New Bonner Center for Civic Engagement to Serve as Focal Point for Addressing Community Issues
January 22, 2004
The University of Richmond is creating a center for civic engagement that will bring together campus and community members to work on major social problems facing the Greater Richmond region and beyond through service, reflection and research.
The Corella and Bertram F. Bonner Center for Civic Engagement will provide space and resources to students, faculty, staff and community leaders actively engaged in addressing a wide variety of local issues such as inequality, poverty, education reform, and homelessness.
The center is named in honor of the founders of the Bonner Foundation, which funds the Bonner Scholars program at Richmond and several other universities throughout the nation. The program awards four-year scholarships to qualified students, enabling them to perform ongoing community service.
Douglas A. Hicks, assistant professor of leadership studies and religion, will be the director of the center, which will be located in Tyler Haynes Commons. Hicks plans to begin organizing seminars and workshops as early as this spring. Prior to the center's formal launch next August, a planning process will invite input from campus and community groups.
A Community Relations Task Force, commissioned by President William E. Cooper in August 2002, recommended the creation of a center "to integrate the existing service undertaken by students faculty and staff; the community-learning, teaching and research led by campus faculty; a network of experts and community organizations documented and interlinked by the Campus Community Partnership and its Web site, Connect Richmond; and various initiatives that bring community leaders to campus and take university leaders into the community."
A Student Life Task Force report in 2001 also called for "an intellectual-social space" for Tyler Haynes Commons that would encourage discussion, analysis and debate among students, faculty, staff and community leaders.
"The center will strengthen connections between the university and local communities and serve as a catalyst for students, faculty, staff and local leaders to work together on common problems that require civic engagement and thoughtful reflection," Cooper said. "It will build on the university's existing courses, programs and community service efforts as well as the leadership, experience and vision of local agencies."
University students, through such public service initiatives as Habitat for Humanity, the Volunteer Action Council, Carver Promise, the Richmond Partnership for Educational Success, Community Service Day and the Bonner Scholars program, donate more than 100,000 hours of community service work each year to the local community.
The center will give students a chance to dig deeper into the root causes of such problems as poverty, homelessness and lack of employment and will provide a "highly visible single point of contact" for agencies in Central Virginia and for volunteers, Cooper said.
"Students who participate in the Bonner Center for Civic Engagement will graduate with a set of skills, experience, knowledge and values that will empower them to make lifelong contributions for the betterment of society," Hicks said.
University chaplain David D. Burhans said: "This is the beginning of a dream fulfilled. It is a powerful statement at the heart of the campus that the university is committed to examining and engaging the critical social justice issues of our day and looking for ways to bridge the lines of difference among us."