By Keyanna Dunn '16
The Faculty Bus Tour is a collaboration between Siena professors and local community organizations to incorporate the organization’s needs into the content of Siena course work. Students and faculty embrace the Franciscan spirit by aiding their community partners in ways in which the groups would not otherwise have the ability to explore.
Created by Ruth Kassel, Ph.D., assistant director of academic community engagement, professors in the program travel to local community nonprofit organizations to get a first hand account of how they can lend a hand. Kassel wants to see the continued growth of this program in the coming years, “My hope is that the faculty would want to work with that partner for their classes and their research.”
The Faculty Bus Tour recently visited Capital Roots in Troy, New York. The Capital Roots Garden Program is an organization that provides garden plots to individual community members. This partnership will allow Siena students to research the production and waste of food, participate in service work, and ultimately help the organization in a multitude of ways. Professors from the Economics and Creative Arts Departments are looking into possible partnerships for next year.
“It takes their classroom experiences and very directly ties them to the needs and insights of the Capital Region. Rather than separating their coursework and their service work, it combines them, bolstering the connection that the student forms to both the community and to the material that they're learning. It makes learning more real,” said Jenna Kersten ’17, a Community Engaged Teaching and Learning Fellow.
Last fall the faculty toured three different partnering organizations: The Capital South Center in South End, The Affordable Housing Partnership in Sheridan Hollow and the D.A. Community Justice Outreach Center. Ashley Provencher, Ph.D., assistant professor of economics, is teaching a course that partners with The D.A. Community Justice Outreach Center by assessing The D.A. Community Accountability Board. Through this class her students are able to gain hands on experience in research with an established community organization.
The Faculty Bus Tour has already made a large impact on the Siena community despite being a recent initiative. Kassel and her CETL fellows are hoping to gain the interest of more Siena faculty and local non-for profit organizations in the years to come. With student involvement, it is possible to further the learning experience by coordinating internship opportunities with the many local nonprofit organizations. Kassel and her team are ultimately working to bring together professors from different departments to understand how they can work with the local partners, and with each other, to break barriers and resolve community issues.
