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Location: about 10 minutes northwest of downtown Richmond

Undergraduate Enrollment: 2,795

Other interesting tidbits: Richmond's Bonner Scholars program hosts almost 100 Bonner Scholars--making it the largest program in the country!  Richmond is also the site of the 2009 Fall Bonner Congress Meeting, October 23-25.  Check the Bonner Congress wiki for updates.

 

BONNER PROGRAM AT A GLANCE

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Name of Campus-Wide Center: The Bonner Center for Civic Engagement

Relevant website: http://engage.richmond.edu/

 

Type of Program: Bonner Scholars

Year Began: 1992 (first full class of Bonners arrived in 1993)

Bonner Program website: http://engage.richmond.edu/programs/bonner/index.html

Current Number of Bonner Scholars: 96

 

KEY CONTACTS

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President: Edward L. Ayers

Center Directors: Amy Howard and Sylvia Gale

Bonner Director: Kimberly Dean

Bonner Coordinater: Bryan Figura

Bonner Senior Intern(s): Kelly Behrend, Zach Ferguson, Sarah Nagel, Zoe Silverman,

Bonner Congress Representatives: Ugo Etudo, Zach Ferguson, and Chaz Barracks

 

MORE ABOUT US (our partners, trips, structure, best or unique practices)

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2009 ANNUAL REPORT HIGHLIGHTS OF PROGRAM ACTIVITIES

2008-09 was quite a year for the BSP at University of Richmond.  We welcomed a new Coordinator, inaugurated a new cornerstone activity for juniors, enrolled first year Bonners in the first Bonner-required course, introduced a formal conference funding process, and had 7 students at SLI representing our campus were just a few of the milestones.  See the bulleted highlights below and more details about this year's inititives in the annual report pages that follow.

 

Conference funding: Eight Bonner Scholars requested support in the inaugural year of a formal conference funding process.  Bonner attended the IMPACT Conference in Maryland (Bonners also presented at this conference), Convergence in Massachusetts, United World College Alumni Conference in Boston, Dominican Student Conference in New York, Physicians for Peace & Global Health in Virginia, The Growing Threat of Drug Resistant TB in DC.    Bonners connected these conferences to their social justice and career interests as well as Bonner service and were encouraged to share what they learned via the Bonner Groups page on the Ning network.

 

One-on-one advising: All active Bonners met with their program adviser at least once a semester to discuss their service experience, academic goals for the semester, plans for summer service, and movement through the Bonner Foundation’s Student Development Model. The BSP director met with third- and fourth-year students and the coordinator met with the first- and second-year students. End-of-year evaluation data show Bonners view one-on-one meetings as necessary and helpful. 

 

Senior Interns: Three students served as senior interns during 2008-2009. Each senior intern selected projects/tasks on which to focus during the application process in spring 2008. Projects/tasks included, but were not limited to, assisting with monthly meetings trainings, serving as Bonner orientation advisors, coordinating a new mentor program for incoming Bonners, and advising students on the Student Leadership Team (SLT). Senior interns also created projects that met the program’s needs and were of interest to them. Such projects included development of a monthly Social Justice Roundtable and collaboration with the Office of International Education to create a document that lists the specific contact person/office in charge of civic engagement at 63 study-abroad partner universities.

 

Student Leadership Team (SLT): Members of the SLT read admission applications of prospective Bonners, participated in live chats with prospective students, and filmed and produced videos for the Bonner Foundation’s Bonner Video Project. Membership also increased to include two representatives from each class, excluding the seniors, who were responsible for planning cornerstone activities. 

 

Summer Leadership Institute (SLI): The BSP director and coordinator and seven  Bonner Scholars (two of whom interned with the Bonner Foundation in summer 2009) attended SLI at Stetson University. Staff and students attended position-related tracks and participated in the Global Issues & Diversity issue track which provided time for “issue to impact” brainstorming relative to a specific community partner. The BSP director, coordinator, and one of the 2008-09 senior interns presented on using the Bonner Student Development Model as a framework for Bonner programming. 

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 2009 Annual Report

Click here to complete next wiki-based portion of Annual Report.   

 

STUDENT LEADERSHIP PLANNING

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 Click here for Congress Leadership Plans:

Richmond Congress Action Planning

 

SPRING 2009 INITIATIVES

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Serve 2.0

• Staff Point Person for project:  name-email (maybe Bryan?)--note: Kim served as staff point person for spring 2009; Bryan will serve is in this capacity for the 2009-10 school year
• Student Point Person for project:  name - email (maybe Zach Ferguson?)--note:  Sr. Intern Paige Wigginton served as student BVL; Sr. Intern Zoe Silverman will serve in this capacity for the 2009-10 school year 
• Planning to submit mini-grant proposal:  Will think about it, but not likely. Want to check energy level of their core of students--note: While there was no mini-grant proposal, Paige Wigginton did facilitate usage of video technology to record monthly meetings to post on Bonner Ning page, as well as compiled video of several BSP programs to put together an overall Bonner promotional video.  Congress Representatives also put together two promo videos to advertise the fall Bonner Congress coming to University of Richmond in fall 2009.
• Bonner Program or Campus-Wide Wiki status:  created; URL: richmondserves.pbwiki.com
• Participating in Bonner Video Project:  yes
  • Student BVL (Bonner Video Liaison) contact info posted on link: Have not yet identified. When they do, will post Bonner Video Liaisons note: Sr. Intern Paige Wigginton served as 2008-09 BVL
  • Need a Flip Cam? (we can provide one per campus): yes
• See useful links:  Serve 2.0 Resource Wiki   |   Mini-Grant RFP
• Balance tech resources coming out from Foundation vs. school; competing interests; intentionally see the value for these tools
• University of Richmond has a groups page, "The Ning"-(internal facebook like) that they would like campus to utilize, may act to the same purpose as the wiki that the Foundation is promoting usage. Will include events, blitz, etc.
• Love the google tools out there-google calendar, google docs-use it to schedule one-on-ons
• With the flip cam, they want to be able to record monthly meetings and post it on the meeting-good for those who miss meetings, etc and then the student can post a response. Anticipating that this will be an immediate use of the flip cam.

 

BWBRS

• Using BWBRS 3.0: yes -fully trained and transitioned, staff started at the end of last semester (approvals, etc), Bryan updated training guide, first day of classes-students were given an overview; first years got a more in depth training to focus around their 1st CLA, etc.
• Need for additional training:  no
• See useful links:  BWBRS 3.0 Help Guide

 

Bonner AmeriCorps

• Do not currently utilize AmeriCorps. Will revisit in two years (from Fall 2007) so they can get through staff transition, federal work study elements, new programmatic pieces, influence of strategic plan, etc. Will have the conversation again in Fall 2009.

 

Issue-Based Research

• What issue(s) working group will your campus focus on (in preparation for SLI 2009)? 
  • general issue area--note: We focused on Global Issues & Diversity at SLI; not an "official issue area" for the campus but different campus constituents (BSP, Bonner Center for Civic Engagement, faculty) put significant resources into this issue area (service-learning, Bonner service, alternative spring breaks)
• Specific topic for issue brief (see Research Guide for help to work with partner in defining):  
  • specific issue brief topic (define by February) note: We established the Program & Policy Association position, of which our campus plans to have 5 in the fall, who will each choose a specific issue area and produce a policy brief in spring 2010
• Lead contact people for project (staff and/or students, community partner agency):
  • names, titles, phone numbers, emails note: TBD once PPAs are selecting in early fall 2009
• See useful links:  PolicyOptions Wiki   |  Campus Implementation Guide

This is a hard piece for them due to the campus wide buy in. Community issues is a piece to be considered.  Community Engagement is one of the 5 principals in strategic plan. Still waiting to see what the implications will be. How do we strategically coordinate our community engagement on campus? How do we best promote coordination? Do we pick an issue as a campus? Criminal Justice and Violence Prevention for example (group Kim was in)-is it something the whole campus would adopt as an issue area for community engagement? They have a lot of conversations as a campus to discuss with this. 

 

Suggested for SLI-use this project as prep work for the campus wide initiatives. Continue having conversations with Bobby as well. 

 

General Support

Technology will be a big project/need for support this semester. Will draw from other schools, see where it fits in bigger picture, buy in and other resources out there. Amount of resources and tools out there can be overwhelming. Also may be good for accurate, long term documentation/infrastructure perspective around financial aid, etc. Want to build an IT system that is going to be supported by the campus. **** LOOKING FOR A DATABASE SYSTEM!

 

International Taxation Office Question--note: We had a conversation with financial aid, international taxation office, and technology contacts to discuss what information needed to be tracked in regards to taxation and how best to track it

 

PHOTOS

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First Year Trip, Class of 2012

 

 

 

 First Year Trip, Class of 2011  

           Educational time at the hostel                                      Time with Bobby

 

 

 

Sophomore Exchange, Class of 2010

Hard at work                                                                                  

 

First Year Orientation, Class of 2011

A view of the city