NY Times article today: Universities Learn Value of Neighborliness

Dear SL colleagues,
This article appears in today's New York TImes, first page of the National
Report section!

Universities Learn Value of Neighborliness

March 12, 2003
By TAMAR LEWIN

CLEVELAND - Tensions between town and gown stretch from the
Middle Ages. The concept of the ivory tower has been around
a long time, too. But Case Western Reserve University is
reaching out to the community here.

On a practical level, Case Western dental students visit
the public schools, where half the children have never seen
a dentist, to apply sealant to the teeth of the 15,000
second and sixth graders. And talks have begun about
bringing the Cleveland Health Department onto the campus
next year, a move that could involve additional medical
students in basic public health issues while saving the
city money on rent.

Dr. Edward M. Hundert, the new president of Case Western,
is exploring other ideas, like how the university might
work with the nearby Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and how to
bring the university's research and technology advances to
market. Finding new ways to give students real-life
experience while helping the community is Dr. Hundert's
refrain.

"It's something for every department to think about," he
said. "At one reception, I was talking to an English
professor about how poets choose particular words to have
an emotional impact, and we talked about the possibility of
having her students spend time in the mayor's
speech-writing office, another place where people think
about that."

Case Western is not the only university thinking along
these lines. A few - most notably Yale - have been doing so
for a decade. In recent years, far more of the top urban
research universities have become engaged in supporting the
communities around them.

Some say their efforts were designed to make it easier to
lure top faculty members and students. Others, like Dr.
Hundert, say it is a pedagogical decision, a way to enliven
the education they offer by engaging students and faculty
members in real-world problems.

Whatever the motivation, many kinds of partnerships are
flourishing. Some universities - like Clark in Worcester,
Mass. - are involved with local school systems,
reorganizing middle and high schools.

Others are involved in biotechnology. Washington University
in St. Louis has used a $40 million venture capital fund
taken from its endowment to encourage startup biotechnology
companies. Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond,
with the city and state, is building a biotechnology
research park to house 3,000 researchers, scientists,
engineers and technicians.

The University of Rochester, where Dr. Hundert was dean of
the medical school, has focused on public health and
eliminating disparities in care among ethnic groups.

Such programs, however, face obstacles. Success often
depends on building ties to leaders who have histories of
university bashing, and marketing projects to communities
that mistrust universities.

Then, too, some universities are wary of projects in which
they have to share control. Others are uncomfortable with
the idea of moving beyond their academic sphere.

"When I became president of Johns Hopkins in 1996, I said
we're not into community redevelopment," said Dr. William
R. Brody, who is now committed to redeveloping the
adjoining East Baltimore neighborhood with 1,500 new and
rehabilitated housing units and a biotechnology park. "I
was like George W. Bush, saying we're not into nation
building. But we are in the middle of urban terrorism, with
one of the worst drug areas in the nation one block north
of campus. We have to build a viable neighborhood."

Yet as endowments shrink, it is no easy matter to find
money for ambitious new projects, especially when faculty
members see the projects as impinging on the money
available to them. But even in tough times, Dr. Hundert
says, those who understand the benefits of closer ties to
their cities will find the money to create the programs.

"Our philosophy is that the external things we're doing are
the things that will set our university apart," Dr. Hundert
said. "If we look outward and combine our funds with
outside institutions, we can create something greater than
the sum of the parts, something that will attract top
faculty and students."

In New Haven, Yale's decade-long investment in overcoming
urban blight is paying off, the university president says.

"In the two years before I became president, a student was
murdered on campus and major national magazines conveyed
the impression that violent teenage drug gangs ruled the
streets," said Dr. Richard C. Levin, who became president
of Yale in 1993 and made community outreach a criterion for
evaluating faculty members and administrators. "By
contrast, last year, a feature article in The New York
Times Travel section called New Haven `an irresistible
destination.' "

At Dr. Hundert's inaugural colloquium on universities and
their cities in January, Dr. Levin described a Yale program
offering subsidies to university employees to buy houses in
New Haven, where housing prices had been declining and
vacancy rates were high. Starting in 1994, employees who
bought houses in the city received $2,000 a year for 10
years. A year later, the two upper-middle-class
neighborhoods in the city had stabilized, so Yale stopped
offering the subsidy in those neighborhoods and expanded it
in lower-income neighborhoods.

Yale, the largest employer in New Haven, has not overcome
its long, dismal record on labor relations, but has made
strides in revitalizing downtown and engaging in civic
life.

At Case Western, Dr. Hundert began wooing the community at
a reception in August where hundreds of Clevelanders met
him and shared their ideas on what the university should do
with a former hospital site it had acquired.

The site may be the new home of the municipal health
department. "It would a great opportunity to have the
medical school and the university and the community
stitched together," Mayor Jane L. Campbell said.

But for now, the dental sealant program is the symbol of
engagement with the city, helping students both to
understand the needs in poor communities and to help fill
that need.

"It's a wonderful thing on all sides," said Dr. James
Lalumandier, the chairman of community dentistry. "In this
country, 80 percent of dental disease is in 20 percent of
the children, and these are the 20 percent. Students arrive
at medical school and dental school with a desire to help
people, and if you get them into clinical work quickly,
they don't lose that desire."

The dental students said their weeks in the schools were
the high point of the year.

"When you sit down for the first time to use a probe in the
mouth, it's a big moment," said Oliver Thuernagle, a
student from Idaho who has been startled by what he saw in
the schools and the children's mouths.

"I'm from a place where you don't lock the door when you go
on vacation, and here I am at schools where you sign in,
and they check you for guns," Mr. Thuernagle said. "We saw
children whose teeth had erupted only five months ago and
were already rotten to the core. You refer them to someone
who will take care of the cavities. But you just wish you
were there five months ago."

School officials say the program is a godsend.

"Having
Case Western here, what a blessing," said Eugenia Cash, a
health administrator. "It hasn't always been the case that
they reached out to the community, but now they truly are."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/12/education/12CITI.html?ex=1048483648&ei=1&en=d721cc7a81a1c48f

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Community-Campus Partnerships for Health is a nonprofit organization that
promotes health through partnerships between communities and educational
institutions.  Check out our website at www.ccph.info

Mark your calendar for CCPH's 7th annual conference - April 26-29, 2003 in
San Diego, CA. The conference will feature a symposium jointly planned and
sponsored by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development's Office
of University Partnerships and the Community Outreach Partnership Centers
program. This will present an unprecedented opportunity for advancing
community-campus partnerships that truly span the campus and contribute to
public problem-solving and healthier communities.

CCPH is the Higher Education Senior Program Advisor for the Learn and
Serve America National Service-Learning Clearinghouse
Visit the Clearinghouse at http://www.servicelearning.org
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