Civic Engagement and Leadership Suites

In the Fall of 2006 the Center for Civic Engagement and Leadership worked collaboratively with Student LIfe to introduce the Civic Engagement and Leadership Suites. These suites offer opportunities for students to integrate civic responsibility into their residential life.  All participants resided in suites located in residence halls physically connected to the Center for Civic Engagement and Leadership. The goal of the program is for students to work in teams with community partners to create campus community programs that will enhance the citizenship and leadership skills of students and meet specific needs in the community.  The created programs would then be threaded into the residence halls by incorporating other students into their projects. Participants enrolled in community based learning courses where they reflected on their work in the community and in the residence halls.  

Current Projects:
The suites initiative has resulted in a number of campus-community projects. One suite consisting of members of the University soccer team is working with the Ogdensburg Boys and Girls Club developing sports programming for the club members. The long term plan is to expand this programming on campus and offer it to youth in the local Canton area. Another suite is working with the local school on a new after school program that includes both tutoring and recreational activities. A third suite is involved in Project Democracy, scheduled to be launched in the spring.  The focus of the project is to provide a forum for students and community partners to dialogue on local issues that affect both the campus and the community.  In the spring, Traci Fordham Hernandez of our Performance and Communication Arts department will train the students in the “Project Democracy Suite” in deliberative and sustained dialogue techniques as part of a .5 unit course.  They will then serve as the facilitators for a series of dialogues on local issues between students and community partners spread over five small groups. The dialogues, which will include 20 students and 20 community partners, will be tied to a second partial unit course taught by Ronald Flores that will provide the context for the campus-community dialogues.