher Newman, and Adjunct Professor Michael Goldfaden. There are now more than 35 faculty who are recognized as Faculty Changemaker Fellows/Champions. These faculty inspire their students and their colleagues to become involved in projects, courses, and community engagement opportunities that seek to make a positive social impact.

Overview | sandiego.edu/changemaker/faculty

changemaking both on and off campus. In addition to the significant number of projects that the hub supported in our local community in 2017–18, there were a number of changemaking initiatives that occurred globally as well. In particular, the hub collaborated with local partners in Chile, the United Kingdom and South Africa to provide students, faculty and staff with the opportunity to learn about, and take an active role in, a variety of social change initiatives.

These initiatives ranged from supporting local social entrepreneurs, providing workshops for youth leadership development and co-creating social innovation curricular modules for graduate students.

CHANGEMAKING IN COMMUNITY

The hub encourages students, faculty and staff to practice

“It helped me to better understand how changemaking doesn’t have to be something that you go out and do for your community but it can just be with yourself. ”

CHANGEMAKING MINOR

In 2017, USD launched the Changemaking minor. This interdisciplinary minor provides students with the opportunity to learn about the practice of changemaking in the classroom. Offered through the College of Arts and Sciences, the Changemaking minor provides students with a range of knowledge, perspectives, methodologies and skills that will equip them well to make positive social change and to be engaged, active members of their communities. One of the goals of the minor is to provide a curriculum for students to critically understand and implement social change projects.

We want our students to not only develop innovative approaches to existing problems, but we also want them to develop a deep understanding of the systemic roots of these issues, as well as the ability to empathize with others. In addition, we want our students to recognize that the most urgent challenges facing our communities today are ones that impact all of us and that we are all interconnected not only with respect to the challenges but with respect to the ways of addressing them as well. Because the most important and complex issues in the 21st century will require an interdisciplinary approach to effectively address them, this minor provides students with classroom and practical experiences that span different schools, units and departments at the University of San Diego.

”What I understand to be the most crucial aspect of USD’s Catholic identity is its call to recognize the inherent human dignity and full personhood of other people, and accordingly, to treat all people with respect, compassion, and empathy. Our identity as a Changemaker Campus depends on realizing these values.”

Chris Harrop ’18, excerpt from 2018 Commencement speech

2018-19 EVENT CALENDAR

DIVE INTO CHANGEMAKING ORIENTATION SESSIONS

SEPTEMBER 3

MY STORY

OCTOBER 23 AND NOVEMBER 14

IMPACT CAREER FAIR

OCTOBER 25

DESIGN THINKING CRASH COURSE

OCTOBER 27

CHANGEMAKER CHALLENGE DEADLINE

NOVEMBER 19

WHAT I BE?

FEBRUARY 18

sandiego.edu/changemaker

CHANGEMAKER HUB

sandiego.edu/changemaker Facebook: usdchangemakerhub Twitter: @usdchangemaker Instagram: usdchangemakerhub CAMPUS OFFICES

Student Life Pavilion, Room 320 and Serra Hall, Room 200 (Humanities Center) PHONE

(619) 260-2798 EMAIL

Mike Williams: jmwilliams@sandiego.edu Juan Carlos Rivas: jcrivas@sandiego.edu Office: changemaker@sandiego.edu