UA program lets students blossom, aids communities
Posted on Sunday, December 23, 2007
FAYETTEVILLE — When Stephen Gilbert pictures the future of Augusta, he sees a riverfront park, marina, amphitheater and a gateway along U. S. 64 welcoming visitors to the small Arkansas River Delta city.
It’s a vision the Crossett native cultivated during his final year of architecture school at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. He spent the spring and fall 2007 semesters traveling back and forth to Augusta, a city of 2, 400 in Woodruff County. And he turned his ideas into a 55-page report that he’ll present next month to city leaders.
It is one of many projects by students in a program known as SEED — Students Engaged in Economic Development. UA’s Economic Development Institute, which seeks to share university resources with cities and towns throughout Arkansas, developed the SEED program so students could participate in community-service learning projects as part of regular course work.
“There are so many different things that communities should be able to tap into,” said Gilbert, 32. “UA’s the state land-grant institution, and communities should be able to take advantage of those resources.” The program started in 2003 and has about 40 students engaged in 10 projects this academic year. Otto Loewer, director of the institute, would like to see to 50 to 100 projects a year over the next several years.
“My goal is to leverage the resources of the University of Arkansas with the other organizations to enhance the prosperity of the entire state,” Loewer said. “If we can connect this underutilized resource of student wherewithal to communities that are in great need of creative ideas that are affordable to them, we can make things possible that people thought were never possible.” UA students have been involved in designing a technology center in Wynne, developing a downtown revitalization plan in McCrory, redesigning a terminal at Drake Field, Fayetteville Municipal Airport, and redesigning a congested highway interchange in West Memphis.
Ongoing projects include city and tourism planning in Eureka Springs, a literacy initiative in Augusta and an oral history project in which UA students are helping high school students in several Delta towns collect stories from their communities.
Bob McMath, dean of the UA Honors College, said the program gives students handson experience in their fields and provides “tremendous opportunities” for underserved parts of the state.
“It gives students the chance to do community service in a way that also lets them practice their craft as a professional,” McMath said. “They’re looking at real community issues and problems.” Loewer and Carolyne Garcia, assistant director of the institute, are talking with other colleges within the university in hopes of bringing existing projects under the program’s umbrella. They’re also encouraging professors to get students involved in new projects.
New projects require faculty members willing to invest the time and effort, and community sponsors willing to support it. So far, communities and businesses have supported the students’ work at an estimated cost of $ 1, 500 per project, Loewer said. “There are an abundance of potential courses,” Loewer said. “We’re trying to get people around the table thinking creatively.” THE BEGINNING Students Engaged in Economic Development started in 2003, when 27 interior-design students helped Cross County officials develop plans for a technology center in the county seat of Wynne. Through a development group known as the Crossroads Coalition, UA partnered with the Cross County Chamber of Commerce & Economic Development Council, county and city leaders, and businesses to redesign the inside of a vacant building.
The 42, 000-square-foot building formerly housed a Kmart but had been vacant for several years, said Betty Loewer, Otto Loewer’s wife and a retired UA interior-design instructor who worked with students on the project.
“The people in the county saw potential in the building, but they didn’t quite know what to do with it,” Betty Loewer said.
Students in her commercial space-planning course did designs to incorporate classrooms, offices and meeting space into the facility. Cross County officials selected elements from work by several of the students.
The center opened two years ago and houses the chamber, the Arkansas Department of Workforce Services, a satellite of East Arkansas Community College, an office of state Rep. Jerry Brown, D-Wynne, and a Lenny’s sandwich shop.
Aaron Stewart, executive director of the Cross County Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development Corp. since June, estimated as many as 400 people are in and out of the building on a daily basis.
The center could not have been built without the work of the UA students, Stewart said.
“It would be a lot like making a cake without flour,” he said. “They were a big ingredient. It’s been a big, big impact for our small county.” In addition to helping the community, students learned what it was like to work for clients with real needs, real problems and a real budget, Betty Loewer said. “That’s experience you can’t get from a classroom with an imaginary project or a project that we pull out of a book somewhere,” she said.
REAL LIFE LABORATORY Eureka Springs has used the UA program on several projects to get fresh perspectives from the “next generation of travelers,” said Jack Moyer, vice president of operations and development of Basin Park Hotel and Crescent Hotel and Spa. “Eureka Springs is a real-life laboratory for the university,” Moyer said. Three years ago, students designed an annex suite at the Crescent Hotel that now includes four suites and employee offices. UA students also helped with plans to redesign the hotel’s grand ballroom and developed ideas for the city on increasing tourism, doing street projects and decreasing parking problems. Students have proposed several ideas, including a water park or golf resort.
Allen Powell, UA hospitality and restaurant management instructor, led the first Eureka Springs projects in the summers of 2004 and 2005. They started as part of a three-week summer school course.
The program is now part of a regular resort management course during the spring semester taught by Kelly Way, professor of hospitality and restaurant management.
About 40 students were in the class last year, and about 25 students are enrolled for this spring. Students get very involved in their projects, she said.
“It’s pretty inspirational,” Way said. “They are so much more engaged.” LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE UA landscape architecture professor John V. Crone has been working with the SEED program since 2004. His students have been involved in the projects in McCrory, West Memphis and Augusta as part of their studio design courses.
Each project typically involves 12 to 14 students, Crone said.
“It fits the mission of the university,” he said. “We do teaching, research and outreach. Students get actual experience and provide something useful to the communities.” The West Memphis project started in 2004, when students were charged with finding a way to upgrade the interchange of interstates 40 and 55 to serve as “a gateway to Arkansas,” he said.
With support from the Mack-Blackwell Rural Transportation Study Center, landscape architecture and civil engineering expanded the project in 2005 to study ways to reconfigure the intersection altogether.
West Memphis announced earlier this month it had gotten a scenic-byway grant of more than $ 300, 000 as a result of the joint effort, Crone said.
The McCrory project was done in spring 2006. The students helped identify needs and goals for a downtown revitalization, then developed proposals for the project.
The Augusta riverfront development project has similar goals, said Gilbert, who also was involved in the West Memphis and McCrory projects.
Gilbert said he likes participating in service-learning projects because of the realworld experience, feedback from community members and the satisfaction of knowing his work will have real implications.
“A lot of students do theoretical projects,” Gilbert said. “This was one of the few that could have actual design implications.” Otto Loewer said such projects also get students invested in the communities. The relationships created may encourage more students to pursue careers in Arkansas after graduation. “In Arkansas, we’ve talked about a ‘ brain drain, ’” he said. “The governor says that education and economic development are intrinsically linked. What SEED does is engage students in solving problems in their communities, and they become vested in their communities. Once they take ownership, who knows what can happen ?” To contact this reporter: cpark@arkansasonline. com
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