From the Editor's Desk Barbara A. Holltlnd In January 1998, a conference was held that has advanced the understand- ing of the nature and form of complex university-community partnerships and of the role of the federal government in supporting such interactions. For the first time, the U.S. Departments of Education and of Housing and Urban Development jointly sponsored a conference exploring the lessons learned from some of their grant pro- grams that fund university-community partnerships. For two days, lively discus- sions took place among community leaders, government officials, university repre- sentatives, and public school administrators. Clearly, there has been a dramatic increase in the use of collaborations to address the large systems that shape community life, such as the schools, health care, public safety, job creation, or social services. The decade of the 1990s has been a time of increasing awareness of the tnultidimensional, interrelated nature of the challenges and opportunities facing our nation's communities. A theme that grew from the conference discussion was the new, experience-based understanding that the probable effectiveness of economic and community development strategies is driven, in great part, by the involvement of the educational system at all levels. To see the growing integration of education with community and economic development, one need only look at some of the grant programs administered by the two federal departments hosting the conference. Both agencies have sought to use federal support as a catalyst for encouraging local solutions to local problems, uti- lizing the convening capacity and intellectual resources of higher education institu- tions as a means to organize and sustain local collaborations. Two programs in- tended to promote university engagement in community-based issues through part- nership activities are the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Community Out- reach Partnership Centers (COPC) and the Urban Community Service program of the Department of Education (Title XI). A study of the abstracts from the grant recipients yielded the following areas of emphasis. Among 59 COPC grants awarded from 1994-97 by the Office of University Partnerships at HUD, 34 included one or more activities related to edu- cational reform, school improvement, and student success. Of these, 11 involved the creation of new or improved academic programs such as language education, math and science curricula, reading rooms, field trips, and experiential learning. Ten included strategies to improve student success and retention; seven had compo- nents related to school-to-work programs. Thirteen supported mentoring and tutor- 4 Metropolitan Universities/Spring 1998 ing services for students. Other educational activities funded by COPC grants in- cluded parental involvement, technology education, links to social services, teacher development, and community involvement. The 34 grants that included elements of education also had some combina- tion of one or more other grant activities more familiar to HUD's more traditional interests: housing, community and economic development, job and workforce de- velopment, etc. The Title XI grants have a longer history, beginning in 1992. Taking the 32 awards funded in 1995 as an example, these grants from the Department of Educa- tion included 18 projects that did not have any specific component related to schools or education. Many projects focused on other critical urban issues such as delin- quency/crime/violence, health, community and economic development, housing, lead- ership development, community-based research, and environmental advocacy. Clearly, the myriad issues and challenges related to improvement of the total educational system and the pursuit of effective strategies for community devel- opment and revitaliz.ation are increasingly understood to be interrelated. The ideas and models of university-community partnerships that were developed at the con- ference will be available in Summer 1998 through a proceedings publication pro- duced by HUD and the Department of Education. It will be a valuable resource to all urban and metropolitan universities as we engage in more and increasingly com- plex partnerships with our cities. The two federal grant programs, COPC and Title XI, are relatively small in terms of the big picture of federal funding to universities, but for the institutions that have sought these grants, they have been key levers for achieving institutional trans- formation. Federal support has helped to validate the scholarship of community engagement as an important element of the mission of many institutions, certainly of the urban and metropolitan institutions. Title XI, in particular, is the only federal program that uses specific eligibil- ity requirements to designate urban and metropolitan institutions as uniquely quali- fied to apply for funds. Title XI has been sustained only through the coordinated lobbying efforts of several higher education associations (including the Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities) and other advocates. Unfortunately, only continuation funding has been available during the last two years. The HUD Com- munity Outreach Partnership Center program, which is the focus of this issue of Metropolitan Universities, was funded as a five-year demonstration project and will be up for review and renewal this year. These programs are key to ongoing efforts to build and sustain university- community relationships that are the defining characteristic of urban and metropoli- tan universities. Even if your institution has not received one of these grants, your campus has benefited from the greater visibility they have given to urban and met- ropolitan institutuions and to the growing value placed on university-community interactions. I encourage you to make sure that your Congressional leaders are 5 aware of the importance of these programs as tools for linking education and com- munity development strategies in response to the challenges and opportunities fuc- ing our cities. In addition, we must continue to encourage, if not demand, the devel- opment of effective communications and logical relationships among different fed- eral programs that have related purposes and goals. I want to thank Mary Ellen Mazey, who has assembled a diverse array of articles for Metropolitan Universities that draw critical lessons from the experi- ences of some of the COPC grant sites. To give all COPC grantees an equal oppor- tunity to contribute, the articles were selected through a peer review process. As Director of the Office of University Partnerships at HUD during 1997, Mary Ellen effectively raised the level of visibility of the COPC program among institutions of higher education, and improved the network of communications and sharing among the grant projects. She was a major force behind the idea of this first joint confer- ence between two federal agencies. Her commitment to the program and to the pro- motion of community engagement as a defining aspect of urban and metropolitan institutions identifies her as a national leader in the exploration of community-uni- versity partnerships. - Metropolitan Universities.I .u.....-..r- - I /~ " ....... ~D """'r--.. I ....... 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