Release date: Dec. 14, 2004

HUD Awards Emory $400,000 Grant for Community Partnership in Atlanta

The neighborhoods of Riverside and Hollywood Courts may be 10 miles away from Emory University's tree-lined campus, but they are now close partners, thanks to a three-year, $400,000 Community Outreach Partnerships Center (COPC) grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Students from nearly every school of the university--from undergraduate and business to law, public health and nursing--will apply what they learn in the classroom to improve the Northwest Atlanta neighborhoods.

"The goal is to develop a holistic strategy to address the needs of distressed communities," says Michael Rich, political scientist and director of university-community partnerships at Emory. "This is an initiative that engages the entire university in the creation and application of knowledge with enormous potential to leave a positive legacy in the community." For the students and faculty involved, this initiative takes community-based and experiential learning to a whole new level.

Awarded to Emory's Office of University Community Partnerships (OUCP), the grant leverages an additional $1.5 million in resources from Emory and its community partners, including office space, faculty time and resources, mini-grants, workshop supplies, pro-bono leadership training and more. Because of these resources, dozens of students can work alongside faculty, local agencies and neighborhood leaders on affordable housing, preservation of community assets, strengthening families, and supporting academic excellence in local schools. The COPC office will be based at Benjamin Carson Honors Preparatory Academy middle school, where Emory alumnus Nash Alexander III is principal.

Examples of the wide-ranging efforts that will fall under the COPC umbrella include:

• Ginger Wickline, a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology, is designing an extensive network of opportunities to strengthen families and bolster teacher efficacy based on a model established at Vanderbilt University.
• Emory master's in teaching students will complete student teaching rotations at Carson Prep.
• Carson teachers will participate in workshops to build their capacity to collaborate with parents for the good of students.
• Emory psychology students and faculty will work to boost parents' skills in parenting teenagers and strengthen family bonds through a series of family activity nights, and skills-building workshops.
• Emory students also will mentor youth at Carson Prep and help them work toward college.
• Emory's debate program, the Barkley Forum, has established a branch of the Atlanta Urban Debate League at Carson, including summer workshops and after school programs three days a week. This is a partnership with the Atlanta Housing Authority, TechBridge, and Boys & Girls Clubs.
• Law professor Frank Alexander, a nationally recognized expert in affordable housing and urban redevelopment policy, will teach a graduate course on affordable housing open to all graduate students, including law, business and public health. Alexander authored Georgia's laws creating and empowering land bank authorities to aid affordable housing efforts.

The grant enables expansion of efforts by the OUCP's Community Building Fellows Program and will allow the fellowship to include for the first time Emory graduate and professional school students in the coursework and community projects designed to preserve affordable housing and give residents a powerful voice in the revitalization of their community. Launched in 2001 with a seed gift from alumnus and fashion designer Kenneth Cole, the fellowship blends academics with activism to prepare undergraduates for careers that make a positive difference in the community. Emory alumna Sam Marie Engle directs the Community Building Fellows Program and will coordinate the COPC.

Established in 1994, HUD's Office of University Partnerships is a catalyst for joining colleges and universities with their communities to address pressing urban problems. The COPC is one of nine grant programs administered by the office.

Emory's Office of University Community Partnerships was established in 2000 to better integrate teaching and research with service to benefit metro Atlanta. The OUCP provides financial support as well as training and assistance for faculty and students to encourage community-based teaching and research that directly benefits metro Atlanta communities. The OUCP also provides the Atlanta community with a friendly and accessible point for connecting with the university's vast intellectual resources.

Emory University is known for its demanding academics, outstanding undergraduate college of arts and sciences, highly ranked professional schools and state-of-the-art research facilities. For nearly two decades Emory has been named one of the country's top 25 national universities by U.S. News & World Report. In addition to its nine schools, the university encompasses The Carter Center, Yerkes National Primate Research Center and Emory Healthcare, the state's largest and most comprehensive health care system.

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