Phennd Resources

Worcester UniverCity Partnership

2008-01-07T18:10:31-04:00

Participating Institutions: Colleges of Worcester Consortium, Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce, Worcester Business Development Corporation, and the City of Worcester

The Worcester UniverCity Partnership is a unique collaboration of the 13-member (9 in the City of Worcester) Colleges of Worcester Consortium, the City of Worcester (including the non-profit community), and the local business community represented by the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce and the Worcester Business Development Corporation Each partnering organization has contributed resources, both cash and in-kind, to form the collaborative. A 12-person Board of Directors made up equally of representatives from each participating constituency provides guidance and direction to the Partnership’s Executive Director.

Los Angeles Higher Education Partnership (LAHEP)

2008-01-07T17:46:52-04:00

The original idea was to improve communication and collaboration among colleges and universities in Los Angeles. Our goal was to “work smarter, not harder” in creating this network. There were two levels of interest. At the institutional level, we were curious about the relationships that our counterparts had with community organizations; no one had ever asked the question or collected this data about higher education’s relationship with agencies and organizations in the City of Los Angeles. Were we all going to the same places, and does it matter? And at the individual level, our hope was that callers to any campus could ideally get a response with no more than one additional phone call through personal referrals to network members. This would increase access to complex systems of campus departments and other units.

Building a Regional Collaboration of Higher Education Institutions and Community Organizations: The Western New York Service-Learning Coalition

2008-01-07T17:32:16-04:00

Institutional Partners: Buffalo State College, Canisius College, Daemen College, D’Youville College, Erie Community College, Medaille College, Niagara University, Trocaire College, and the University at Buffalo.

The vision of the WNYSLC is to become the hub for service-learning in Western New York. There are multiple areas in which non-profits and higher education institutions can collaborate to deepen the quality of the service-learning experiences for faculty, students, non-profit agencies, and the clients they serve. One of the action items of the Coalition’s strategic plan coalition is to standardize paperwork and evaluations. Additionally, through our network, we aim to provide collaborative orientation and training sessions for faculty and students. Another objective of the WNYSLC is to create the region-wide service-learning database, which is now underway. The network will significantly reduce paperwork, reduce time and costs spent on mailings and phone calls, reduce the workload of agency supervisors, and improve service-learning recruitment, supervision, and experiences for everyone involved.

How PHENND Works

2008-01-07T17:30:10-04:00

This paper is an attempt to provide a theoretical framework and rationale for regional higher education networks for community development and educational reform. It is based on the work of the Philadelphia Higher Education Network for Neighborhood Development (PHENND), a long-standing network of 40 colleges and universities in southeastern Pennsylvania. PHENND’s mission is to build capacity of member institutions to develop sustainable, mutually beneficial, democratic, service learning partnerships. These partnerships are one strategy toward alleviating and eliminating social ills, particularly poor schooling, poor health, and poverty.

There a many different ways that educational networks are formed and operate. In part, this paper will explain how PHENND works as an organization and how PHENND provides benefits and “value-added” to its member institutions as well as to the larger community.