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Introduction:
Drawing on the Local drew 180 people (from the university, urban community groups, schools, and foundations) into a community problem-solving dialogue, asking: As Carnegie Mellon develops community-based courses, research, and outreach projects, what are the strategies for nurturing and drawing on local expertise? The opening Pittsburgh premier of "Art Show " gave life to the meaning of "local expertise" in a documentary of grassroots entrepreneurship, urban youth initiative, and creative performance in sites across the country. The panel and participants then examined alternative visions of collaboration around issues of urban youth, education, community development, and the digital divide. The Drawing on the Local traveling poster art exhibit told the story of multiple university/community partnerships at the reception hosted by the ProvostÕs Open Your Mind Forum. Issues on the Table How does this university -- and do we as a university? draw on the grassroots expertise in inner city communities and urban organizations in our teaching, research, outreach?
In dialogue with the audience
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The Panel
Shirley Brice Heath, Professor, Stanford University Dr. Heath, a linguistic anthropologist, Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellow, and Carnegie Mellon honorary degree recipient, joined the dialogue as the Director of ArtShow. Her decade of research with policy analyst Milbrey McLaughlin has studied learning in community youth organizations and the ways they (unlike the ways of school) develop linguistic and critical thinking skills. Their book, Identity and Inner-City Youth: Beyond Race and Gender, speaks directly to Pittsburgh. Esther Bush, President and Chief Executive Officer, The Urban League Ms. Bush is a dynamic change maker, who came "home" to Pittsburgh after directorships in New York and Hartford and a graduate degree from Johns Hopkins, with a sense of what the university can and could do. She is a forceful coalition builder and publisher of the recent State of Black Youth in Pittsburgh. Justin Johnson, Judge, Superior Court of Pennsylvania Judge Johnson has been a deeply respected voice in the Superior Court for 20 years. But for many his reputation for incisive thinking and decisive vision comes from his work as a Life Trustee of Carnegie Mellon, as a Presbyterian leader for Social Justice and Peacemaking, and a mentor of aspiring African American lawyers. Indira Nair, Vice Provost for Education, Professor, Carnegie Mellon Dr. Nair has been publicly recognized as one of Carnegie MellonÕs finest educators and for her research in Engineering and Public Policy on issues, such as environmental risk and green design, that have great community impact. As Vice Provost she is spearheading a process of educational broadening and creating new incentives for interdisciplinary and community-based courses. Linda Flower, Director, Center for University Outreach, Professor, Carnegie Mellon Dr. Flower, moderator, has connected her research on writing and cognition, problem solving and intercultural rhetoric to the development of the Community Literacy Center and the new Working Partners Network with community youth organizations, schools, and business. Her books, on intercultural interpretation and negotiated understanding, document strategies for community problem solving and collaboration. |
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The Pittsburgh Premier of ArtShow: Images of Expertise
In the lives and locations portrayed in the documentary video youth work as artists, teachers, and builders of local learning environments outside of schools, in arts-entrepreneurship organizations created and largely sustained by young people • an arts-entrepreneurship organization in Boston • a theatre and arts-business incubator in the South Bronx • a"student illustrators" project in rural California • a young artist who brought her Governor’s School for the Arts experience back to her rural Kentucky community Living in neighborhoods that place them “at risk” economically and socially, these young people have helped to create arts organizations that contradict the public perception of youth as vulnerable, apathetic, and disengaged from productive challenge. Here young people develop talents that place "intelligence" not just in the individual, but also in collaborative effort and resourcefulness for community benefit. With strategic planning and hard work, these young artists leverage their energy, curiosity, and commitment to create classes, portfolios, exhibitions, and performances that educate, entertain, and connect family members, friends, and neighborhood residents. But success in these organizations comes also with frustrations from funding inadequacies, lack of recognition of art as a "serious" vehicle for learning, and strains that result from conditions of local neighborhoods. ArtShow pushes viewers to ponder the potential of youth to build community through the meaningful risk taking in the arts.
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Over the past decade, Shirley Brice Heath and Milbrey W. McLaughlin’s Stanford research team, including two dozen youth ethnographers, has followed young people through hundreds of community-based youth-centered organizations—from midnight basketball teams, to Boys and Girls Clubs, to grass-roots youth arts entrepreneurs The 52 minute PBS style documentary and resource book is available through Shirley Brice Heath (see Resources at end). 
At the Building Community-University Partnership Exhibit
Inviting rival hypotheses
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How does a community problem-solving dialogue work?
Linda Flower: It starts with a genuine problem in which we all have a stake. But instead of speaking as advocates, waving the banner for our position or turf, we speak to each other as working partners trying to build a joint plan for action. So the preacher in the room doesn’t get to preach; the teacher, social worker, and manager hold their urge to teach, advise, and direct. Instead, as collaborative planners, we help our partners in inquiry elaborate their emerging ideas. There is a second twist. A community problem-solving dialogue is an intercultural, interdisciplinary, cross institution, cross neighborhood dialogue. It requires the diverse perspectives and special expertise different folks bring to the problem, as policy makers, community workers, teenagers. It opens the door to diverse discourses, that is, to different ways of talking, building a case, or making a point, based on narratives, arguments, statistics, history. Therefore, as your working partner I must encourage you to bring your distinctive voice and reading of this problem to the table (and I must also work to hear it). Researchers call this move “seeking rival hypotheses.” In community literacy, we simply call this collaborative process “rivaling.” Seeking good rivals gives us a wide angle lens on the whole picture. When you are good at rivaling, you raise alternatives to your own argument yourself. Take the question on our table: How can a university acknowledge and nurture community expertise? We’ve already seen one answer to this in ArtShow’s South Bronx story: Community efforts work when they are born out of community initiative. When the neighborhood folks are lining up to break out a wall and fix up the building. So, the rival hypothesis here is, “Carnegie Mellon, if you want to help, just send money—and stay home.” But the dance troupe in the next scene offered an immediate rival to that, with a professional dancer who in the settlement house tradition, chose to locate his work and studio in the community. So the rival there is, if you want to help, become part of the community. But when we look at the community/university partnerships in this room (and in the poster exhibit) we can hear another rival which says: We nurture community expertise best when we collaborate on a shared problem in which both partners set out to learn something from each other. So let me invite the panel to launch this dialogue into the rival hypotheses and trade-offs you see.
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The People Beside You
In a community problem-solving dialogue, it’s important to recognize the people sitting around you. I see - students who have tutored in the schools, - computer science majors who helped CBO’s to get wired, - my class of mentors and teenagers from the Community Literacy Center, Carnegie Mellon faculty, staff and trustees, with active community partnerships all around Pittsburgh—in Wilkinsburg, Homewood, East End, North Side, the Hill, the River, downtown - teachers, public administrators, and foundation officers, - and—perhaps most significantly—a large number of community leaders, youth workers, and everyday people committed to urban neighborhoods. This means we have the expertise and insight in this room to understand problems and possibilities from many sides and from the inside. [see http://english.cmu.edu/ inquiry/five.html on holding dialogues] |
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Shirley Heath:
The community involvement you saw in ArtShow involves considerable risk. What the young man talking about the bagel factory didn’t tell you on camera was that he used to come down and steal equipment and supplies at night, until he found out that these people were really committed. So one hypothesis is that you must be prepared to take risks and take chances and have expectations of something that’s going to come at the end, for a very diverse community.
Justin Johnson: Thinking about the collaboration between Carnegie Mellon and the Martin Luther King Cultural Center here in Pittsburgh maybe three years ago, I guess I would have to think about it in terms of what it didn’t do, and what it should have done—what we didn’t really accomplish. Students in the Heinz School, Master of Arts Management Program were working with a small non-profit on the Hill, trying to establish a cultural center to fit with the Regional Center already there. I was quite impressed by the enthusiasm, by the readiness with which students had come in and were working up on Herron Avenue at the Cultural Center. But it occurred to me, Linda, looking back on it, that it really wasn’t so much a two-way thing, as it was Carnegie Mellon trying to give information to us folk at the Cultural Center. I guess the one thing—the piece we didn’t have was an expectation on the part of the professors from Carnegie Mellon that they could be learning something about the community beyond putting together a business plan. There’s no question it was a valuable experience for the students: they were in Arts Management, they were learning about some of the difficulties and problems connected with trying to start a small non-profit. But I didn’t get the feeling, looking back, that it was the sort of collaboration and quid pro quo that obviously was coming out of this operation [In ArtShow]. What I found really exciting was how young people can teach younger people. That is really something I don’t even think about until I see it, and then I say, Gee, this is really powerful. When we’re talking about collaborations—and here I’m putting on my Trustee hat—you’ve got to keep in mind that the business of CMU is education. So whatever we’re doing, it has to be with the expectation that it will enhance or strengthen or increase the knowledge which the students are getting. For me, that shouldn’t be very difficult. For me, it’s sort of like going back to integration, where you regularly heard people say, “Oh, what a great thing that Black children now can go to school with White children.” And no one wanted to admit the fact that White children were getting an awful lot of important stuff by being in school with Black children. So, I think we have to understand that even as we send young people out so that they can impart their skills and their knowledge, they’re going to be learning an awful lot that they can use throughout life if they keep their ears and eyes open in the community. |
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Be prepared to take risks, spend time, show you’re committed.
The enthusiasm and readiness with which the students came up on Herron Ave, to give information. One thing we didn’t have—the expectation on the part of professors that they could be learning something. A sort of collaboration, a quid pro quo was obviously coming out of the operation. As a university, we must expect to increase the knowledge students are getting. (But how is knowledge defined?) An attitude with a history? No one wanted to admit White children got a lot from being in school with Black children. |
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Esther Bush:
When you look at this student body and at this urban center, the life experiences seem very different. It should be those differences that motivate people to partner in the community. As the world changes, it is critically important for your success to understand major urban areas (where most businesses are). And if you look at an urban area as asset-based and not deficit-based, you go in with a more open mind for a win-win situation.
You might go into a community with skills, knowledge, time, interest—or “I just need to get an A on this project, and they’re making me do this.” That’s fine, too. But what you may get out of it is working with urban youngsters. Because, see, a lot of us have a tendency to buy into whatever the media has set up. We make the major mistake of looking at what it is on the outside of people. You look at the skin and it’s different from yours; you look at the clothes and you think “they’re poor; they’re poverty stricken; my God, they’re different from me.” You assume some things about the intellectual level. But we have to realize we all have the same human needs—as well as different opportunities, exposures, and life experiences. If we put some things together, with a little conversation and research, the expertise you bring from Carnegie Mellon can support the assets of the community. There are probably few initiatives here that could not benefit some part of its many realities. For instance, the Urban League would not have had the skills, the expertise, nor the cash to become Y2K compliant if Jared Cohon and Mark Kamlet were not committed to working with us—and holding our hands as we went to foundations to solicit funds. So when we talk about urban America, we’re absolutely talking about the children, but there are also community-based organizations, helping communities, that also need assistance. So when you look at what you can offer to a community, understand that it is the differences that should make it interesting, exciting and challenging. Let the urban community be your laboratory—get off the campus to deal with real life experiences and to understand the gratification of what you’ve learned. You will have brought expertise into the community. But when you understand the people and the intellect of the people that are in that community, it starts to change and the relationships and the partnerships start to become something that all of us can be proud of. It’s a little scary at first—you talk about risks—because you’re talking about the unknown. We have to get to know each other, and then it can happen as a result of relationships. |
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It is the differences that should motivate community partnerships. An asset-based look creates a win-win situation. What you really get may be working with urban youth—not the media image of them. We’ve got to talk about children and community organizations. Understand that it is the differences. Let the community be your laboratory. But when you understand the intellect of the people, it starts to change. |
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Indira Nair
: At Carnegie Mellon—we call ourselves the problem solving university—the interdisciplinarity comes because no problem comes in little chunks. But one discipline we sometimes forget is the discipline of understanding knowledge that is packaged differently from the kind of packaging we do for class.
In the community you can find that local knowledge—in my country we call it indigenous knowledge—that is embedded perhaps in a different language, a different kind of consciousness, a different kind of environment. This is really important for students, for us all, to be able to understand, because what converts skills into competence is really context and connections. All the skill that we package and give to students in the chunks of mathematics and engineering comes to life and become problem solving, only when it’s put in place. That is what community gives us the opportunity to do. I think of education as the 4 Cs: Contact, Connection, Confidence, and Conscience. And I think Conscience also comes from that part. Of course, the rival side of this is what Judge Johnson was saying: we have four years for all the stuff we are supposed to pack into our students and send them out, so there is always that problem, time, that one wrestles with when we do projects. Judge Johnson: I’m delighted with the idea that this is talking about Carnegie Mellon and community expertise. Because normally we don’t think of bringing together a very professional, sophisticated institution with the communities here in Pittsburgh on the understanding that there’s expertise out there. I would be curious as to the degree to which the faculty here understands or is committed to the idea that there are valuable minerals out there to be mined. Linda Flower: That is exactly one of the questions that I was interested in myself. So I would like to open this up. Are you ready? We need to work here as a room of 200 colleagues trying to come up with good rivals that need to be considered. The panel has already raised some strong points about our expectations, which affect the extent to which a collaboration nurtures community expertise. An asset-based expectation can deepen the relationship and the quality of learning. On the other hand, it also sounds like there is a price. If you take that approach, you’re going to have to engage in some risks and you may have to change some attitudes. You may have to find out how to deal with local knowledges. It’s a challenge, especially for time-crunched students and for disciplines, to somehow talk across those differences. So we’ve got some rivals out on the floor. What do you think? |
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We forget the discipline of understanding knowledge that is packaged differently.
Local knowledge comes embedded in different languages, a different consciousness. It takes context and connections to convert skills into competence. Community projects pit education of the conscience against the demand of time. I’m delighted. We don’t normally think this way—understanding that there’s expertise out there. But is the faculty committed? So can we do this? Do we do this? |
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Find the memory of the neighborhood
Phil Pappas [Community Human Services]: If you’re going to do anything in the Hill or in Oakland, you look at the context. You have to get into the guts and energy, and risk of buildings that can attract different kinds of activities. The ArtShow sites generated energy where there was abandonment—it’s in that abandonment that young people can create without fear. We’ve got to go to those kinds of places. That’s why settlement houses work in a very profound way. It would be fascinating if CMU with its art students, its writers, its engineers would go, play with the young people and take on a building that’s part of the memory of the Hill. So that’s my—what do you call it—rival? Risking. Instead of going in to the safe activities, the folks in the film went into the guts of the Bronx. Apolitical outreach and financial agendas Martha Harty [Center for Applied Ethics, Carnegie Mellon] : I’m worried about going into these communities and being apolitical. …a local university got this great HUD grant, administered by the university who hired the trainers and so on. People wrote papers but it didn’t feel to the community like they benefited a whole lot. The got the training, but none of the financial…. The structure of university administering grants seemed unfair. Perhaps one of the reasons to do this is to raise consciousness. I’ve been taking my students this semester to the jail and juvenile court and it has opened some eyes. Justin Johnson: I don’t know that you and I disagree Martha. I was trying to say that unless you can identify an educational outcome, maybe it should be done by somebody else. The things that you mentioned have educational outcomes. I don’t see how a student can go to the Allegheny County Jail without receiving education. Really. Martha Harty: That’s right. I think what needed to be done in my example was to understand enough about the community needs to create a program that would really benefit the community in the way they need it. Not just get the University a grant or a research project. Justin Johnson: I don’t disagree with that. |
Linda Flower: This is an important tension. Students can learn something just by going into urban communities. But if you also want a partnership based on expertise, it may create tension with the standard university MO for research and learning. So if we are apolitical about the relationships, our “outreach” may not actually contribute to local needs. Trust makes good research Esther Bush: I would comment about that as well. I have been contacted by several universities saying can you identify some clients to participate in this or that research project. We’ve received a number of calls about people wanting to do research in our Charter school. What you saw on the video (ArtShow) is totally different from that. You saw a group of people who cared about community and were willing to go in and earn the trust of community and do something that was a win-win. Just like the little boy that was stealing very early on; he stopped stealing. Before I came to Pittsburgh I worked in Harlem. And in Harlem I would park my car and the drug dealers would watch it for me. My car never got touched, cause I earned their trust. You go into a community and you build trust. You give them something they need, and they watch you in terms of consistency. That’s totally different from going in, doing a research project that’s gonna benefit you and what is it doing for them? Typically nothing. Maybe five or ten dollars when they sit down and have a conversation with you. But they’re not really committed; they’re getting the five or ten dollars. So how good is your study really? People have to understand that it is a win-win, to see some respect for the fact that there is expertise in the neighborhood. When there’s a level of trust there, that’s when you have a fabulous project. |
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The Test of Continuity
Paul Stoney [Executive Director, Hill District, YMCA]: What Ms. Bush is saying about continuity in the community is true. Institutions have come to lower income communities with these avenging souls; they’re there maybe two or three months, and then unfortunately they have to leave. Last semester Joe Mertz’s students trained several of my staff people in using computers. We needed that and couldn’t afford to pay for it. Carnegie Mellon certainly had the resources and expertise, but more importantly, they had the commitment to stay with us over a 15 week period, then follow up from beginning to end. That’s what’s necessary. And you can’t come in with a very “look down your nose” attitude, or as if institutions don’t have a history. Because our institutions, like the YMCA which has been on the same corner for 80 years, are very adept at smelling out an opportunity that is a one-way situation. So I think any opportunity has to make it a continuous opportunity. I have children in five projects and 400 people come to my facility. Those are the people that I ask, “are these people real?” And that’s the answer I think is most important. Those children can tell whether or not someone is sincere and whether or not there’s going to be any continuity. So I’m proud to work with Carnegie Mellon. Figure Out Our Mutual Resources Shirley Heath: Here’s another example from our research of kids in a YMCA basketball team who had been trained in asset mapping. They said, we’re not going to take expertise one way, thank you. We have to be able to sit down and work with the computer people (who were involved in their study program) so that we give them as well as they give us. What they eventually worked out was the kids came up with nine topics they wanted to study and said, we’ll do the research if you help us figure out how to get it up on the computer. We want a unit on the finances of the NBA; we want a unit on the chemistry of making of uniforms in the sports industry. The computer people were dumbfounded because they hadn’t thought about having to get involved in this. Then they had to tap other resources—librarians, basketball players, the medical clinic—they wanted a unit on neurophysiology so that they could actually be wired, if you will, while they were doing certain kinds of exercises. So a whole series of computer-based units were developed. But it was truly a two-way operation and those units went out to be used in a number of high schools as supplementary science units. But it’s very important to keep this notion, that you must never be a one-way street. In all the cases we have worked with it was never a |
situation in which the power institution did the grant. It was always, sit down, have a conversation, start small, let’s figure out how we both bring resources to the table. But What Does Partnership Require Of Us? Linda Flower: I hear you alluding to the hard question of, how do you prepare people to actually enter this mutual kind of working partnership? We have certainly had that discussion here. Just thinking about it I can hear Wayne Cobb [Director of Community Education, CUO], saying, you start with respect. You’ve got to have the right attitude to build a relationship. And then I hear Joe Mertz [Associate Director, CUO] bringing rivals from the experience with his Computer Science in the Community course. He’s got eighteen computer hot shots working with community organizations and he wants these students to go out and really work collaboratively—not just build a system the group doesn’t want, can’t use, and won’t know how to maintain after they’re gone. What I hear him saying is he had to redesign the course to put in real time for joint problem solving. Then he added a new and very telling criteria—to succeed, students have to leave an increased capacity to do something in the community. You don’t just leave a product or report on the doorstep. But then, in the spirit of good rivaling, I think of my ten years experience with the Community Literacy Center. I agree with my colleagues, but think of students who have Wayne’s commitment and Joe’s structure for collaboration, yet when they enter the urban community, they can hear the words, but they don’t get the message. So my rival hypothesis is that many students also need problem-solving strategies for intercultural communication—like this rivaling strategy or like these dialogues—thinking tools that help you work across differences of race, class, culture and background. So with rivals like those as our starter set, how do we actually get such partnerships to work? |
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Faculty Relationships
Indira Nair: One thing is faculty. Students come and go by semester, but the faculty have to have built community relationships and know communication channels that are open for them. The Urban Lab has this kind of ongoing relationship. I attended a meeting where the community was telling our architecture professor, David Lewis, what they thought students ought to be doing. And David was there preparing for a course he is going to teach a year from now, in the fall of 2000. The faculty needs that kind of knowledge and the willingness to build and maintain those links and relationships. Student Initiative—Unleashed Justin Johnson: I’m not sure I know what rivaling is, Linda. But if I can try and rival what you said… Professors can be older and pretty much set in their ways. Why can’t the professors be required to give students in the class who have this empathy—who have this understanding, who want to get out in the community—the opportunity? Does this have to be a whole class? Why can’t they be doing it even while other students in the same class are not doing it. My guess is that there are students at Carnegie Mellon who would be delighted to get the hell off campus and do something constructive if their professors would let them. Community Partners Joe Mertz : I think what the university can really do is listen to the community, try to clarify and bring that information back into educational folds. But I wouldn’t have been able to do that if there wasn’t someone else who was my community partner like Kathy Schroerlucke in this case. Somebody who was actually out there, visiting every center on a regular basis and understanding what those problems were, who was much closer than I was. In these partnerships, that is where the wisdom of the community is available. Shirley Douglas [Director, Senior AIDES Center, YWCA]: The advantage to me is that the student actually comes to my office and teaches me exactly what I need to know. And if there’s a problem she doesn’t understand, she says, o.k. I really don’t know what that is now, but I’ll give you the information when I come back—and she always does. So, I’m very grateful CMU has this relationship with community-based programs. |
Community Scholars
S.K. Woodall [Landscape Architecture Project, CMU Alumnus]: But what happens when someone from the community wants to bring a program from the community into the university? I think that’s where the big divide is. I would like to congratulate Dr. Flower that we are having this dialogue. But how do we get department heads and faculty to understand that there is scholarship in the community and also to identify that scholarship when it comes from the community to the university. There are certain assumptions, you know; people don’t assume that one may have that information. You shouldn’t have to use the name tag of alumni or graduate to identify that scholarship. “Hey, I’m an alumni, you know, I know this.” How do we get faculty and department heads to recognize scholarship when it comes from the community? Intelligence in Different Packages Esther Bush: That’s part of where I was going earlier. We have to get rid of labels. We have to get rid of stereotypes. Use the new millennium as an excuse. Everything starts new in a new millennium. And if you look back in the beginning of the 20th century, Boy Scouts started, Girl Scouts started, the Urban League, the NAACP—all of them happened in about twenty years of each other. Think about the millennium from the perspective of—it’s o.k. to reinvent who we are across the board. It is o.k. as faculty to think about the City of Pittsburgh as a laboratory for you to go out and do something creative and not to just think that intelligence comes in a certain package. It comes in a variety of ways, and we need to think about how we judge people and how we include or exclude people. And that takes putting on a different hat. Diversity in Different Places Susan McElroy [Heinz School of Public Policy]: I’m glad that I required the students in my project course to attend this. I’m the faculty advisor for a project on welfare to work and training. In response to the comment about faculty being old—not all the faculty are old. |
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Or at least some of us would like to think we aren’t! My point is really that the faculty might actually be a little more diverse than you think. What I see happening is that the stereotyping works both ways. If we as a university community hold some stereotype about organizations in the community, it’s going to work the other way also; they may believe that we always have narrowly focused interests. There are those of us who do care about the community and who are interested in seeing the resources of the university used to improve the quality of life here. And one way to help these projects be successful is that both the university and the community partner are involved in the planning stages. In the project course I advise, for example, I co-wrote the course proposal with the director of the organization who is now our client.
Linda Flower: So, I am hearing, what these successful relationships reveal is that community organizations and developers posses a critical expertise—you know what should be happening in your organization and what is needed to make it work. Joe Mertz had to redesign his course so that students spent a lot more time learning what you know and what you need to know. It’s the same problem Susan McElroy was working on—making these partnerships a two-way exchange. But Who Is Our Community? Reiko Goto [Studio for Creative Inquiry]: Communities are usually very practical and that shapes their asking. But what you can give is often not practical. The film was showing this; art is not practical. We go to art school not to earn money by making art. When you think about trees or forests, when that is the issue, they don’t talk, but they also live with us. So when you listen to the community, you sometimes have to twist the process, you have to represent someone who is not speaking. Linda Flower: We have to listen creatively because some of the answers we should hear are not the expected, are not straightforward? And Where Does the University Weigh In With Suffering? Wayne Peck [Executive Director, Community House]: It’s clear that Carnegie Mellon and other universities have enriched many different sites within Pittsburgh. But there is a discrepancy between the wealth of resources in a large institution like this and the wealth and resources of the smaller institutions in the relationship, where it’s always murky around mutuality and parity. |
But I want to speak to the unspoken political dynamic and ask, where does the university weigh in and make common cause for suffering? In these partnerships, where is the solidarity and how is it felt in Pittsburgh? No one would question the competence of Carnegie Mellon in making new knowledge, but how does it weigh with its knowledge to get things done in urban neighborhoods as well? So the rival here has to do not only with learning, but also with the element of political action as you learn together.
Indira Nair: I think that’s probably one of the places we need to work on more to tell you the truth. We’re just at the point where we think we know how to teach students some skills. That’s the easy part. We still haven’t come to the full realization of the responsibility that comes with it. And it is a very slow process. But I’d like to think it has begun. Justin Johnson: I think Wayne’s asking more than that. Maybe I shouldn’t get into what he’s asking, because it could be embarrassing. He’s really asking about where the university is not going to be teaching young people about being good citizens but to what degree will the university be a good citizen. And it’s a political question. I would have to say it’s a difficult question. From where I sit you always get into a lot of historical conservatism, and I’ve seen situations where one or two people might want to move the university in one direction, and the answer is, “well, you know Pittsburgh’s a conservative city,” which is not an acceptable answer. But you pose a good question, Wayne, and I think the trustees need to be considering whether the resources of the University can be applied both to the education of students and the education of the community through good works. That has to be a joint effort, alright? Right now, well. . .I’ll just leave it there. I appreciate your question. Ethical Awarness/ Ethical Action Kate Lynch [Department of History]: I remember seeing a survey of how our graduating seniors evaluate their Carnegie Mellon education. And one or two of the lowest scoring things that the students ever learned here was how to discuss or think about moral and ethical issues. The questions that we’re talking about are not merely political, but ethical and moral ones. Our own students don’t feel that they have learned how even to discuss the issues, let alone act on them. |
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Secondly, we talk about the university as an “it,” but in fact one of the great strengths of this university is that it’s not an it, and that individuals such as Linda Flower, or individual faculty members, have had the freedom to make new things; they have good ideas and convince people to run with those ideas. Our thinking about the future should be based on, first, interested faculty members with good ideas. We can facilitate that by being good matchmakers, by getting together information about all sorts of organizations with needs and helping match interests with needs.
I serve on the board of a community development organization in Pittsburgh where I have been astonished, overjoyed, and in great wonder at the heroism and the great educational level of the community leaders of this city. One of the great long kept secrets in this city is the level of education and expertise in our community development organizations. We can convince other faculty by our own example of what they can do—for themselves and for our students. Final Words Change Gets Noticed Esther Bush: I am very pleased that the image of Carnegie Mellon is changing in the community, and it is changing because more faculty and more students are out in the community. A lot more needs to be done and it needs to come from within at every single level. The teachers, the students, the staff just need to understand what Pittsburgh is about, and respect the fact that it is a win-win situation. No matter what you learn in a textbook, to be able to see it, feel it, and understand people’s quality of life as you’re doing it—there is no greater learning opportunity. Non-profit organizations really do need your support and your input. So thank you for what you have done, and thank you for what you will do. A Direction for Impact Judge Johnson: One excellent idea I heard was the point about working with individuals within the university to advance individual projects within the community. I imagine that this is sort of the beginning, Linda, of what can occur across the campus. I look upon this as an opportunity for the entire university community to begin to participate in this kind of conversation. I’m optimistic Carnegie Mellon will continue to move in a direction where it will have a more positive impact within the greater Pittsburgh area. You know, I’m not the only trustee here. |
Is Business in This Conversation?
Shirley Heath: There is another partner we haven’t talked about very much and that’s the business community. Throughout the country more and more businesses are saying, we’ve got to talk about soul; we’ve got to talk about moral development; we’ve got to talk about our ethical commitment in terms of what’s local, and our sense of growth has to be a growth in terms of the spirit and the well-being of the community in which we exist. Lots of schools of business have programs on social entrepreneurship helping non-profit organizations like those in the film developing for-profit arms in coordination with local businesses. So, I commend you on this initial conversation and, echoing Ms. Bush’s words, on what you have done, what you will do, and hope you will find ways of bringing business community members into your continued conversations. A Problem Solving Partnership Launched Linda Flower: I do indeed hope that happens. Tonight, as many of you know, marks the inauguration of the Carnegie Mellon Community Think Tank. Its first series of structured dialogues are focused on youth and employment. The Think Tank has targeted a question whose answer would let educators, community networks, and employers build on the assets already here, i.e., “What does it really take to succeed if you are an inexperienced urban employee trying to enter the mainstream culture of work?” We see this community/university Think Tank as an intellectual tool for bringing a more systematically articulated voice of community expertise into a focused problem-solving dialogue among the diverse stakeholders. I believe the substance and breadth of tonight’s discussion is impressive evidence that “drawing on the local” can lead to both knowledge and action. |
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Resources
Art Show , a vibrant 52 minute video, documents learning, entrepreneurship, and achievement in the arts by youth in two urban and two rural community organizations. A 120-page resource guide details the history, operations, and business structure of each group and the findings of Shirley Brice Heath and Milbrey McLaughlin’s 10 years of research with youth-based organizations. Contact Dr. Heath 650-566-5133 or e-mail: sbheath@leland.stanford.edu Building Community-University Partnerships: A Traveling Exhibit from “Drawing On the Local” is on loan. Its series of 2’x3’ posters dramatize the people, places, and action of educational and community projects across the city. Created by Carnegie Mellon School of Design students, Hillary Carey (’00) and Carrice Delo (‘99), it is available from the Center for University Outreach. At the Carnegie Mellon Center for University Outreach web site you will find - A Student Guide to finding—and making—outreach opportunities - Background on Outreach Projects across campus and in the community - The Working Partners Network projects linking community, schools, and business in projects for urban youth www.cmu.edu/outreach At the Intercultural Inquiry web site you will find - An introduction to the process of intercultural inquiry - Projects in community literacy, culture of work, and other areas - Research Briefs by faculty, papers and abstracts by students - Findings from the Carnegie Mellon Community Think Tank - Community Problem-Solving Dialogues: Including the edited transcript of Drawing on the Local http://english.cmu.edu/inquiry/ Drawing on the Local© is a publication of the Carnegie Mellon Center for University Outreach Edited by Linda Flower, Director Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA 15213 (412) 268-7801 |