Spinning Words into Gold for Ithaca's Southside Community
 

Assistant writing professor Pat Spencer makes a point of taking academic activity off the hill and into the community. Students in the writing course she teaches -- Proposals, Grants, and Reports: Tools for Managing Social Change -- are actually facilitating social change in Ithaca's Southside community.

As part of their coursework students in her class are working with members of the Southside community and Historic Ithaca Inc. in a proposed effort to survey the neighborhood's significant architecture, document its unique social and cultural history, and present this information in the form of historical education programs in the community. For their part the writing students are identifying funding sources and writing actual grant proposals that will turn the project into reality. Ultimately the objective is to aid Southside in its efforts to earn designation as a local, state, or federal historic district.

"The material we wrote has been integrated into proposals from the community and has now been submitted to funding sources," Spencer said. "I think we really shortened the timeline for the community. We were able to research funding sources, ghostwrite the proposals, and give them the materials they need to move forward."

The Southside preservation team is just one of four teams working in the community through Spencer's class. Other groups are developing funding proposals that will support a summer music program for local children, integrate aging issues into the grades 7-12 social studies curriculum, and upgrade a neighborhood playground tainted by the use of pressure-treated lumber.

The work undertaken by Spencer's class is part of the College's broader InVisible Histories initiative. This interdisciplinary project combines student work in communications, history, writing, education, and other departments to document and support unseen and marginalized histories within the community.

Unlike some service-learning programs, which are structured for short-term contact between students and the community, Spencer's grant writing group is in it for the long haul.

"We wanted to make sure this was not another hit-and-run service-learning experience, the kind of situation where a student group descends on a community project then disappears," she said. "We're making this an ongoing relationship. I see the Southside as a long-term partner, especially for an institution that shares the same hill." HS