Mesa already has Mesa Community College, and is next door to Arizona State University, but campuses are still scarce in the region:

 

How to create community=university partnerships that can be sustained over time is the theme of Volume 4 (2011) of the journal, Gateways: the International Journal of Community Research & Engagement. There are quite a few excellent pieces of interest to planners in this volume—which is not at all focused on infrastructure. Definitely worth a read if your work on campus involves planning for workable community partnerships in some way. 

Requires free registration to access. Here are two examples from the many interesting articles in this issue:

Collaboration Between Universities: An effective way of sustaining community-university partnerships ... 

[E]xplores the potential for universities to collaborate on building effective engagement mechanisms (such as helpdesks, ‘hub and spoke’ contact models, and research groups to review ideas for activities) that will support an ongoing flow of new projects and partnerships over time. ...

In an ‘age of austerity’, we contend that collaboration between universities may be an efficient and effective way of engaging with local communities but that such inter-university collaboration is not cost-free and requires high-level strategic buy-in by institutions. ...

However, the resources required to create the ‘infrastructure’ to support community engagement are sometimes overlooked. A significant proportion of these costs are for academic and administrative support staff time, although there may also be marketing and promotion costs as well as general office-related overheads.

A Mutually Beneficial Relationship: University of the Third Age and a regional university campus is definitely of interest to planners with regard to engaging “active retirees” in the academic community.

A mutually beneficial relationship has developed over the past 15 years between a regional South Australian branch of the University of the Third Age (U3A) and the local university campus. Arising from the initiative of a community member, the group sought assistance from the university, and has now become integrated into campus life.

The ‘third age’ is the age of active retirement, following childhood and youth and then the age of full-time employment, and preceding a more dependent old age for some. 

If you find this item to be of interest, then you need to be checking out SCUP's Pacific Region's annual conference next spring: Inspiring Community, March 21–23, 2011 at Seattle University.

Consider the case of Lowell, Mass., located on the banks of the Merrimack and Concord rivers and once coined mill city. Named as one of five “innovative cities” by the Innovative Cities consortium, the City of Lowell’s dramatic reversal of fortune was driven by lean manufacturing and, significantly, a robust appetite for commercial and retail development, cultural diversity, and community engagement. The key ingredient in Lowell was that business and civic leaders united behind a co-development strategy, attracted investment from outside the community and leveraged capital financing for building out town/gown infrastructure, like sports stadiums, residential commons, and state-of-the-art student fitness and recreation centers.

A recent USA Today feature reported on two types of recession-proof economies: the first, state capitals and the second, collegetowns. In these latter cities, higher education institutions created transportation linkages, river walks, bike paths and pedestrian pathways to guide, inform, and enhance the urban life experience. Increasingly, Americans are seeking out these river mill collegetowns as powerful options for retail, hospitality, and ecotourism investment and as wise choices to live, learn, start a business and raise a family. This new wave of urban homesteaders has learned that collegetowns are now lifelong destinations and more than temporary undergraduate residences.

SCUP is, BTW, collecting links to economic impact or community impact reports. You can see the 14 we have found so far here. Please use this simple online form to share any other such links you know of. Thanks.

We discovered this economic impact report while we were looking for news on the Iowa website about the $152M FEMA grant it just received to rebuild from its flooding. We didn't find much yet, just this, but when we do we will share it. The following language begins the executive summary of the report:

Statewide expenditures by the University of Iowa and related constituencies totaled $2.6 billion in fiscal year 2008-09. The University affected business volume in Iowa in two ways:

1. Direct expenditures for goods and services by the University, its employees, students, and visitors. This supported local businesses, which in turn employed local individuals to sell the goods and provide the services that University constituencies needed.

2. Induced or indirect spending within the state of Iowa. The businesses and individuals that received direct expenditures re-spent this money within the state, thus creating the need for even more jobs.

As a result of expenditures on goods and services by the University, the overall economic impact of all the University’s operations on the state of Iowa in FY 2008-09 was $6.0 billion ($2.6 billion direct impact and $3.4 billion indirect).

This Boston Globe article by Robert Gavin includes a video interview with University of Massachusetts president Jack M. Wilson, which begins with him talking about the $1.9B of building the university has done in the last few years.

Underlying all the construction is the university’s growth. State funding pays for 14 percent of this year’s $2.8 billion budget, down from 28 percent a little more than a decade ago. But since 2003, enrollment has risen nearly 15 percent systemwide, to about 66,000 students, while revenue from tuition, fees, and other non-state sources has doubled to $2.3 billion. Federal and corporate funding of UMass research has jumped 50 percent to nearly $500 million last year. Fees from licensing technologies developed at UMass nearly quadrupled to more than $70 million.

Just as important has been a cultural shift borne of dwindling state support. University officials say, they have had to take an entrepreneurial approach to make the most of available resources.

Many institutions have found it useful to publish a "Community Impact Statement," by one name or another. The statements attempt to make clear the value of the campus to its surrounding community and region. SCUP has begun a collection of links to such statements. You can view the current collection here and you can add additional links to more community impact statements at this easy to use online form.

We have links to community impact reports from North Carolina A&T State University, Missouri Western State University, Nicholls State University, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University, University of Texas at San Antonio, State University of New York at Oswego, Smith College, and Southeastern Louisiana University.

Please share yours.

Don't miss out on joining nearly 1,500 of your colleagues and peers at higher education's premier planning event of 2010, SCUP–45. The Society for College and University Planning's 45th annual, international conference and idea marketplace is July 10–14 in Minneapolis!

 

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SCUP has begun an online database for the sharing of links to a variety of college and university "community impact statements. These are anything from simple statements to comprehensive websites. They serve the purpose of making evident the institution's economic, social, or community benefits to its surrounding community or region. Please consider taking a moment to locate your institution's pertinent document and share the title and link.

Input data here (very simple form)

Browse the output here

Thank you.

Wilkes Community College is the leader of the Northwest North Carolina Advanced Materials Cluster, Inc. (Cluster), "a public/private partnership for economic development focused on enhancing research, education, and economic infrastructure."Read this League for Innovation Leadership Abstract to learn more:

The Cluster (www.advancedmaterialsnc.org) formed in January 2004, when county managers of Wilkes, Ashe, and Alleghany Counties joined WCC to create a sustainable economy in northwest North Carolina. Under the direction of WCC, the Cluster forged partnerships among a number of industries, educational institutions, and governmental agencies. An executive committee guides the mission of research, education, job growth, and infrastructure. Collaboratively, the committee makes strategic decisions regarding programs, organizational structure, and partnerships. What began as a three-county economic development effort under the leadership of their community college has now grown to encompass several counties, partners, and networks across the state.

As the three-county service area’s higher education institution, WCC saw the webs of interconnections that weave the region together; became more aware that the region lives in relationship, connected to everything else; and learned that profoundly different processes explain how open systems emerge and change. Many disciplines, in different sectors and voices, now speak about the advantages of networks, the value of relationships, the importance of context, and new ways to honor and work with wholeness.

If there is a single topic we most hear from reporters and other representatives of the news media this year, it is that of colleges and universities as local and regional economic engines. Recently, The Chronicle of Higher Education hosted, Leslie Boney, the top economic development official at the University of North Carolina system, in an online "brown bag" about:

how colleges can combine their educational missions with the expectation of becoming economic saviors as well. . . . [H]ow can colleges and universities work in their local economies in ways that are responsive and meaningful? How do institutions develop a strategic plan for dealing with long-term economic challenges while managing short-term expectations of the university as economic savior? And how do they encourage faculty members to marry their research goals with real-world needs?" Read that transcript here!

Related: As more evidence that this is a hot topic for planners, you can read the abstracts from these related concurrent sessions at SCUP-42 (July, Montreal) this summer:

• Collaborative Facilities Strategies
• Planning and Design in the Realm Between Campus and City;
• Re-aligning the Business of Higher Education with Local/State Economies;
• Steps to Successful Partnerships for Performing Arts Centers; and
• Stimulating and Sustaining Regional Economies Through Workforce Development.

In this article from Inside Higher Ed, Michael Bugeja shares 10 best fund-raising practices useful for administrators who never thought they'd need to raise money:

Unhappy with budget cuts and reversions, I had reached that stage of academic life when I had to decide my fate: Make do with my sliver of the legislative pie chart and fade into retirement, or chart a bolder plan of my own. . . . That plan was to work with the ISU Foundation to enhance programming, boost professional development and maintain first-rate facilities. Taking in part what I had learned at [Oklahoma State], we have codified 10 best fund-raising practices . . . for chairs, directors and deans.