COVID-19 has affected every sector, including higher education, in ways both expected and not. One way this has manifested is with student internships and practicums. While universities across the country were able to offer coursework in a virtual format, many fieldwork and internship sites were shuttered due to widespread stay-at-home orders and business closings.
Pacific Oaks’ Center for Community & Social Impact (CCSI) wanted to be part of the solution. Buoyed by community work, and with a mission of extending Pacific Oaks’ reach into the community, CCSI partnered with the College’s Academic Affairs team to ease the disruption. With this partnership, CCSI was also able to help advance work that was already happening in the community.
This was already a long-term goal for Donald Grant, Psy.D., the executive director of CCSI and former dean of the School of Human Development. He has seen CCSI as a way to merge and highlight the output from Pacific Oaks. COVID-19 and CCSI’s community connections has sped up this process.
The CCSI team put together five projects with different supervisors, courses, and project hours. They range from existing work with Pasadena Unified School District (PUSD) on eighth-grade leadership success pathways, to needs assessment for family success, to work with CCSI on developing a kindergarten preparedness home engagement guide and an IEP advocacy resource guide. CCSI has also been working with Collaborate PASadena, which sits under the umbrella of CCSI, to create a Pasadena Community Assets Resource Guide.
CCSI’s work has helped not only Pacific Oaks students continue their educational paths during this pandemic, but has also helped young students in the area succeed in a virtual space as well.
The eighth-grade leadership success pathway project took on a new meaning in the pandemic. Earlier this year, CCSI finalized a partnership with PUSD that’ll connect a cohort of 250 middle school students and their families with a Student Success coach and a community specialist. Now, these mentors are supporting youth to manage all the challenges that come along with virtual learning.
“When we see these initiatives and look at how we can help to build capacity, it’s really a valuable opportunity to reduce some disparities,” Dr. Grant explains.
At Pacific Oaks, you don’t have to graduate and become an alum to make a difference. You start impacting your community right away with fieldwork placements based on community needs. That’s why the partnership with Academic Affairs is so vital: to not only help place students in the wake of COVID-19 but also to highlight the output of Pacific Oaks (through theses or fieldwork practicums). While this helped get students out into the community, Dr. Grant eventually wants to create thesis opportunities based on a catalog of community needs.
“The work of a higher education institution isn’t just to educate but to give back to the community,” Dr. Grant says. “For us to be an institution that makes an impact, we have to have a leg that DOES the work—operationalizing civic and community engagement.”
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