CommUniverCity SJSU is a nationally recognized public-private partnership led by San Jose State University (SJSU) that spearheads 40 community-engaged learning projects a year in Central San Jose’s underserved neighborhoods.
Two faculty-led projects in particular help college students understand education inequality in local schools. Just as importantly, course assignments teach students how they can be part of the solution. For one project, Linguistics students are paired with struggling third grade readers where they read aloud together and discuss story themes and characters. In CommUniverCity’s Writing Partners program, fifth graders attending a school where 80% of students are either English-learners or economically disadvantaged exchange a series of letters with SJSU students. At the end of the semester, the pen pals meet face-to-face for a day of conversation and a campus tour.
Facilitators for this workshop will introduce output and outcome measures used for the two CommUniverCity projects described above (e.g., number of volunteer hours, number of students involved, and reading level gains) and lead a discussion among attendees of useful measures for assessing project impact. The challenge of how to measure outputs and outcomes across different types of projects will also be addressed, with a particular focus on the need to demonstrate community benefit.
