RWU center connecting students with community needs

DUAL PURPOSE: Arnold Robinson, director of Community Partnerships Center at Roger Williams University, says that the program allows students to apply what they’ve been learning, as well as meet the needs of the community organizations. / COURTESY RWU
DUAL PURPOSE: Arnold Robinson, director of Community Partnerships Center at Roger Williams University, says that the program allows students to apply what they’ve been learning, as well as meet the needs of the community organizations. / COURTESY RWU

Arnold Robinson is director of the Community Partnerships Center at Roger Williams University. Formed just under two years ago, the center serves as a central resource to partner students with community organizations, client organizations and government agencies in real-world, experiential-learning projects that would have a visible impact on partner communities.
Projects for the 2012-2013 academic year include a Main Street revitalization project in the Broad Street neighborhood in Providence and Main Street in Woonsocket; a children’s-room design at Adams Memorial Library in Central Falls; and a collaboration with the East Bay Coalition for the Homeless on marketing research to obtain data on community perceptions. Robinson hopes to expand the program and the number of community partners.

PBN: How did the center for community partnerships come about?
ROBINSON: I taught at Roger Williams as an adjunct professor for nine years before my visiting professorship. I integrated experiential learning with all my courses. You need to leave the ivory tower and go out and work with citizens on community projects they care about. While teaching a graduate preservation class we established a relationship with Warren, and wrote the preservation-planning element of a comprehensive plan. That philosophy was very quickly picked up by two leaders here and after my visiting year was over, they asked if I’d like to do this more broadly across the university.

PBN: What is the goal of the program?
ROBINSON: It has two main goals and I like to say they are completely counter-balanced. The first is to provide students with the ability to exercise what they’ve been learning within their particular disciplines on real projects in the community. The second is to meet the needs of the community organizations through real and valid projects. I think the rub there is that often times you’ll think of student work as being «constant ****SSLq»Oh, isn’t that great they did something, but can we really use it?’ All our projects are neatly balanced to have terrific experiences for the students. They get something they would never have gotten otherwise. PBN: How are the students benefiting in a career-building way that they would not from other experiential-learning programs?
ROBINSON: There are two levels. The first is the chance to test methodologies they’ve learned in class. If you’re reading about how to construct a market test that’s one thing, but if you put that test out and it fails, you are challenged. The second piece is at the end of a successful year or semester; all our students are walking out with a final report that is very polished that is the result of their collaboration with that community group. … It is a work project that is going to be used by a professional organization.

PBN: Why do these community groups need the program’s help?
ROBINSON: Many groups we serve often have a backlog wish list of things they would love to do as an organization but [when] budgets are cut, they don’t have enough staff. What we can do is to fulfill some of those particular ideas, to test them, do early stages of development, and to forward a goal that they’ve always had.

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PBN: Will these groups actually see practical, long-lasting benefits?
ROBINSON: That’s a question that will be answered over the long term. Warren is rewriting its comprehensive plan and is using work from our preservation students. Will they just copy and include it? Absolutely not. But it is helping to lower their costs and energies. We teach our students it is a long-term process. PBN: What students are participating in this program?
ROBINSON: We have 30 live projects this semester. It’s kind of crazy. It is preservation students, business teams, accounting, justice students, political science, public administration [and more].

PBN: Could a community-partnership project eventually become a senior capstone requirement?
ROBINSON: That’s above my pay grade to answer but all I can offer is that Roger Williams University has been discussing over the past year or so that experiential education is becoming one of the central themes by which we help to provide a better educational experience to our students. Right now, it is done through faculty and students who have an interest and passion to grab projects. The institution would have to make a broad decision. Right now we’re tapping 529 students per year. … We’re looking to increase that next year to 750 to 1,000 students. We have to grow it as we can.

PBN: So you see the center as a permanent fixture at RWU?
ROBINSON: It’s a great business-planning question. It’s 22 months old. I think we’re a key part [of RWU]. I would want to say this: We are not the only experiential-education experience at the school. Across the university there are examples of doing education that benefit the community. We just happen to be one of focus because of the community projects. •INTERVIEW
Arnold Robinson
Position: Director, Community Partnerships Center at Roger Williams University
Background: After graduate school, Robinson was the preservation planner for New Bedford, before joining the Providence Preservation Society as assistant director and then as executive director. He then joined Newport Collaborative Architects and stayed there until 2008, when he began a visiting professorship at Roger Williams University. He has been in his current role just under two years.
Education: Bachelor of arts, American studies, Bates College, 1987; master of arts, historic preservation, Boston University, 1990
First Job: Working on his grandfather’s wholesale food truck in Newport
Residence: Barrington
Age: 48

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