The Bonner Program rests on three key principles: building programs with strong student development and leadership, making a difference through reciprocal community partnerships and a focus on impact, and promoting a campus-wide culture for civic engagement. Here we describe the campus-wide culture area.
The Vision
The Bonner Program seeks to engage and impact students who are directly involved as Bonner Scholars and Leaders, as well as their community partners, staff, peers, and others with whom they work — but we don't want to stop there. Our vision is that campuses in the network build a culture of service that strives for the motto: Everybody, Everyday! There are ways that the resources of a college and university — students, faculty, intellectual resources, and even financial resources — can be leveraged to meet community needs and build the capacity of our local communities to solve problems. Bonner Programs work on a whole array of issues — most prominently, education, school readiness, school success, youth development, homelessness, hunger, the environment, and health. Students are most directly involved in community service efforts, but many are making connections to their academic study, doing community-based participatory research and service-learning programs, conducting policy research and analysis, and finding other ways to systematically address issues— engaging other aspects of the campus and community in the process.
Some Helpful Pieces for a Strong Structure
- Governance Considerations (where your program is housed)—access to resources and authority
- Organizational structure—a good structure of reporting and team definition
- Sufficient staffing and student leadership positions—at least one full-time person for every 40 Bonners, supplemented by a robust student leadership structure (Congress, Senior Interns, Project Coordinators)
- Clarity about roles with program management—use the Self-Assessment Tool as a planning tool and to discuss who is responsible for the various roles of the program— recruitment, advising, training, reflection, site management, BWBRS, academic connections, and campus-wide collaboration.
Read more about these on the introduction about Campus Infrastructure.
It is also helpful to know about and at times frame the discussion and aims for the campus infrastructure around the broader literature and conceptions of civic engagement's place in higher education. The following page contains important references about civic engagement, including institutional assessment tools and rubrics.
The Strategy
Learn more about how to talk about and conceive a strategy for developing your campus-wide culture and centers for service.
Below are the powerpoints, handouts, and worksheets from the 2008 New Bonner Directors & Coordinators Meeting.
Building and Using Your Bonner Team and the National Network: Congress Reps, Senior Interns, & Student Leaders with a special focus on the Bonner Network Wiki and Serve 2.0
- Powerpoints
- Handouts
- Worksheet
Campus-Wide Infrastructure
Bonner AmeriCorps
