Author: Annalisa Purser

30 Years of Student Service

November 28, 2017

In the 1970s, Irene Fisher participated in a rally opposing the demolition of a low-income apartment complex to make way for a parking garage. She and the others wanted to give voice to those whose lives would be impacted by the change. While at the rally, Fisher needed to use the restroom. She recalled asking a “little old lady with hair like mine is now” (white), who was a resident of the apartments and was also attending the rally, if she could use her bathroom.

“She was gracious and agreed to let me into her home,” Fisher remembers. As she walked in through the living room, Fisher saw pictures of the woman’s grandchildren on the tables and embroidered cloths on the back of the couch. She listened to the woman talk about how she had already moved four times as a result of exactly what was happening then—low-income apartment buildings being torn down. “I’m not one to get angry,” Fisher says “But this was earth-changing for me.”

Irene Fisher

It was this experience that shifted Fisher’s focus from her prior work of providing reports full of data and facts to enact change—which laid the foundation for Utah’s dramatic successes fighting chronic homelessness—to work centered on service, built on emotion.

Fisher remained involved with the community as a member of the League of Women Voters and became especially focused on supporting people living in poverty. In 1987, she learned about a new service center opening at the U and wanted to help future community leaders have the kind of experiences she had. “I lobbied incessantly and got selected as the first director,” she says.

When the Lowell Bennion Community Service Center opened its doors 30 years ago, Fisher was the sole employee directing a small group of students. Today, the center has 11 full-time staff members and approximately 150 student leaders supporting thousands of student volunteers. Service opportunities both local and abroad are facilitated through nearly 50 programs run by the center, from week-long service trips during school breaks to Saturday Service Projects to hosting underserved elementary kids on campus. And as the center has grown and changed over the decades, its legacy of student leadership has become a staple that continues to be recognized across the nation.

ALL ABOUT THE STUDENTS

In 2009, a team of 10 individuals from the University of Nebraska at Omaha began planning for what would become a 55,000-square-foot building dedicated to campus-wide community engagement, known as the Barbara Weitz Community Engagement Center. With it still in the conceptual phase, the group embarked on a series of site visits to clarify its vision. The first stop was the Bennion Community Service Center.

“I still think the Bennion Center is the gold standard for student engagement when it comes to volunteerism,” says Sara Woods, director of the Weitz Center at UNO, who was associate dean of UNO’s College of Public Affairs and Community Service and a member of the center’s advisory committee at the time of the site visit. “It has all the really critical components. It engages students in a meaningful way, focuses on leadership development, and is respectful of the role of community partners by looking at them as more than beneficiaries of a service.”

Woods also recalls that the Bennion Center was full of energy and bustling with students during the visit. “What we really loved was the way these students were so energized and informed about what they were doing,” she says. “We were captivated by the way the room felt so student-focused. It was for and about students. They were driving a lot of the work. It wasn’t a place where administrators were driving agendas. Instead, the staff worked as facilitators and supporters.”

This is exactly what current Bennion Director Dean McGovern says makes the U’s model unique. “It’s a careful balance that we have to be mindful of,” he says. “We’ve hired professional staff members who want to do a great job but who are educators and mentors first. They’ve created a learning laboratory for our students.” Because of this, the center has maintained the student-focused, student-run approach that has defined it since the beginning.

In fact, this focus on student leadership is what Fisher attributes to the early success of the center. Because she was initially the only staff member, Fisher says, “If we were going to get things done, it was the students who were going to do it.” Immediately, there was too much going on, she remembers. “If something didn’t get done, it wasn’t good, but it was a learning experience.” There was no organizational chart or set of rules or expectations in those early days. They just started doing service.

Although the center began operating in 1987, its benefactor had naturally begun thinking about it a few years earlier. After learning about Stanford University’s new service center, U alum and successful developer Dick Jacobsen BS’68 wished to help establish a similar center at his alma mater. Through an initial endowment gift from Jacobsen, the center was established and named in honor of Lowell L. Bennion BA’28, whom Jacobsen had admired since high school.

Bennion was a Utah icon with an international reputation for compassion, service, and commitment. At the time of the center’s founding, he was serving as both the associate dean of students and director of the U’s LDS Institute. By naming the center after such a well-known figure, Jacobsen knew it would immediately have a set of values and a philosophical foundation on which to build.

VISION MOVING FORWARD

To take it into the next 30 years, the center’s helmsman, McGovern—who joined in 2014 as the fourth director— envisions reaching even more students by integrating community-engaged learning experiences into more classroom curricula. While the center connects with nearly a third of undergraduate students annually, McGovern is passionate about expanding access to every single student, not only because of the vast community need but also because of the powerful learning experiences students have when they connect their academic learning to the community.

From an early age, McGovern learned from his parents that community involvement was part of adult life. But it wasn’t until he took a course from Professor Rick Chavez that McGovern became enamored with the role of higher education in connecting students to service.

In a kinesiology course at Colorado State University, Chavez implored his students to participate in a program he ran called Tuesdays for Tots, where they would play games and do activities with children who attended the program after school. As the semester went on, McGovern began to understand why his professor asked his students to attend. In class, Chavez referenced their activities—Frisbee, Nerf ball, soccer—and explained the movements behind the games. At the end of the semester, he talked to the students about how many hours they had volunteered and about how helpful it was for the parents of these children to have an educational place for their kids to be during the time between school and when they finished work.

Looking back, McGovern was impressed by Chavez’s ability to subtly connect his students to a community need while helping them to think beyond themselves. “He was engaging us in a community project that made a genuine impact in the lives of people while he was teaching us the course content,” he reminisces. “When I think about it, I’m amazed at how influential he was to be able to get young college students to think about their community and the larger world.”

It was this experience that compelled McGovern to build infrastructure at the Bennion Center to drive course-based efforts such as this campus-wide. Through development of a task force, faculty incentives, recognition programs, and more, community-engaged learning courses are expanding across the U.

“Students are here, first and foremost, to participate in an academic program and get a degree,” McGovern says. “For students who want something more, the Bennion Center offers a variety of service options, but getting at the academic component is our charge. If we can enhance academic courses by encouraging and training more faculty to integrate community engagement into their syllabi and partner with community agencies, we will be able to reach every student.”

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"I’m impressed with my ability to take what I learned in the classroom and actually apply it in the community.”

SERVICE IN THE CLASSROOM

Kristina Hosea, a senior from Holladay, Utah, says that after participating in the Bennion Scholars program, she couldn’t imagine her life without the experience. As she describes it, the program is for students who want to find passion and purpose in an academic setting.

The Bennion Center considers the program the ultimate form of academic-based service and civic engagement. It is an exceptional opportunity for students interested in immersing themselves in a capstone project that merges their academic expertise with a community need, and students who participate in the program complete at least 400 hours of community service.

Before students commit to becoming a Bennion Scholar, they take a course called Introduction to Civic Leadership, in which they learn about leadership styles, working with nonprofits, and how to create a timetable, prioritize their time, and collaborate with different partners. Students then form groups to complete a project with a local nonprofit.

Hosea spent hundreds of hours working with the nonprofit Amanaki Fo’ou (“A New Hope” in English, translated from the Tongan term), which aims to decrease the debilitating effects of diabetes in the South Pacific. Volunteers work to address immediate needs, such as treating severe wounds, while also educating the population and supporting them in making lifestyle changes that can prevent diabetes.

A human development and family studies major, Hosea focused her project on developing a training program and video designed to provide a cultural orientation for volunteers and help them understand the history of diabetes among the population.

Hosea spent two weeks with the organization in Tonga during summer 2017. While there, she interviewed the volunteers who had completed her cultural competency training and learned that it had a profound impact on their experience. “Volunteers who participated in the training were happier to be there and more prepared for what to expect,” she says. “They appreciated the Tongan people so much more because they understood their background and history. They were able to interact with the people without pointing fingers, blaming, feeling anger, or misunderstanding them.”

Students who complete the Bennion Scholars program have an extra tassel on their mortar boards at commencement and receive a special designation on their transcripts, but Hosea said those things are just the cherry on top. “After completing my project, I thought, ‘Wow, I cannot believe I did this,’ ” she says. “I’m astonished by the relationships I developed, impressed with my ability to take what I learned in the classroom and actually apply it in the community, and filled with love and gratitude for those who worked with me.”

The effort opened her eyes to a new future for herself. “I often think about how certain experiences pull out certain colors in who we are,” she says. “I used to think of myself more one-dimensionally, but when I got involved in the community, it pulled out so many other colors I didn’t know I had.”

Hosea’s experience illustrates what Fisher knew from the beginning: Students are powerful forces for good and are capable of leading important work to improve their communities. As more students are given the opportunity to connect with the world around them, built right into their academic coursework, we can look forward to a bright (and colorful) future.

—Annalisa Purser is associate director of communications at the U.

Service Highlights

(2016-17 Academic Year)

Keeping the Fires of Innovation Burning

June 8, 2017

As head of the Office of Fossil Energy in the U.S. Department of Energy, Douglas Hollett MS’79 oversees researching technologies such as clean coal, along with a portfolio including R&D aimed at keeping the nation’s fossil fuels clean, dependable, and affordable.

Hollett visited the University of Utah this past February to discuss the U’s Department of Energy-funded projects with students and faculty affiliated with the U’s Institute for Clean and Secure Energy, its Energy & Geoscience Institute (EGI), and other programs. “It was an honor to have Mr. Hollett at the U to show him firsthand some of our research, such as our rock-on-a-chip technology to test advanced stimulation methods for oil and gas carbon sequestration,” says Raymond Levey, director of the EGI and a research professor in the College of Engineering.

Hollett graduated from the U with a master’s degree in geology. A Connecticut native who received his bachelor’s degree in geology from Williams College in Massachusetts, Hollett says he had been glad to return to the West after summers spent doing research in Colorado and California. He was drawn to the U’s outstanding faculty and ample graduate funding, which, coincidentally, came from the Department of Energy. Additionally, Hollett had skied competitively in college and says the access to world-class skiing in Utah was the icing on the cake.

During his visit this winter, Hollett noted how high-power computing has dramatically changed the energy industry since his graduate school days. He recalled getting his first PC in 1983 and marveled at the advances since that time. “The application of computers and the ability to handle large volumes of complex data are some of the biggest changes to the field,” he says. “These advances have touched all scientific and technical fields and have been at the center of many of the conversations we’ve had today.”

Hollett came to the Department of Energy in 2011 after more than 32 years of experience in the oil and gas industry, most recently as a manager and director for “unconventional new ventures.” His first role at the DOE was as deputy assistant secretary for renewable power in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, where he oversaw research, development, and demonstration for a diverse clean energy portfolio.

Hollett says that his transition from working in the private sector to public service was not necessarily a logical change, but it has been fun and fruitful. The key to success is to embrace and even look forward to inevitable changes, he says. He urges graduates to be flexible and maintain a passion for their chosen discipline throughout their career, and to constantly upgrade their skills and competencies.

“It’s important to love what you do above all else,” he says. “If you have passion, it will almost automatically make you good at what you do. You also have to be willing to take some risks and do things that aren’t in your comfort zone.”

Hollett notes that in his personal life, he found a partner whom he admires for her own ability to face daunting challenges. Pam Melroy is a former NASA astronaut who has spent more than 38 days in space over three missions, the last in 2007 as only the second woman to command the Space Shuttle. “Her willingness to set a goal and go straight for it, even when it seemed impossible, is impressive and a lesson for us all,” he says. “Everyone faces barriers, whether imposed on them or self-imposed, but it is the willingness and ability to face them head-on that allows people to reach their dreams.”

Intellectual Infusion

March 31, 2017

Theresa Martinez. (Photo by Brian Nicholson)

When sociology professor Theresa Martinez came to the University of Utah in 1990, it was a different place. Martinez, a Chicana from New Mexico, recalls Utah being very homogeneous, which probably doesn’t come as a surprise. But in addition to the lack of diversity, she found that the environment in her department was, for the most part, not welcoming, nurturing, or supportive. While Martinez was appreciated and supported by faculty and administrators outside her department, she consistently struggled within it.

She worked alongside faculty who taught from the controversial 1994 book The Bell Curve, which argued, among other striking claims, that immigration to the United States should be reduced so as to increase the average IQ in the U.S. “It was hard—really hard,” acknowledges Martinez, remembering her reality. “It’s an emotional thing.”

Nearly 30 years later, U administrators recognize that the university still has work to do in creating a welcoming and inclusive environment for all students, faculty, and staff, but it is working passionately to achieve that goal.

In fall 2016, the U celebrated its largest incoming cohort of faculty and postdoctoral fellows from underrepresented backgrounds. Nineteen new hires took positions across main campus. This represented nearly half of all the new main-campus hires for the academic year.

“This is a historic achievement for the U,” says Associate Vice President for Equity and Diversity Kathryn Bond Stockton. “It demonstrates that there is a tremendous commitment from the highest levels of the university to do everything we can to make sure that we’re creating a diverse faculty for our students and for our intellectual life.”

BETTER LEARNING OUTCOMES

Research continues to point to the benefits of diverse groups for decision-making, problem-solving, and creativity. In a 2014 Scientific American article, Professor Katherine W. Phillips from Columbia Business School wrote about finding how being around people who are different results in more creative, more diligent, and harder working individuals.

The piece, titled “How Diversity Makes us Smarter,” references an experiment she conducted with colleagues from Stanford and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The researchers took a group of undergraduate business students and divided them into groups of three. Some groups were made up of all white members, and some had two white members and one person of color. The students were given information to help them solve a murder mystery. Each member received information that all their team members had, as well as a set of unique information. (the information was identical between the two study groups.) To solve the mystery, groups needed to share all the information they collectively possessed.

“The groups with racial diversity significantly outperformed the groups with no racial diversity,” Phillips reports in the article. “Being with similar others leads us to think we all hold the same information and share the same perspective. This perspective, which stopped the all-white groups from effectively processing the information, is what hinders creativity and innovation.”

A SENSE OF COMMUNITY

Along with promoting better intellectual outcomes, university administrators want students to feel a sense of belonging. In fall 2016, the freshman class enrolled 29 percent domestic students of color. Across the entire undergraduate student body, nearly 25 percent are domestic (noninternational) students of color.

“If we are lucky enough to have a diversifying student body, we certainly want our faculty to reflect that diversity so our students feel a deep-seated sense of belonging to this intellectual community,” says Stockton. “We want students from every type of background to see that careers are open to them in every possible field. We want them to know that they belong in these fields.”

The importance of focusing on improving faculty diversity and building the underrepresented community was reinforced at an open dialogue on racial climate held on campus in November 2015. Students, staff, faculty, and administration participated, including President David W. Pershing, Senior Vice President for Health Sciences Vivian S. Lee, and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Ruth Watkins. In a letter distributed to campus the week after the event, the three wrote: “We heard things that humbled and deeply moved us. We also heard that we must accelerate change at the U, in order to address injustices, create a stronger, better university, and foster a community that is truly welcoming to students, faculty, and staff from all backgrounds.”

Three weeks after the town hall meeting, the administration released 13 plan-of-action responses that promised meaningful change, many of which had already begun.

IMPROVED HIRING PRACTICES

Among the changes already under way was an open initiative to accelerate and support recruitment of faculty and postdoctoral fellows from diverse backgrounds. Before a search even begins, committees meet with a consultant from the Office of Equal Opportunity who provides basic information about the importance of considering a diverse pool of candidates. To build such a pool, the Office for Equity and Diversity offers guidance on a number of topics, including how to write listings, where to advertise openings, and who candidates might wish to meet when they’re on campus.

Additionally, search committees are encouraged to participate in an online Unconscious Bias training that was pioneered at U of U Health. The training increases awareness of the social stereotypes that individuals form about groups of people outside of their own perceived backgrounds (racial, economic, etc.). It also explains how these biases result in powerful unconscious conclusions about others that are often wrong. The training helps people identify their bias tendencies and uncovers ways that committees can reduce bias.

“When people are engaged in a process that they take seriously, and when they use the same rubric, questions, and evaluations for every candidate, it tends to even the playing field and yield better results,” explains Amy Wildermuth, associate vice president for faculty. “Those who are committed to approaching the process in a more rigorous way avoid making assumptions and taking shortcuts and, as a result, end up with better outcomes.”

A NEW MENTORING PROGRAM

The 13 U administration responses also included the development of a mentoring plan for all junior faculty. The Academic Senate Diversity Committee had investigated best practices for mentoring diverse faculty, and through their research, found that faculty mentoring programs in general could use strengthening and improvement.

The College of Humanities was selected to pilot the new mentoring program in fall 2016 because it welcomed 11 new tenure-track faculty members at that time, eight of whom are from underrepresented racial/ethnic backgrounds and nine of whom are women. The new program involves a semester-long mentoring workshop for new faculty in place of teaching a class. The workshop, led by English professor Vincent Cheng (who has been at the U for nearly 20 years), focuses on developing a cohort and sense of camaraderie among new faculty and helping them establish a network of mentors.

“New faculty, especially those right out of graduate school or postdoctoral positions, experience a lot of pressure,” says Cheng. “They may feel overworked, isolated, and intimidated by the publish-or-perish mindset of higher education. Having gone through the process myself as a faculty member of color, and at a time when there were even fewer of us, I feel a particular responsibility to help our new faculty feel welcomed, supported, and appreciated with a sense of belonging that would make them want to stay here.”

During their weekly three-hour meetings, the group explored a full spectrum of issues, challenges, and adventures facing new faculty. They discussed the nature of the U’s student body; learned about living in Salt Lake, including ethnic markets, restaurants, recreational possibilities, and other community resources; examined the challenges of teaching controversial topics, especially for young faculty of color and young women faculty; examined ways to secure research funding and fellowships; learned about the retention, promotion, and tenure process; shared best practices for publishing; and much more.

“As we develop and refine this approach, it’s going to be among the best mentoring programs in the nation,” says Stockton. “Compared to the old one-on-one model, this program gives new professors a strong experience together and builds for them a network of resources. This is a perfect example of how thinking about diversity makes life better for everyone.”

Leading the charge behind the U’s new School for Cultural and Social Transformation are (L to R) Ed Muñoz, Nicole Robinson, Kathryn Stockton, and Susie Porter.

MOVING FORWARD

In addition to the faculty hiring initiative, the U launched a new School for Cultural and Social Transformation in fall 2016. The new school is the first in the Intermountain West to focus on the intersection of race, gender, and social justice issues. The school not only elevates the Gender Studies and Ethnic Studies programs to academic divisions, but it also allows the divisions to directly hire and grant tenure to faculty.

Things have come a long way since Martinez and Cheng joined the U. “Of course, I wish change was faster, but I can’t deny there has been a lot of hard work in getting us here,” says Martinez.

In spring 2016, four Chicana faculty members—all of whom joined the U in 2009 as part of an earlier effort to hire faculty from diverse backgrounds—received tenure at the same time. Martinez, who was reported to be the first Chicana in the state of Utah to receive tenure, was elated.

“When I received my tenure letter in 1996, I carried it around with me for a year because I couldn’t believe it,” she adds. “I still get choked up. these women are so deserving. I see them as a reminder that I’m glad I stayed and fought it out. I’m glad I could pave the way for them—just a little bit.”

—Annalisa Purser is a communications specialist for University Marketing & Communications.