Medaille College has announced that it will receive $400,000 in grant funding from the John R. Oishei Foundation over the next three years. This donation is going toward a college program called Project EQUIP, a program that contributes to community-based service learning programs for undergraduate students.
This program, among other things, will allow students to participate in service learning activities and pursue internships and senior capstones that take them outside of a classroom setting and into the Buffalo community. Project EQUIP is an acronym for helping students "explore their community", "question their roles within the community", "understand their academic discipline in the context of community needs", "involve themselves", and "produce new knowledge" while they complete their undergraduate degrees at the college.
The college first experimented with a community learning program in its 2006-07 academic year, intended to help provisionally admitted students, 35% of incoming undergrads. Beginning in fall of 2009, they expanded this to include all new undergrads. By the end of the semester, Project EQUIP had allowed over 300 students to work with senior citizens at the Northwest Buffalo Community Center, study the effects of industry on Buffalo-area waterways, and complete many other projects.
According to Brad Hollingshead, Ph.D., Associate Dean for Foundational Learning and Assessment at Medaille, both Project EQUIP and the donation that will help make it possible to represent an opportunity for positive change in the Buffalo community and a chance to turn things around in tough economic times.
Hollingshead pointed out the fact that over two-thirds of current students at Medaille College are local, and around 68% of alumni of the school continue to live and work in the Western New York area after graduating. Additionally, he said that Medaille has gone out of its way to meet the needs of students who have been "historically underserved by postsecondary institutions in America."
"For many of these students, college is a route, perhaps the only possible route, to a better future," Hollingshead said. "Arguably, preparing our students to succeed professionally and engage actively with their communities is some of the most important work needed to strengthen the U.S. workforce and build a civic and sustainable future, particularly in Buffalo, which has one of the highest poverty rates in the country."
According to Hollingshead, turning Buffalo into a classroom in and of itself is a good way for students to become aware of social problems and interact with people they may not otherwise see in the community. Ultimately, he hopes that Project EQUIP, along with the Oishei Foundation, will contribute to a generation of college graduates who are aware of these issues and can not only live and work in Buffalo, but give back to their city and community as well.
"We predict that Medaille's teaching and learning commitment to Buffalo's renewal will hold valuable lessons that we can share with our higher education peers in the region, who we know are also committed to citizen and workforce development in Buffalo," he concluded.
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