2009 ANNUAL REPORT OF PROGRAM ACTIVITIES

Please add narrative text that responds to the questions in the four categories below.

Implementation of Student Development Implementation of Community Partnerships Campus-Wide Culture and Infrastructure  Serve 2.0  Campus Issue Profiles

 

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Implementation of Student Development

What was the structure and content for the implementation of the developmental model this year?  In particular, please share (no more than one page text needed):

• The Structure for training, courses, & meetings
• Cornerstone Activities including First Year Trip, Second Year Exchange, Third Year (and beyond) Leadership Roles, and Senior Capstone & Presentation of Learning
• Roles of Student Leaders in integration of the Serve 2.0 initiative (e.g., developing and using web-based tools for service)

 

 

The Bates Bonner Leader Program student development strategy for 2008-09 was based on three premises:

1. That the design and piloting of the Program in this first phase is itself an important opportunity for student leadership development, not simply a means to future leadership programming;

2. That we can leverage existing student development programs at the Harward Center and across campus even as we engage students in self-motivated activity to create new program models and materials;

3. That the trajectory of the Bates education points toward a developmental model of Explore, Commit, Explore, Commit in the design of Bonner Leader Experiences.  This model, which emerges from research by Anna Sims Bartel and Georgia Nigro, and reflects key aspects of the Bates curriculum such as First-Year Seminars, widespread study abroad, and a universal capstone requirement, maps the Bonner Leader Program’s commitment to student development through community engagement.  This model is entirely consistent with Bonner's development model, albeit framed in somewhat different ways.

 

 

The Structure for training, courses, & meetings:

Given the emergent phase of our work, training this year was embedded in research, design, and piloting of the Bonner Program—including the creation of a formal training co-curriculum for future years.  Each participant in the Bonner Planning Group chose one or more areas of research and development and took responsibility for creating plans for leadership development, orientation, service trips and other cornerstone activities.  Students worked with one another and with faculty and staff members of the Bonner Planning Group through and outside of regular meetings.  For next year, we have planned a formal structure of weekly meetings which will build community and create spaces for regular trainings and reflection.  Additional training opportunities this year were woven into a range of other HCCP and campus programs and included: Student Volunteer Fellow orientation (two Bonners were SVFs); the Carignan Group student philanthropy trainings (several Bonners participated); the Dean of Students' leadership training series, attended and studied in particular by Jordan Conwell, our first-year student leadership guru.  We enter the upcoming year with concrete plans, an enthusiastic, dedicated VISTA, and a rich Bonner culture of student engagement and leadership.

 

Cornerstone Activities including First Year Trip, Second Year Exchange, Third Year (and beyond) Leadership Roles, and Senior Capstone & Presentation of Learning:

This year saw the implementation of few cornerstone activities and the planning of many.  We also learned that our unusual academic calendar (with a Short Term in April/May) poses scheduling challenges that we are grappling with.

 

 

First-year service trip: we worked for several months to create an appropriate trip for all Bonners to Indian Island's Wabenaki community to assist with ongoing college aspiration work, but the timing was difficult because of our Short Term.  We continue to plan and intend that trip to happen this coming spring; we are particularly excited to implement this trip because it grows out of ongoing community partnerships we are nurturing and so carries a much smaller risk of “service tourism.”

 

 

Second Year Exchange: Again, we hoped that this exchange would engage all the Bonners rather than only sophomores.  We worked with Amherst College's Bonner program to create plans for an exciting weekend of service and cultural exchange, but again, calendars were problematic.  They wanted to do spring, but our Short Term complicated that proposal, so we are planning together for a Fall semester exchange.  Two Bonners did attend the Students as Colleagues conference at Bentley; two attended Bonner Congress; and one attended the June 2009 SLI, so "exchange" was certainly an aspect of the program.  We are eager to work with Amherst (and perhaps other schools) to create more regular exchange programming, and that planning is already underway.

 

 

Third Year (and beyond) Leadership Roles: Many students at Bates adopt leadership roles before their third year, and many use senior year as a way to bridge leadership in community work with engaged scholarship in their thesis.  Our three senior Bonner Leaders were all good examples of this: two were Student Volunteer Fellows, leading robust volunteer programs; the third had given up his junior-year Student Volunteer Fellow position in order to captain two varsity teams, but he remained active in community-based learning.  All three wrote community-based theses that integrated, analyzed, and intensified their long, deep, and fruitful community partnerships.  For future Bonners, we anticipate four categories of Bonner activity to be most attractive and appropriate to third- and fourth-year students: Student Volunteer Fellows; Community-Based Research Fellows; Global Storytellers (for juniors abroad); TAs for CBL courses (seniors, probably).  But other options remain open to them, including CWS positions, CBL courses, and regular volunteerism, all requiring more substantial leadership and responsibility.

 

 

Senior Capstone & Presentation of Learning: Our three seniors used Bonner meetings as well as the CBR Fellows Program (two of them) to reflect on their experiences across all four years; all three of them have also participated (this year or last) in our research project on student trajectories and perceptions of community engagement, which featured significant reflection.  The two students who were both CBR Fellows and SVFs this year had a range of opportunities for such reflection, and all three of them used the thesis and related advising and career-development sessions with faculty and staff for summative reflections on their years at Bates and their involvement in Bonner.  (Of the three, one is in graduate school for social work in her home community; one is part of the new Health Corps, working in the Rhode Island Free Clinic and using her Spanish language skills as well as her other training; the third is doing Teach for America in Washington, DC.)  Two of the three also presented at the Mt. David Summit, an annual college-wide celebration of student academic achievement, where they presented research posters describing their thesis work.  (One of them gave her poster to the hospital that was her partner, and they proudly display it near the Cancer Resource Center for/with whom she did evaluation and program development).  We are planning more formal mechanisms of capstone and presentation, including an annual Bonner Student Conference and/or an HCCP conference that celebrates the range of community-engaged work and scholarship undertaken by students, including Bonners.

 

• Roles of Student Leaders in integration of the Serve 2.0 initiative (e.g., developing and using web-based tools for service): see below, under Serve 2.0

 

 

 

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Implementation of Community Partnerships

Please share a summary of your work with community partners, highlighting your work regarding  (no more than one page text needed):

•  Arrangement and management of community partnerships and placements (orientation, site visits, meetings, strategic planning)
•  How partners were engaged as co-educators, including academic linkages, courses, and student advising
• Partnerships managed through site-based or issue-oriented teams, as well as other issue-based organizing undertaken
• Capacity building initiatives for community partners (such as workshops, policy research, or resource development)

 

 

Bonners worked with a range of community partners across a range of issues, sites, and projects.  Many of them continued in ongoing, deepening relationships; a few stepped into ongoing partnerships themselves for the first time, with strong support from the Harward Center and other Bonners.  Key Bonner partners this year included local schools; the St. Mary’s Health System; Lewiston Housing Authority; the Volunteer Lawyer’s Project; Hope House; Project StoryBoost.  As with student development above, these partnerships draw on the rich weave of “pre-Bonner” community projects that the Harward Center and Bates bring to the Bonner design process.

 

 

 Arrangement and management of community partnerships and placements (orientation, site visits, meetings, strategic planning):

The Bonner Leader Program at Bates is designed to integrate with and capitalize on the Harward Center's existing robust programs of Volunteerism, Community Work-Study, Community Leadership, Community-Based Research, and Academic Community-Based Learning.  Therefore, management of community partnerships happens through those existing programs, in a system that works well for everything from logistics to advising.  We intend to retain this structure and to add opportunities for group site visits to Bonner Leaders' sites, including issue-oriented visits so students can see multiple avenues work on similar issues.

 

How partners were engaged as co-educators, including academic linkages, courses, and student advising:

Our partnership programs are intentional about framing community partners as both experts and teachers, and our students report significant learning from them.  Community-Based Research Fellows, for example, work in an explicit three-way relationship with advising faculty and advising community partner, using a research design template that demands feedback from all three partners.  Some community partners are active in course classrooms, and all are involved in the design and creation of partnership projects.  Advising is often a less explicit function of community partners but still a frequent and much-welcomed activity on both sides: many students (Bonners included) report important advice, news, perspectives, and/or learning from community partners.  We know that community partners are immensely valuable in student learning and development.

 

Partnerships managed through site-based or issue-oriented teams, as well as other issue-based organizing undertaken:

The Harward Center has worked for the past four years to develop a “collaboratory” model of multi-year, multi-modal partnerships around particular issues (like literacy) or sites (like the Lewiston Housing Authority), and the Bonner Leader Program is already contributing to and benefitting from that model.  A vital component of several collaboratories, our Student Volunteer Fellow program works on a site-based model; incoming Bonners will most often find partnerships and mentorship through these existing programs.  And these deep, lasting relationships are of course most effective for collaborative strategic development of community impact.  The work of creating Campus Issue Profiles engaged the Bonners in significant discussion of issue-orientation as a way to connect students working in diverse programs or modes on similar concerns; we plan to use Bonner Student Conferences as well as other mechanisms to achieve this.  We are already seeing this in our Bonner Leader program as the new recruits are selected: a current Bonner would like to establish a Bonner Buddy system whereby current Bonners "adopt" a new Bonner based on shared interests (currently, immigration and racial/ethnic diversity are important matches).

 

Capacity building initiatives for community partners (such as workshops, policy research, or resource development):

The partnership practice of the Harward Center is geared toward community capacity-building already (see references to collaboratories above), so most of our partnerships take that as an explicit goal and engage community partners in ongoing dialogue about their needs and interests.  An example: two current Bonners participated in my First-Year Seminar in Fall 2008, in which they partnered with a new story-based literacy program in our community, Project StoryBoost.  My course helped create a cadre of trained volunteers to support the budding project, expanding its reach and giving participating teachers new capacity and resources.  More explicit and focused capacity-building happens through courses (e.g. several courses offered key data and analysis for the Community Food Assessment), Student Volunteer Fellows (e.g. the Adult Learning Center needed more help recruiting and organizing volunteers, so we created a new position there); and Community-Based Research Fellows (e.g. the new Cancer Resource Center at St. Mary's Hospital needed evaluation of its programs; that evaluation built capacity but also suggested that volunteers wanted more training; the CBR Fellow then did more research to create a volunteer training manual based on articulated needs and interests as well as best practices and models elsewhere).  Policy research happens through a course in the politics department that we support (and which participates in PolicyOptions); community resource development happens in a very concrete way through the Carignan Fund for Community Programs, a student philanthropy program which makes grants to community partner organizations.

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Campus-Wide Culture and Infrastructure 

Please describe key activities and structures related to the development of campus-wide infrastructure and the role of the Bonner Program in enhancing (or being enhanced by) campus-wide culture and participation in service.  In particular, share  (no more than one page text needed):

• Key activities for faculty engagement and academic connections.  In particular, note any connections to curricular offerings that are linked to the Bonner Program.
• Key relationships and activities involving other departments or divisions on campus (for example for recruitment, student wellness or retention, financial aid, and so on).
• Unique initiatives (such as events, assessment, or strategic planning) that have enhanced institutionalization of service and civic engagement on campus.

 

 

The campus culture of service and community engagement is robust and is nurtured by the Harward Center for Community Partnerships (formerly the Center for Service-Learning, founded roughly 15 years ago).  Bates also holds the Carnegie Classification for Community Engagement in both Curricular Engagement and in Outreach and Partnerships.  The Bonner program integrates with HCCP programs and, though its emphasis on supporting students from underrepresented groups, has been attracting new interest and participation from faculty and staff across campus.  We currently have no courses designed exclusively for Bonners, although we are considering that model, but Bonner has certainly spurred new levels of engagement with the "swing deans" -- two extraordinary individuals who alternate between the positions of Director of Multicultural Recruitment (in Admissions) and, following the class they've just recruited, the Associate Dean for Student Transitions (in Dean of Students).  Their participation has been vital to our success, as they have developed and implemented the recruitment model and coached us in everything from language to program design for best support of these students.  Another useful partnership has been with a psychology professor (clinical psychologist) who leads an AACU Bringing Theory to Practice grant studying student wellness and understandings of "engagement" -- she has been an active member of our planning team, our evaluation specialist, and a key supporter of this initiative in all its hopes to engage students on multiple levels at once.  We hope and anticipate that our Bonner Leader Program will complement HCCP efforts to expand and diversity student engagement across socio-economic, racial/ethnic, and gender categories.

 

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Serve 2.0 

Please highlight your key activities related to the integration of web-based tools as they are connected to the design, management, and outreach for service.  In particular, share  (no more than one page text needed):

• Link to your campus-wide service center or Bonner Program wiki ,web-site, or Ning site. Please explain how it’s most used and by whom.
• Your integration with other social media tools (such as the Bonner Network Forum/Ning, Twitter, YouTube, the Bonner Video Project, PolicyOptions Wiki, or others)

 

 

Our use of Serve 2.0 has been primarily through the "workhorse" wiki we set up for the Bonner Planning Group (B-BOP: the Bates-Bonner Organizing Project), online at http://batesbonner.pbworks.com/.  We found that a remarkably useful tool for several reasons:

1. It enables all partners to see where we are, what we're up to, and what they might have missed, anytime, from anywhere (especially useful for those students abroad who want to keep up with or contribute to our work);

2. It empowers partners equally to add, edit, amend as needed;

3. It removes a central gatekeeper and the attendant anxiety about which ideas are "good enough" -- the culture became one of sharing ideas and providing feedback, which developed good plans more quickly and effectively;

4. It creates a more democratic space in which first-years have equal voice to tenured faculty;

5. It creates a central, structured repository for information, ideas, and plans, so that no one person has to keep amending or sending out new info.

 

 

We also have a basic program description on the Harward Center's site (http://www.bates.edu/x202243.xml), but that is mostly useful right now for minimal explanation of the program and to host the application.  That site will become more robust and usable as the program develops, depending on students' ideas about what works best for the student population.  Some Bonners are deeply interested in various other tools -- we anticipate someone will launch us into Twitter; one Bonner abroad has just taken a flipcamera to Ghana and will move us into blogging and vlogging more seriously; we understand that the current Google site for the Student Volunteer Fellows will be updated and will serve larger campus purposes for scheduling and publicizing community events and opportunities.  A Bonner with serious training in videography lead the group in writing, filming, and editing a video introduction to our program that we will post and share in the fall, and that Bonner is excited to lead our efforts in the Bonner Video Project.  Bates also participates actively in the PolicyOptions network.  (We are exploring using PolicyOptions as a mechanism for documenting research that happens outside the policy course as well -- including through CBR -- but we need to iron out issues of form and coaching.)  In short, Serve 2.0 is an area of real student interest and growth, and we look forward to Bonner Congress as a space in which students can develop and bring home more ideas.

 

 

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Campus Issue Profiles

Add links to your completed or draft campus issue profiles here:

• Education/literacy: http://bonnernetwork.pbworks.com/Education+-+Bates+College