Civic Engagement Initiatives

Staff Contact: Gavin Luter

University Assisted Community Schools

In coordination with our faculty associate, Dr. Bob Kronick from Educational Psychology and Counseling, staff members at the Baker Center are helping coordinate an effort to establish long-term relationships with Knox County Schools by providing services to at-risk urban students in Knoxville and hopefully expanding to the entire county.

The model of education reform is based on three tenants: prevention, collaboration, and systems-level thinking.

Currently, the model is being used in 4 elementary schools and 1 pre-school:

• Inskip
• Sarah Moore Greene
• Green
• Pond Gap
• Sam E. Hill

UT students serve in these schools as mentors, teachers and friends with faculty supervision.

For more information about this program, please contact Gavin Luter (dluter@utk.edu).

Community-Based Research Collaborations The Baker Center has been working to bring faculty, staff, students, community, business, non-profit, and educational leaders together to explore overlaps in research, resources, expertise, and to match those with the needs of the community and the University. Examples of collaborations sparked by the Baker Center are:

• College of Nursing and United Way of Anderson County: Project Lifesaver [Contact: Dr. Shu-li Chen, College of Nursing, schen4@utk.edu]
• College of Business, College of Law, Housing and Urban Development: Foreclosure problem [Contact: Dr. Nissa Dahlin-Brown, Nissa@utk.edu]
• College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences and Knox County Public Schools: Urban Schools Service Alignment [Contact: Gavin Luter, dluter@utk.edu]

For more information about this program, please contact Gavin Luter (dluter@utk.edu) or Dr. Nissa Dahlin-Brown (Nissa@utk.edu).

Academically Based Community Service Courses Judith Rodin, former president of Penn, stated in an address on Martin Luther King Day that if the University only produced great research and doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc., but failed to rouse the souls of their students to serve others and engage in the larger issues of the day, they were not fulfilling their mission. We also see it as our mission to “rouse the souls” of our students and one way to do this is through ABCS courses. In coordination with the Tennessee Teaching and Learning Center and other academic outreach efforts on campus, we are using the University of Pennsylvania's model to create meaningful academic partnerships that allow students to learn real-world problem solving in the context of their community and within their academic disciplines.

For more information, please contact Dr. Nissa Dahlin-Brown (nissa@utk.edu) or Gavin Luter (dluter@utk.edu) at 865-974-0931, Dr. David Schumann (dschuman@utk.edu), or Dr. Bob Kronick (rkronick@utk.edu) at 865-974-8799.

Upcoming Events

• Tapping into Water
  Sunday, Jan. 31, 2010
• Tapping into Water
  Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2010
• Tapping into Water
  Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2010
• Tapping into Water
  Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2010

Opportunities@BakerCenter

Contact Senator Baker

Honorable Howard H. Baker, Jr.
P.O. Box 600
Huntsville, TN 37756
423-663-9148
hbaker@bakerdonelson.com