Annual Report – Programmatic Section

Please complete this template below to share programmatic highlights.  The entire report can be three pages or less.  Please share information and highlights, in a letter-like or reporting format, that addresses the following three categories and provides a synopsis of your Bonner Program this year.

Implementation of Student Development: 

Bonner Leader learning opportunities highlight environmental sustainability. This year the orientation included an outdoors Community Challenge Course to increase mutual support among Bonner Leaders, to enhance involvement with the natural world, to increase participants’ personal confidence, and to have fun. Follow-up meetings discussed community-building, civic engagement, and spirituality and health. A campus-wide service plunge organized by Bonner Leaders assisted in trail clean-up in coordination with the Municipality’s Parks and Recreation Halloween Celebration. 

To support community-engaged research, UAA supports Community Service-learning Advocates. This program offers tuition assistance to students who work on community engagement projects with faculty. Students assisted in Biology labs and Campus Action to Reduce Environmental Toxins; tutored Russian and English in local schools; and created art lessons at the ReCreation Afterschool Art Program.

Implementation of Community Partnerships: 

Community partnerships with adult literacy and social service programs including anti-hunger and -homelessness programs were particularly strong this year. Both Bonner Leaders and community-engaged research projects connected with the Food Bank of Alaska. Community partners are involved in our meetings and strategic planning.

As a community-engaged research opportunity with Tracey Burke, a professor in Social Work, students examined the Alaska School Breakfast Program and designed community-based public policy with the Food Bank of Alaska. They identified national model programs, examined the “state of breakfast in Alaska” by surveying school district nutrition staff members, and created fact sheets for legislators describing what schools in each district are doing. Students traveled to Juneau to advocate for reducing hunger in Alaska during the legislative session. 

Campus-wide Culture and Infrastructure: 

Community engagement is widespread throughout UAA’s activities, curricular practices, planning, and mission. The next step in our institutional maturation is to consider anew shared definitions and expectations for faculty work that will guide our processes of hiring, evaluating, promoting, and tenuring faculty at UAA. In 2008, a Provost-appointed Task Force began a review of UAA’s peer review processes. As part of their charge, “...learning and engagement will be the unifying themes of a shared definition of quality that reflects a scholarly approach to all aspects of faculty work and talent reflected in UAA’s unique mission.”

In 2008, UAA also began exploring the feasibility of offering a community-engaged learning abroad program. Its intent is to provide opportunities for students to study and be civically engaged abroad as they gain (a) deeper understandings of the complex connections among self, identity, culture, systems, and their expressions; (b) skills in scholarly approaches to inquiry grounded in global awareness and personal efficacy; and (c) understandings of the transforming power of cultural competence and participatory action. 

A UAA Faculty Team -- from Civic Engagement, Education, International Studies, Languages, and Philosophy -- held extensive meetings focused on curriculum, service-learning abroad principles, study abroad issues, and course delivery modes. The team worked with staff and administrators across units, including Academic Affairs staff, the director of International Affairs, the director of International Student Services, and the international student advisor. During a May 2008 site visit to Guatemala, the team met with several potential site and community partners. Much work has now been completed with regard to policies and procedures for program implementation and with regard to the creation of an integrated curriculum with civic engagement as an organizing theme. Future program development in a community-engaged learning abroad program will advance integrated scholarship of engagement at UAA.