GAMBIER – Kenyon College hopes that its new initiative to engage with the community will take off.
Kenyon's Office for Community Partnerships — established to cultivate the partnership between the college and Knox County's local businesses and organizations — recently launched the Community-Engagement Project Form, a new communication channel where area businesses or organizations can ask Kenyon for volunteerism, research, internships and more.
"The idea for the Community-Engagement Project Form grew out of conversations we had over the summer with our regular community partners," said Alyssa Gomez-Lawrence, Kenyon's assistant director of the Office for Community Partnerships. "During these routine check-ins we asked if there were any particular projects they could use a Kenyon partner to help with. As we sorted through the ideas, we realized that in most cases we had not collected all the information we needed to find the right campus partner for the projects."
After hearing the needs of community partners, the new form is a way to simplify and streamline the information-collecting process, Gomez-Lawrence explained. The college partners with over 50 local organizations, and the assistant director feels that the form will help to further open an already-open-door policy with the community for project ideas and needs.
"We are open to all types of projects," Gomez-Lawrence said. "Our team will discuss the project and recommend the best way to meet our partners' needs, whether that be with volunteers, as a summer research, through an internship or community-engaged learning course. Filling out the form does not guarantee a connection to further the project, but we will do everything we can to help our partners find a solution."
Once a form is submitted, the Office for Community Partnerships reviews the application with the Career Development Office to sort the project into one of the following categories: course projects, internships, volunteer opportunities or summer research projects.
After a soft launch in February with select community partners to gather feedback and interest, Kenyon hopes that the rest of the Knox County neighborhood will also have positive responses to the new form system.
"We are really looking forward to casting the net wider," Gomez-Lawrence said. "(The Office for Community Partnerships) engages faculty and community representatives as partners in developing student research and assignments connected with everyday life, in creating opportunities to apply academic knowledge to real-world problems, and in providing hands-on experiences with social and civic realities."
The form link is available on the Kenyon website.
Basic organization information
Organization description including capacity and clientele served
Organization contact person information
Brief description of project
Audience for project
Type of activities in project to be expected
Product that is hoped to emerge from project
Anticipated length of project (entire semester, summer, weeks, etc.)
Timeline
Any other details that Kenyon should know
Community organizations interested in learning more are encouraged to contact Alyssa Gomez-Lawrence at lawrencea@kenyon.edu.
