by Leslie Lytle, Messenger Staff Writer

For more than 10 years, the University Office of Civic Engagement has nurtured a unique classroom-community symbiotic relationship on the Plateau. Recently, founding director Philosophy Professor Jim Peterman stepped down passing the torch to Politics Professor Amy Patterson. What is the OCE? Where did it come from and where is it going?

According to the website, the OCE’s goal is “to advance the economic, social, and environmental well-being of communities.” Translated into action, that means bringing knowledge “from the classroom into the community and from the community into the classroom,” Patterson said. She shares with Peterman a vision for community partnership that first took root 20 years ago.

In 2002 a grant from Dupont prompted Peterman to develop a community engagement class in which community participants identified five end-of-life wishes to help them make end-of-life decisions. The University Center for Teaching embraced the community engagement concept for a time, but the idea lost momentum when the Center for Teaching downsized. Looking for a way forward, Peterman partnered with Robin Hille Michaels to start the Bonner Leaders Program. Bonner Scholar interns establish connections to and engage in a four-year collaboration with community partners. On another front Peterman worked with the South Cumberland Community Fund to create an AmeriCorps VISTA program. VISTA volunteers commit to a year of service to alleviate poverty by helping local organizations expand their capacity to make changes. Peterman found another door for civic engagement working with Dixon Myers who headed up the University Outreach Program and founded Housing Sewanee, bringing volunteers together to build affordable homes for the economically challenged. In 2014 the Office of Civic Engagement opened in an official capacity as the coordinating hub for multiple civic engagement efforts.

“The centerpiece of the OCE’s work is to bring academic resources to community service,” Peterman said. The OCE pays the internship stipend for student summer interns who work with nonprofits and oversees student interns in the Philanthropy Lab who work with the SCCF writing grants.

“Any academic discipline can have a public focus,” Peterman explained. He pointed to Classics Professor Chris McDonough’s students who tutor South Middle Schoolers helping them build vocabulary skills by drawing connections to Latin root words.

Patterson points to the Civil and Global Leadership Program, a four-year student commitment requiring 500 hours of community service and culminating in a senior Capstone Project with a “deliverable” outcome. The program begins with a leadership course where students learn about the challenges of poverty and how to engage in constructive dialogue. Selecting a focus on either community development or health, they work with community partners to investigate how other organizations or schools dealt with problems similar to those facing the local community.

Looking forward, Patterson wants to see “more intentional curricular intersection” and “more faculty on board.” The OCE’s recent move from the Bishop’s Common to the Hatchett House next to the Fowler Center will help foster that goal, Patterson said. Having all the OCE programs housed in the same building will facilitate community interactions, make parking easier, and encourage students who attend OCE programs to become more involved.

“I’d be retired by now if it wasn’t for my interest in working with the OCE program,” Peterman confessed. On sabbatical this year, he plans to investigate how to address disparity of resources in rural communities and fundamental differences in society. His proposed research shares common ground with the OCE’s Dialogue Across Difference program which promotes understanding across differences through dialogue and civil discourse. “That is the absolute centerpiece of a thriving democracy,” Peterman insisted.

Patterson concurred. “Learning from community partners is not always happening for a grade,” she acknowledged. At bottom something far more fundamental was going on: “deepening connections.”