The Rochester Center for Community Leadership at the is changing its name to the Center for Community Engagement, effective November 16. The new name more accurately describes the focus of the center, which is housed in the College’s Office of the Dean of Students in Lattimore Hall.

The center, which is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, connects community partners with students, faculty, and other members of the University community to work together on initiatives that address social challenges in the city and region.

“The new name reflects the center’s evolution over the past 15 years from a grand vision to a complex operation with a wide array of initiatives,” says center director and assistant dean Glenn Cerosaletti ’91, ’03 (MA). “So many have contributed to that growth, from the center’s founder, (former dean of students) Jody Asbury, to current and former staff, students, alumni, donors, faculty, and community partners.”

Since 2013, the center has been instrumental in the development of the College’s community-engaged learning initiative and administers the certificate of achievement in community-engaged learning. In addition, the center manages a portfolio of programs that create a pipeline of community-engagement opportunities that spans from when undergraduate students first arrive at the University until after they graduate. These programs include Wilson Days of Engagement, Rochester Youth Year, Urban Fellows, and the Learning and Exploring at Play (LEAP) program that connects students from the College with elementary school students in the Rochester City School District.

In 2018–19, Cerosaletti cochaired the work group that compiled the University’s successful application for the Carnegie Foundation’s elective classification in community engagement. The application was a self-study that inventoried community engagement efforts across the University with reference to best practices in the field of community engagement in post-secondary education.

To earn Community Engagement Classification, institutions voluntarily submit an extensive application describing the nature and extent of their work with the community. The University’s application outlined the ways in which the University’s mission, culture, leadership, resources and practices support sustained and mutually beneficial community engagement. The process of completing the University’s began under the leadership of recent University President Richard Feldman and was carried out by a workgroup composed of faculty and staff from across the University.

In her October 2019 inauguration address, University President Sarah Mangelsdorf reaffirmed the University’s longstanding commitment to partnering with local citizens and organizations to improve the well-being of the entire greater Rochester community. “Without a vibrant Rochester, the University cannot thrive,” she remarked in her speech at Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre. “Issues facing our community and many other communities—poverty, unemployment, and lack of access to education and health care—are our shared responsibility. We must be a committed community partner, working together to achieve success. We must build on our shared past and work together on our shared future.”

Through the Carnegie self-study, the University identified the University-community collaborations that are helping drive the University’s commitment to community-based research, education, and service. In 2017–18, undergraduate students recorded 4,100 hours of community service through student organizations, complementing more than 53,000 hours of community engagement made possible through the University’s Rochester Center for Community Leadership. These efforts alone have benefited more than 35,000 community members.

As a leading research institution with expertise in health care, education, the arts, and public health, among other areas, University faculty, staff, and students are partnering with local agencies and organizations to alleviate urgent community needs, enrich lives through arts and music, and develop new initiatives that are improving our region and the city of Rochester in many ways. The community also enriches the lives of University students by providing real-word environments and lived expertise to enhance the educational experiences.

The Carnegie workgroup was co-led by Glenn Cerosaletti, assistant dean of students and director of the Rochester Center for Community Leadership (RCCL), and Theresa Green, faculty member in the at the URochester Medical Center.

“The process of compiling the University’s application for the classification benefited from input from many collaborators across the University, as well as from community partners,” said Cerosaletti. “It not only helped us to appreciate our strengths and the collective impact of the University’s many partnerships with the community, but also to identify opportunities to improve our efforts. We hope that the process will inform the University’s efforts going forward, and propel us to become ever better.”

“We are excited about the Carnegie designation and are so very thankful for our community partners who continue to support the mission of the University, teach our students at every level from undergraduates to medical residents, and inform our research agenda,” said Green. “The collaboration and self-study that led to the Carnegie designation provides a strong foundation for exciting work ahead.”

Wade S. Norwood ’85, CEO of Common Ground Health, agreed. “Carnegie is recognizing what we in Rochester have experienced for many years: that the University is a true community partner in health care, anti-poverty initiatives, access to education and social justice,” said Norwood.

Here are just some of the University’s local programs and partnerships:

• A partnership between the University and Rochester’s East High has helped the school forge a new culture and commitment to revival. Various additional partnerships with the University are contributing to this great academic progress, including the provision of needed mental, social-emotional, and physical health services to scholars, parents, and families. Through the Center on Urban Education Success, Warner School faculty members are conducting evaluation work for East Upper and Lower Schools on culture and climate.
• David T. Kearns Center for Leadership and Diversity: Home to four federal Department of Education TRiO grants (Talent Search, Upward Bound, Upward Bound Math/Science, and McNair), the Kearns Center serves more than 1,000 low-income, first-generation, and/or under-represented minority students from the Rochester City School District and from around the country. Students who participate in the Upward Bound and Upward Bound Math/Science programs have a 100 percent persistence and retention rate from year to year, a 97 percent high school graduation rate, and a 90 percent college-going rate. Of the students who participate in McNair, 99 percent have graduated from college, and more than 85 percent have gone on to graduate school, with more than 100 doctorates earned.
• The Memorial Art Gallery (MAG) partners with various community organizations to design museum tours for more than 300 individuals who might not have come on their own. MAG underwrites transportation and admission to the museum and offers free family memberships for the year following the visit. The MAG collaborates with the Rochester chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association to offer monthly tours for individuals with early-to-mid-stage dementia. For individuals in elder-care facilities who can no longer visit the museum, MAG staff bring reproductions of artworks to the residents. This program, known as Art at the Bedside, is implemented by MAG docents and student volunteers from the University.
• School-based health centers: Located on-site at several schools within the city school district, health center services include complete physical exams, health screenings, risk behavior screenings, care for acute and chronic illnesses, medications and immunizations, sexually transmitted disease and pregnancy testing and prevention, and mental health counseling. The aims to decrease dental health disparities in the community by providing regular accessible, affordable, and convenient dental services to RCSD students.
• A student organization in Arts, Sciences and Engineering dedicated to aiding school children in the learning process. Its goals include bettering the academic experience for Rochester school students; promoting higher education by means of tutoring, mentoring, and various activities; and encouraging students to pursue their goals through education. Partners in Reading has been in existence for over 25 years, and and actively manages projects with four different community partners.

The Carnegie Foundation’s Classification for Community Engagement is an elective classification involving data collection and documentation of important aspects of institutional mission, identity, and commitments, and requires substantial effort invested by participating institutions. The documentation is reviewed by a National Review Panel to determine whether the institution qualifies for recognition as a community-engaged institution. Rochester’s Community Engagement Classification from the Carnegie Foundation is valid until 2026. Of the 119 institutions classified in the 2020 cycle, 44 are receiving the classification for the first time while 75 are now re-classified after being classified originally in 2010 or 2015.

President Mangelsdorf has appointed a University-wide steering committee to coordinate the advancement of community engagement efforts, informed by the Carnegie self-study and the recommendations developed by the work group in the process.

Doris Gray, director of the Hillary Clinton Center for Women’s Empowerment at Al Akhawayn University in Morocco, and Monica Sharma, author of “Radical Transformational Leadership: Strategic Action for Change Agents,” are coming to the University for International Education Week (IEW) to discuss leadership and change, empowerment, equity, and access for education and healthcare worldwide. IEW, November 12-16, 2018, is an annual opportunity to celebrate the benefits of international education and exchange worldwide.

“The legacies of Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass thrive here, and for Rochester’s inaugural International Education Week Speakers Series two scholars will help us link and extend Rochester’s long tradition of social justice with our equally long tradition of international engagement,” said Jane Gatewood, vice provost for Global Engagement.

Gray is the director of The Hillary Clinton Center for Women’s Empowerment at Al Akhawayn University, which was established in 1999 and is the foremost English language research center on contemporary gender and women’s rights issues in North Africa. Before becoming an academic, Gray was a journalist and foreign correspondent for the German Press Agency in Johannesburg, South Africa, and in Nairobi, Kenya from where she covered events on 22 African countries. As a result, her scholarly work focuses on contemporary issues, in particular women and gender and social change. She earned her Ph.D. in French & Francophone Studies from Florida State University in 2005, and her research expertise lies in the areas of contemporary gender issues in North Africa, Islamic feminisms, migration, and transitional justice.

She is an associate professor of gender studies in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at AUI and author of three books: “Women and Social Change in North Africa: What counts as Revolutionary?” “Beyond Feminism and Islamism: Gender and Equality in North Africa;” and “Muslim Women on the Move: Moroccan Women and French Women of Moroccan Origin Speak Out.”

Sharma, author of “Radical Transformational Leadership,” is trained as a physician and epidemiologist and has worked for the United Nations more than 20 years. Currently, she engages worldwide as an international expert and practitioner on leadership development for sustainable and equitable change, working with the UN, universities, institutions, governments, businesses, media, and civil society organizations. She is the Tata Chair Professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai. She created and uses a unique response model for simultaneously solving problems, shifting systems, and creating new patterns sourced from individual inner capacity and transformational leadership.

The keynote event will be Friday at 3:30 p.m., when Sharma and Gray will participate in a panel addressing issues of equity and access to health and education on a global scale. The panel will be moderated by Catherine Cerulli, director of the University’s Susan B. Anthony Center, and will be in Goergen Hall 101 & Munnerlyn Atrium. The themes to be explored are:

• What are the drivers for and barriers to education and healthcare access globally?
• What global regional differences in access and equity to both healthcare and education exist?
• What are the effects of these differences?
• What factors affect women’s empowerment globally?
• What other imperatives inform or drive access to and equity for healthcare and education globally?

The International Education Week Speakers Series is organized by the Rochester Center for Community Leadership, the MK Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, International Student Engagement, and Global Engagement. All IEW events are free and open to the University community. For a full list see /iew/schedule.html.

(The Daydream Foundation) is an international nonprofit organization whose goal is simply to provide moments of happiness and childlike joy to people of all ages through recreational community events. The University chapter used its grant to fund weekly transportation to the Cameron Community Ministries in downtown Rochester where members volunteered at an after-school dinner program called .

“We were excited and relieved to win the grant,” says Shelley Verma ’19, who served as president of Soñar Despierto during the 2017-18 academic year. Transportation had been a struggle for the organization in the past, Verma explains, but with the grant they were able to volunteer regularly for the first time. At Kids Cafe, members of Soñar Despierto played games with the children and became familiar faces. “We really felt that we were making a difference in these kids’ lives,” she says. They also used a portion of the grant to volunteer at the Monroe Community Hospital where they hosted interactive events for patients including dance performances and sing-alongs.

The Community Engagement Challenge is supported by the Class of 2011 Community Service Fund. The fund aims to strengthen the University’s relationship with the City of Rochester and highlight students’ efforts to give back to the community. Last year’s winning project was selected by a team of six panelists consisting of four administrators from the Rochester Center for Community Leadership, one undergraduate student, and one local alumnus.

for the 2018-2019 academic year must be submitted by September 30 and can be found on the website.

“I had done a lot of volunteer work my first two years at Rochester, and it had molded my education,” says Guenther, now a state associate court attorney in Buffalo. “I felt it could mold others.” Guenther’s idea was approved by the orientation committee, and a few hundred freshmen signed up for a day of service off campus.

“It was hard to get local organizations involved, because they were concerned about liability,” Guenther says. “We thought this event was a one-time thing. There was no plan for it to survive past the first year.”

But survive it did. On August 27, Rochester will celebrate the 30th anniversary of Wilson Day. More than 1,300 incoming students will fan out to about 90 schools, libraries, senior centers, neighborhood associations, and more across Rochester. They’ll paint, stack bookshelves, rake, pull weeds, and begin to get involved in the community they’ll call home for the next four years.

“It’s become a University tradition,” says Glenn Cerosaletti ’91, ’03 (MA), assistant dean and director of the Rochester Center for Community Leadership, which organizes Wilson Day. “It helps students realize that community engagement is part of what being a student here is all about.

Students congregate in the Palestra, wearing matching Wilson Day T-shirts (this year’s color is blue). After opening remarks set the tone for the day, the students board buses and go out into the community in assigned groups.

The official name has been changed from Wilson Day of Service to Wilson Day of Engagement this year. The theme is “Think Global, Act Local.”

“It’s a day of bonding and, really, a day of community engagement,” Cerosaletti says. “We feel the students get as much out of it as the host sites they are helping.”

Wilson Day is named after Joseph Wilson ’31, former chairman of the University’s Board of Trustees and founder of Xerox Corporation, in honor of his community service. By the time of Wilson’s death in 1971, he and his wife, Peggy, had given more than $40 million to the University and helped launch it into a major research center.

Wilson Day was first established in 1972 as a daylong offering of seminars on the River Campus and Medical Center, a dinner at the Memorial Art Gallery, and a concert at the Eastman Theatre. In 1988, thanks to Guenther’s idea, it became much more.

Kavya Bana ’19 is this year’s Wilson Day coordinator. As a first-year student, her Wilson Day project was to sort food for Foodlink. It struck a chord in the political science and microbiology double major from Simsbury, Connecticut.

“I didn’t feel as if I was helping the community but rather learning from it and working within it,” she says. “It opened my eyes to the passion of community members for improving the community they live in.”

Bana has since worked two other Wilson Days as a resident assistant, organizing a food pantry and gardening. She also began volunteering at a city school, interned at the Rochester Public Market, and was part of Urban Fellows, a summer urban engagement program for Rochester-area undergraduates.

“None of this would have happened if not for Wilson Day,” she says. “I never would have noticed how special the people in the community are if I hadn’t been brought outside of campus boundaries my very first week here.”

They’re part of Rochester Youth Year (RYY), an AmeriCorps VISTA-sponsored fellowship program based at the University’s . Working in schools, neighborhood associations, nonprofits, and municipal offices, their goal is to create, expand, or sustain initiatives that alleviate poverty among youth and families in Rochester, one of the poorest cities in the United States.

Among their many accomplishments:

• The Rochester City School District hired 34 additional reading teachers in 2015 based on RYY fellow research and data analysis.
• The M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence secured more than $180,000 in grants and resources to support its School Climate Transformation Initiative.
• East Upper and Lower Schools created a food pantry for low-income students.
• The Anthony Jordan Health Center created an internship program for college students to address needs based on a Youth Year report.

“Rochester Youth Year has given us the opportunity to expand our capacity and pursue important opportunities that we would be unable to do otherwise,” says Chad Rieflin, director of programs and grants for Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Rochester, a regular Youth Year host site. “The program has also connected us to other initiatives in the community, which has greatly strengthened the work we do.”

Rochester Youth Year helps fulfill the University’s mission to “make the world ever better,” and does so in the community where its fellows graduated.

Rochester Youth Year was the brainchild of Jody Asbury, the University’s former dean of students, who was inspired by the RCCL’s Urban Fellows summer program and the collaborative model it’s based on. Asbury envisioned a post-graduate fellowship opportunity that would keep students engaged in the Rochester community.

There were only three fellows when the program began in 2007-08, with Rochester, Roberts Wesleyan and SUNY Geneseo each sponsoring one student. Since the fall of 2008, Rochester Youth Year has been an -sponsored program and the program has expanded to include recent graduates from eight local schools.

The fellows receive a modest living allowance stipend of around $12,000, which puts them at the level of the community they’re serving. They’re given basic, emergency health coverage and can choose between an end-of-service cash stipend of $1,800 or an education voucher of $5,920 to help pay for educational debt.

Of the 108 fellows who have served, 38 are Ģ����ý graduates, including nine of the 16 who will complete their year of service August 1 with a ceremony at City Hall.

“Being a fellow fosters a love for this community,” says assistant dean and RCCL director Glenn Cerosaletti ’91, ’03 (MA). “We choose host sites and projects that offer an opportunity for connections between the University and the community.”

One of the goals of Rochester Youth Year is to keep graduates of local colleges in the Greater Rochester community. In the past 10 years, 44 fellows have stayed in the area, including 17 of 38 University graduates.

Meet the University fellows

Nine 2017 Ģ����ý graduates will compete their year of service with a ceremony at City Hall on Wednesday, August 1. Here’s what they’ve been doing the past year:

The center has grown from just two programs to several that give undergraduates and graduate students an opportunity to engage and learn outside the classroom.

They include:

• LEAP, which enlists undergraduates in tutoring kindergarten through third grade students to develop the language, literacy, math, and social skills;
• , which places recent graduates of Rochester-area colleges in community-based organizations, where they help create or expand initiatives that address various challenges facing local youth and families;
• Transition Opportunities at the URochester (TOUR), partnership between the RCCL, the University’s and the regional organization Monroe One BOCES that provides access to a college experience for adults 18 to 21 with intellectual and developmental disabilities;
• Urban Fellows, a 10-week summer program for University students and Rochester natives who attend college elsewhere to immerse themselves in an outreach project.

There are several others.

“Programs like these are important to students’ education,” says Glenn Cerosaletti ’91, ’03 (MA), director of the center. “They gain leadership and career skills, obtain an appreciation of diversity, and, hopefully, learn to be involved and engaged members of their community.”

RCCL also oversees Wilson Day, established in 1988 as an annual day of community service for first-year students to perform tasks in the city of Rochester such as painting, landscaping, and classroom preparation. It’s the oldest community service day among colleges in the country.

In addition, the center runs leadership development programs including Medallion Leadership Society and the as initiatives to promote research in the community, such as the Citation in Community-Engaged Scholarship.

“We’re seeking to integrate students’ academic pursuits with community-based experiences to contextualize their learning and benefit the community,” Cerosaletti says.

Located in Lattimore Hall within the , the RCCL was established by former dean of students Jody Asbury, who also was a driving force behind the creation of Wilson Day. Hundreds of students have been engaged, educated—and affected—by their participation in RCCL programs.

One of those students is Ori Yehezkely ’18, a psychology major from Miami who is president of the and served as Wilson Day coordinator in August 2017. It’s a 180-degree turn from her freshman year, when she was “overwhelmed” by her adjustments to college life.

“I wasn’t ready to engage with the community,” she says.

In her sophomore year, however, she joined Urban Fellows, working at a city farmers market while attending community events and learning about urban education, crime prevention, health, housing, and jobs.

“I got to meet incredible change-makers in the community and was inspired by their love of their community,” she says. “I now see Rochester through a different lens.”

It’s helped her recognize and develop her leadership skills. “The RCCL provided me with the push and support I needed to really put myself out there in the community,” she says. “I’ve become more service-minded and fully intend to pursue service after I graduate, and stay active in whatever community I end up at.”

Jeffrey Runner, dean of the College, says students involved in RCCL programs receive an education outside of the classroom—and often, away from campus.

“That’s a really good thing, and something we can really take advantage of with our open curriculum,” he says. “It’s not just about us giving. We can learn a lot. It’s an opportunity for students to get out there and learn alongside people in the community. That’s a really important part of what students get here.”

Sponsored by the Rochester Center for Community Leadership, Wilson Day is a chance for students to visit and help out at local schools, churches, nursing homes, museums, and more.

“Wilson Day is designed to help students learn that community engagement will be a significant part of their undergraduate experience at the URochester,” says Glenn Cerosaletti, assistant dean and director of the RCCL. “Wilson Day is just the beginning:  we have an array of opportunities for them to connect with and strengthen the community, while deepening and contextualizing their learning.”

See photos from this year’s Wilson Day event

TOUR is a partnership between two University offices—the Rochester Center for Community Leadership and the Institute for Innovative Transition—and the regional organization Monroe One Boces.

With the support of special education teachers, employment specialists, and trained University undergraduate peer mentors, students in the TOUR program participate alongside their matriculated peers in college courses and campus activities, and access transition and independent living education, vocational training, and internships.

“The thing I like best is becoming friends with people I’ve met,” says Spenser McGuckin, who was enrolled in the TOUR program the past two years. “It makes me feel like I’ve matured a lot.”

Read more in Rochester Review

It was part of a broader message delivered to incoming undergraduates that the University isn’t a city on a hill, but rather, an integral part of the city in which it lives. Wilson Day—a day of community service that has introduced new students to volunteerism in the Greater Rochester community for more than a quarter century—underscores that message.

More than 1,400 first-year students fanned out to 94 sites—schools, churches, libraries, museums, senior centers and more—to perform afternoon tasks such as landscaping, painting, decorating, and classroom preparation. Seligman visited three sites—Mt. Hope Family Center, Enrico Fermi School #17, and Jewish Family Service of Rochester—with Dean of the College Jeffrey Runner and Dean of Students Matthew Burns.

This year’s theme, Welcome Home, emphasized the importance of first-year students—from 42 states and 105 nations—becoming active citizens of the local community. Students appeared to take it to heart.

Johvanny Rodriguez, who came to Rochester from Jersey City, New Jersey, to study biology, plucked weeds outside Enrico Fermi School #17. “This is home,” he said. “You keep up with your weeding at home.”

“I plan to stay active,” said Kennedy Martin, who came to Rochester from the Bronx to study computer science. She was part of a group charged with beautifying Wilson Magnet High School. “Eventually, we’re all going to graduate, and we should want to make sure we’ve made an impact on the community we’ve lived in for four years.”

Glenn Cerosaletti, assistant dean of students and director of the Rochester Center for Community Leadership, which sponsors Wilson Day, will facilitate the efforts of students like Martin to make good on that promise.

“This is just the beginning,” he said. “We have an array of opportunities for them to connect with and strengthen the community.”

 In Photos

Members of the Class of 2021 mark their first days in Rochester with a day of community service.
(University photo / J. Adam Fenster)