Since its founding in the fall of 2021, the CWRU Neighborhood Advisory Council (NAC) has steadily grown into its role as a liaison between the residents living in the neighborhoods and communities surrounding campus and university leadership. And as it has, the university’s Community Innovation Network (CIN) has provided support for this unique collaborative effort, gently guiding the NAC’s course when appropriate and serving as a trusted partner.
The NAC was an outgrowth of the CIN’s first Foundations of Community Building program, a nine-month cohort-based program designed to bring institutions and the people who live in surrounding communities closer together. The first cohort met during the 2018-19 academic year and, at the conclusion of the program, created a task force specifically to help make the CWRU campus a more welcoming place.
“People in the community were really craving a connection,” explains Associate Professor at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences and Founding Director of the Community Innovation Network Mark Chupp. “They wanted access to the lectures and to the amazing expertise we have on campus. They wanted to take classes. They wanted to be engaged. And the university had that same craving for a connection and to interact with community members more than we were.”
The NAC became that mutual connection. Comprising members from the surrounding communities and institutions, civic leaders and representation from the university, the NAC has become a multiplier for the community engagement that occurs at CWRU. The CIN was identified in the NAC charter as a supporter to help maintain the spirit and values of the relationship between the university and the surrounding community. Today, it remains as the NAC’s leading advisory partner and facilitator.
“The CIN’s expertise is in community building and building trust between everyday residents from marginalized communities and institutions,” explains CIN Program Manager JP Graulty. “With the NAC, we can tap into our own know-how and utilize our expertise to support this initiative.”
The success of the partnership was most evident during the NAC’s Community Dinner last November, which drew a crowd of more than 200 people to the Tinkham Veale University Center. The 2023 Community Dinner was the first held at the university since before the pandemic, and, as Chupp explains, it had a drastically different feel.
“In the past, the dinner was more of a community relations event where the university would share what was going on within the university,” Chupp says. “But this most recent community dinner was more about how the community interacts with the university and how the university interacts with the community.”
Another change was the role played by graduate students from the Mandel School. In the past, the students facilitated community dinner table discussions and took notes, but in November, each table discussion was facilitated by an NAC member and the MSASS students became note-takers. Those notes became points of discussion for the NAC, and in turn, the NAC has used those notes to create a report which they will share with CWRU President Eric Kaler at the beginning of next month. The report also will be published and shared with the community at large.
In addition, the table questions were considered differently for the November community dinner. Thanks to the help of MSASS intern and graduate student Abby Schultz, Graulty says the questions were structured intentionally so that conversations would be real and honest about the challenges that exist, while encouraging participants to envision the relationship they wanted to create and the world they wanted to see.
“One of the things that people commented on was that it was helpful to hear from the NAC member at their table about what their role is and what they're doing. This had the effect of making each of the NAC members become much more like ambassadors for the community,” Chupp says. “And so now I think we are in a different place where people can say, ‘Oh, we should contact the NAC instead of contacting the university. And they will know that they have a route they can take that leads to more direct contact with university leadership.”
NAC Co-Chair Trevelle Harp says that working alongside the CIN and the university’s Office of Local Government and Community Relations has given him hope in CWRU's commitment to community engagement. “The NAC intends to take full advantage of the access these partnerships bring,” Harp says. “It is our collective goal to build a bridge of mutual respect between the university and the neighborhoods that surround it, so that together we can develop and implement strategies that benefit the common good and promote racial equity."