CLC-Conference-Proceeding-2018

Anchor Institutions Advancing Local and Global Sustainable Community
Development Through Teaching, Scholarship, and Research
Gloria Bonilla-Santiago, PhD and Matthew Closter
Universities, as anchor institutions, have
a moral and just responsibility to fulfill social
justice missions to improve the educational and
economic wellbeing of their communities
(Bonilla-Santiago, 2014). They harness
incredible human, social, intellectual, and
physical capital (Flora, Flora and Fey, 2004) that
can be leveraged to empower neighborhoods and
residents to change educational, environmental,
and economic conditions. Universities have
traditionally developed partnerships with
businesses, schools, and nonprofit organizations
to produce an ecosystem of collaborative
learning and engagement, but their role has
shifted to engage in the fabric of the community
as agents of change.
The Rutgers –Camden campus has been
the leading partner with the LEAP Academy
University School as the only educational
pipeline from cradle to college in the country.
As an institution of higher learning, we are
preparing students from early ages through the
K-16 system to be college and career ready for a
learning and workforce environment that
requires college degrees. Our campus has
embraced a model of civic engagement and
experiential learning for college students to
volunteer, intern, and assist in community
programs to get exposure to life beyond the
college boundaries and to study and reflect on
their impact.
The purpose of this monograph
and compilation of symposia proceedings is to
disseminate original research papers of how
faculty and entrepreneurial university leaders go
beyond civic engagement and experiential
learning to change the social conditions around
them and fully empower communities to excel
and succeed in their educational and economic
paths. The Rutgers-Camden Community
Leadership Center (CLC), led by Rutgers Board
of Governors Distinguished Service Professor
Gloria Bonilla-Santiago, has been a leader in the
movement to instill a community development
framework within universities to take action
against the status quo in education that leaves so
many children and families behind, particularly
in Camden, New Jersey.
It convened two conferences and a
symposium from 2017-2018 to share knowledge
from local initiatives in the Philadelphia/New
Jersey region and from Puerto Rico and Cuba,
where it has been fostering a major collaboration
on sustainable community development. The
following proceedings are papers presented by
symposia participants on the collective
responsibility of universities and communities to
embrace a social justice mission and work with
communities to build solidarity and shared
meaning. The consensus is that universities have
not traditionally been an ally of communities and
have a long way to go to build trust and avenues
for college resources and access. Rutgers-
Camden takes much pride through the work of
the CLC to highlight our pipeline model for
children and families as we improve the
educational and economic outcomes of
marginalized populations in the City of Camden.
The CLC has an accomplished history of
developing sustainable university partnerships
with the community through joint projects and
initiatives to steer the educational landscape