2009 ANNUAL REPORT OF PROGRAM ACTIVITIES

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

Implementation of Student Development

Training Structures:

The Student Developmental Model was implemented in Siena’s training plan with weekly meetings on Thursday nights for two hours. Each meeting structure was composed of an opening reflection of highs and lows of the week. Next, students were given a social justice article that would expand and have them compare the article with what they were seeing and experiencing in the community. After the reading, students engage in a training exercise that would allow them to gain the skills to become better leaders and change agents in the community. This structure was also occasionally interspersed with outside speakers and trainers who could utilize their expertise in areas of leadership, diversity and empowerment. In the Spring semester, most of the Bonner students enrolled in Dr. Johnson's Sociological Perspectives course.  This course was an experimental course designed to give the students a living laboratory to experiment with deliberative democracy and projects design and execution.  This course will now be a required course for all freshman admits to the Siena Bonner program and in addition to the deliberative democracy and project design and execution threads, will include a significant poverty studies component. For 2009, the Bonner Freshmen will continue to experience the student developmental model through an additional component to the academic pathway that will be discuss in greater detail later on in this report. By linking the freshmen in a course that they all take together, they are able to combine academic theory to their service experiences and exploration of social justice, civic engagement, spiritual exploration, diversity, international perspective and community building.

Cornerstone Activities:

As Siena students just took on their second cohort of Bonners in Fall 2009, the past year’s cornerstone activity was embodied in the First Year Trip to Washington, D.C. Students partnered with S.O.M.E (So Others Might Eat) to address issues of homelessness and hunger. S.O.M.E. has served the D.C. area for almost 40 years working to holistically care for the homeless and poor citizens of the city. S.O.M.E. offers hot meals, clothing, medical attention, job training and affordable housing to their clients as they strive to make real and lasting changes in their lives (www.some.org). Siena students were able to join SOME in providing food, clothing and facility rehabilitation for their clients. Bonner, Amanda Simone described the experience as follows: "It was a wonderful and eye opening experience that allowed the Bonners to gain insight on how one organization can help the poor in so many different ways."  Siena Bonners also participated in several Bonner Network meetings/conferences: IMPACT, Congress and Engage Your World, and SLI. 

Roles of Student Leaders in Integration of the Serve 2.0 Initiative

Student Leaders like Kim Vassilatos, the Bonner Senior Intern and Hannah McCarthy took the lead as Bonner Video Liaisons in Siena’s participation in the Bonner Video Project. They did create an issue-based video; however it was not submitted properly to the Foundation. Flip cams were also used to document moments at conferences and group bonding activities. April Risley and Melanie Iannacone also played a key role in participating in these films. Students enjoyed passing the camera along to each other to document these moments.  Most of our clips have been compiled into videos that are now posted on YouTube, including our video “A Day in the Life of a Bonner Student” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmM57wuJk34. Siena Bonners participated in the Bonner Congress Road Rules Challenge and created a music video in transit that they submitted for the conference contest.  Videos and slideshows of photos were utilized in the end-of-year celebration of service on campus.   In addition to video, Siena had instituted blogging as a form of reflection in which all Bonners participated. Siena students would blog reaction to articles and/or events that were relevant for their community activities. They also impacted the wiki, as student leaders made a presence on the Siena Bonner Leaders Wiki with profile pages that feature each student. The Bonner application was also disseminated via the wiki as PR materials directed interested applications to review the wiki and obtain the application as well.  The Siena VISTA Fellows Program greatly expanded the use and content of their wiki this year and will be assisting the Bonner program in its continued development. (scvista.pbworks.com) 

Implementation of Community Partnerships

Arrangement and management of community partnerships and placements 

In order to place our students at community partners, we first meet with the students to determine their interest in issue areas.  After determining in what area the student is interested in serving, we turn to our network of community partners that are already working with the Franciscan Center for Service and Advocacy, and specifically for those already familiar with the Siena DEEP Service Model.  From here, the Assistant Director of Academic Community Engagement/Bonner Coordinator (ADACE/BC) meets with the community partner to discuss the logistics of a long-term, developmental student placement essentially resulting in the student becoming integrated as part of the staff.  From here, the ADACE/BC will accompany the student to the organization for an orientation of what the organization is about and how they will be serving.  Throughout the student’s time serving at this organization, the ADACE/BC will make visits with the site-supervisor to assure the relationship is still beneficial for both the student and the organization. In addition, it is important to note that we are adding greater depth and sustainability to partnership design with more integration with the Siena VISTA Fellows Program and with the Academic Service Learning and Community Based Research programs. The Siena VISTA Program has increased dramatically to 15 Fellows, with each placement requiring the Director and staff to discuss a three year strategic plan with each site. By adding Bonners to these placements, we can add additional support and strategic focus to help meet these goals and strengthen initiatives.  The goal is to create partnerships that are multi-layered and multi-faceted.

How partners were engaged as co-educators

This year, our program worked intensively on building a strong relationship with the Boys and Girls Club of Albany.  The site director, Keyon, was invited to attend the SLI conference with our Bonner students.  While at the conference, he gave a presentation on the issues facing his organization, as well as the Albany community as a whole.  His insight into these issues gave the students a deeper understanding of what is happening in our community, as well as the steps that we can take to help take some of those issues away.  Overall, Keyon has played the role as an invaluable resource to our program, helping to educate the students on what it takes to run a successful non-profit organization that effectively reaches the community.  Several other current and potential new community partners attended one of the three Problem Based Service Learning Faculty Trainings on campus to better understand the faculty perspective, what modern academic service learnign is, and provide the community partner perspective.

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

Our relationship with Boys and Girls Club of Albany, as well as our program’s interest in child development has led to the formation of a site-based team at the Boys and Girls Club of Albany.  We have placed two students at the Boys and Girls Club, as well as a Siena College AmeriCorps VISTA to build a team of dedicated volunteers that are deeply immersed in serving this site.  Through building this team, we hope to have a more effective relationship with Boys and Girls Club, as well as a greater impact in helping the community. For the 2009 academic year, we will look to further grow our teams to expand to other partners like the North Albany Academy and potentially another issue area.  We will also be exploring place-based teams as some of our sites are geographically connected by particular neighborhoods in the city.

Campus-Wide Culture and Infrastructure 

Key activities for faculty engagement and academic connections

This past year all Bonner students were required to take Dr Johnson’s Sociology 101 class which focused on civic engagement.  During the class, students explored social issues, including poverty, homelessness and community service, affecting our community and society as a whole.  It was beneficial to be enrolled in this class with both Bonners and non-Bonner students because it allowed us to share our views with those who may not know much about service opportunities in our community or service in general. For the 2009-2010 academic year, all incoming Siena Bonner Service Leaders will have a formalized academic pathway. By starting this pairing early on in their Bonner journey, academics will become a core part of their service experience. All Siena Bonner freshmen (with the exception of 2 for scheduling reasons) are enrolled in Father Ken Paulli's Foundation 100 class for the duration of the year. This class is a gateway course that will introduce the students to understanding our local communities and the systemic issues that they can address here with a service learning component. Spring semester, they will also be required to enroll in a variation of Dr. Johnson's course discussed above focused on poverty.

Key relationships and activities involving other departments or divisions on campus 

The integration of the Siena College Bonner Service Leaders Program with the Vista Fellows Program and the Academic Service Learning Program has meant a solid academic connection for the program.  It has provided increased exposure to faculty and to the campus as a whole.  Furthermore, community connections developed by the VISTA Fellows Program have been very important to the development of sites.  The structural home of the program, the Franciscan Center for Service and Advocacy, has also provided access to years of pre-existing relationships that our campus has with community partners in need of help.  These structures make it easier for us to “plug-in” to organizations.  Furthermore, we build upon these relationships and strengthen them, allowing Siena College as a whole to have a better and DEEPer relationship with the community.  The Policy Options initiative at Siena is primarily housed within the Environmental Studies Department as the pilot project is a green corridor.  This has created connections with another academic department (Dr. Johnson is in Sociology).  As Policy Options takes root on campus, it will be spread across departments.

The Office of the President and the Chief of Staff of the College have played a large part in the growth of our program this year in regards to staffing. With their support, we are better able to institutionalize and prioritize service and Bonner as an academic service program on campus. 

Unique initiatives

Siena has developed a language and model to speak clearly about the campus culture of service we are trying to build.  This is our DEEP Service model: upload ppt here.  This presentation in some for has been delivered to many constituencies on and off campus.    Dr. Johnson has co-facilitated three faculty retreats on mission with Fr. Ken Paulli, Chief of Staff of the President's Cabinet, at which the DEEP service model has been discussed.  Additionally, Siena has held three two-day intensive Faculty trainings on Problem Based Service Learning stipended over 20 faculty to incentivize the development of rigorous academic service learning courses here at Siena.  Dr. Johnson and Dr. Levy have also developed the Assessment of Service and Civic Engagement and will be deploying that on campuses nationwide this semester.  It was a tremendously useful instrument in the planning and organizational assessment here at Siena.  The Foundation staff also did a site visit this year which proved very useful in purseding some of the senior faculty of the necessity of move toward a more capacity building model of service.

Serve 2.0 

Please explain how Serve 2.0 technologies are used most used and by whom

Our Bonner wiki, http://sienabonnerleaders.pbworks.com/ is a very useful tool for all of our Bonners on campus, as well as potential Bonners, family and friends of Bonner.  The wiki allows the user to view a profile of our campus, our program and each Bonner student in our program.  It also gives the user a chance to explore what community partners we work with, as well as issue areas we are intensively working in.  We also use the wiki to explore how other schools successfully run their Bonner program, in an effort to find ways to help make our young program more effective.

Your integration with other social media tools (such as the Bonner Network Forum/Ning, Twitter, YouTube, the Bonner Video Project, PolicyOptions Wiki, or others):  This year the students used blogger to publicly reflect on their feelings towards their service experiences.  This was a very useful tool that allowed us to grow as a group through our understanding of each other’s experiences and feelings.    

This year we hope to implement and use Ning as a networking tool amongst ourselves and also between ourselves and Bonners located at other schools.  Ning shows the promise to be a very effective tool in helping to keep our students in touch with each other as well as allow them to interact with veteran Bonners from schools with a more established program. This will be a great tool to act as a forum for issues and or event planning as well.

Campus Issue Profiles

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