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Pilot Project Profile - Amherst CollegeLead Contacts | Issue Focus | Pilot Project Plan | Timeline | Progress Reports Lead Contacts
Issue Focus
Link to Amherst College Working Page Link to Springfield Institute website
Progress Reports
Pilot Project Plan1. Background
The Local PolicyOptions.org Initiative concept mirrors our own strategic planning at the Center for Civic Engagement (CCE), while providing technical and financial resources to begin implementing those plans. Since the inception of the CCE in September, 2007, much of our community engagement work has involved students providing direct services such as tutoring, mentoring, building affordable housing or working with people who are homeless. We know that this involvement, alone, is not enough to make lasting change in communities and to truly teach students all they need to know to become the effective, engaged citizens we are preparing them to be.
Given the opportunity to employ their analytic and technical skills, we believe Amherst College students are capable of contributing, and gaining, so much more. Beyond charity, we would like our students to have the opportunity to participate in real systemic change. The work is more meaningful (personally and pedagogically) for students, more consistent with the College’s mission, and leads to a larger contribution to our community partners and society.
With this goal in mind, we have been in discussions with an Amherst-based nonprofit organization called Policy Development (PD) since CCE’s inception. PD was conceived by a group of students and faculty at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School specifically to bridge this gap between research and policy on the one hand, and community-based organizations and direct services providers on the other. Similar to PolicyOptions.org, Policy Development believes that closing this gap has numerous benefits for all parties: higher quality teaching and learning, more informed and inclusive policy debates and decision-making, more responsive community project planning, increased capacity to track community trends and evaluate community impact, increased PR and fundraising capacity for community based organizations, etc. (see attached PD summary).
PD projects are regional, national, and international; but CCE and PD have chosen a new initiative in Springfield, Massachusetts to be a demonstration project for the Local PolicyOptions.org Initiative. The initiative, called The Springfield Institute, is a bold response to the city’s chronic and mutually reinforcing challenges. These challenges run the gamut: public education, poverty, health disparities, de facto segregation, public safety and gang violence, incarceration rates, unemployment, private investment, infrastructure, municipal debt, and a legacy of corruption. There is a growing recognition among many of the region’s next generation leaders that the traditional approaches aren’t working. The Springfield Institute will be a home for these next generation leaders. It will be a laboratory for big ideas about how great cities work, and how Springfield can begin its own transformation. PolicyOptions.org will be a great way to create a vital “on-line” presence and to send another signal that we’re not using the old methods.
The Institute, and in turn our use of PolicyOptions.org, will combine the analytic sophistication and policy level influence of conventional think tanks with an unprecedented level of engagement with community organizations and residents themselves. The Institute will also be an opportunity for Amherst College students and faculty to apply their talents in more sophisticated ways, and ultimately make a greater contribution to social change. The explicit goal is for the Institute to be a conduit for many of the area’s colleges and universities to engage in ways that haven’t previously been possible.
For starters, we’d like to provoke public discussion and encourage fresh perspectives on five critical topics:
We have already begun collecting examples of forward thinking urban policies that have worked in other cities with similar features (demographics, economic trends, scale, etc.). We need to expand our knowledge base, and at the same time gain a better understanding of the circumstances that led to Springfield’s current situation. Using a wide variety of formats (public forums, focus groups, surveys, radio call-in shows, digital stories, etc.), we will begin engaging community groups, public agencies, the media, funders, colleges and universities, and others. Our goals are to introduce some new ideas, gauge reactions, get a better sense of Springfield’s history, and recruit a broad spectrum of Springfield stakeholders to participate in an ongoing and deliberative transformation process. Within the first year of operation, the Institute will have generated original research about the applicability of new policy directions for Springfield, and mobilized historically underrepresented constituencies to spearhead a transformation process.
The Institute will have a small staff of professionals with both analytic and community organizing skills. These staff roles will initially be supplied by Policy Development until the Institute develops other sources of funds. An advisory board representative of Springfield’s diverse stakeholders will guide the staff. The work of the staff will be leveraged using its partnerships with allied institutions (see above). PolicyOptions.org is the perfect vehicle for the Institute’s stakeholders (including students and faculty) to learn about, and help create, systemic change in Springfield. We imagine PolicyOptions.org helping to make that analytic work more accessible to the community, and making systemic change an inclusive process.
Even at this early stage in its development the Springfield Institute has been embraced by community leaders. Evidence of this includes the fact that a local community service agency is providing free space in a newly refurbished storefront in downtown Springfield, just off Main Street (see attached photos).
2. Student Engagement
Annually, CCE places 175 students in internships in the summer and 48 during January term. In the cases where the host organization cannot provide a stipend, CCE does. It is often challenging to find internship sites that afford students the opportunity to do policy development or advocacy work. We anticipate that the PolicyOptions.org/Springfield Institute internships will be very sought after by students. The CCE will provide stipends for the students who participate in the Institute. The entire Public Service Internship program run by the CCE is well known on campus (last year 250 students applied for 175 opportunities), so we will use our current recruiting approaches to let students know about the new internships with the Springfield Institute.
CCE staff will recruit students and train them in the technical aspects of PolicyOptions.org. Policy Development staff will provide ongoing guidance regarding the substantive aspects of PolicyOptions.org (e.g., assigning research, writing, etc.), and provide on-site supervision. Students will also be paired with faculty mentors who will provide additional guidance for their work.
Student activities will include demographic and historical research, urban policy and planning research (beyond Springfield), preparation of presentation materials, meeting summaries, interviews, policy briefs, web site development and maintenance, media outreach, event planning, study tours (Springfield, South Bronx, New Haven, Newark, etc.), and participation in internal planning sessions and board meetings.
3. Faculty Engagement
It is often hard to find Amherst College faculty who can imagine a role for themselves with the direct service work that students are doing currently through the CCE because, in a liberal arts college there is little overlap between direct community service and the teaching or scholarship of most faculty. It will be much easier to involve faculty in public policy work that has strong and obvious connections to the intellectual work of the faculty. We have already had conversations with faculty in the Economics and Sociology departments that are eager to redesign specific courses (Health Care Economics and the Sociology of Inequality) to integrate the policy involvement students will have through the Institute.
4. Deliberative Democracy Forum
The Springfield Institute itself is our experiment in deliberative democracy. We expect to have broad and ongoing participation from several critical constituencies: residents, community organizations, policy makers, the media, academics, youth, business leaders, organized labor, and faith-based organizations. Activities being considered include: research and analytic writing, mainstream media op-eds, community forums, expert panel discussions, film series, and community organizing. The purpose will be to convene a broad (and often underrepresented) set of constituents who can deliberate together about both the challenges Springfield faces and the potential solutions.
5. Editorial/Advisory Board
Our local PolicyOptions.org Editorial/Advisory Board will include 1-2 representatives of the following constituencies: Amherst College faculty, Amherst College students, Policy Development staff, Springfield residents, Springfield community organizations, local media. Its charge will be to provide guidance on policy and community outreach priorities, analytic methodology, and legislative strategy. CCE will “house” our local PolicyOptions.org initiative.
Timeline
Spring 2009
Summer 2009
Fall 2009
Winter 2009/2010
Spring 2010
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