Ginsberg Center: Community Engagement
Supervisors
Sara Saylor and Amanda Healy
Location
Ann Arbor, MI (remote)
Description of Project Role and Responsibilities
The Ginsberg Center serves as an access point for social sector partners interested in engaging with the University of Michigan. Through our community-centered approach, we build relationships with non-profits, schools, and governmental agencies to best understand their priorities and needs. We are then able to thoughtfully match these priorities and needs to university faculty, staff and students interested in positive social change. Managing and stewarding these relationships is a critical piece of the ability to effectively advance community priorities.
With a network of over 300 partners, that continues to grow, we need to develop new approaches to relationship management to preserve the intimacy of Ginsberg-partner relationships at scale. The center hopes to design a graduate-student led case management fellowship, interns, field placements, or an expansion of Ginsberg’s existing Graduate Academic Liaisons program to train and support graduate-student case managers who do low-hour multi-year work with Ginsberg.
This intern will work closely with the Assistant Director of Community Engagement and the University-Community Partnerships Manager to research and benchmark case management models and propose a new model for the center to pilot in fall 2021. Activities include:
- Attending Community Partner Meetings. A significant portion of this role will be spent working closely with community partners joining and then leading annual check-in and follow-up meetings. These meetings are used to understand and update partner priorities. The intern will attend intake and check-in meetings with a range of community partners representing different types of organizations, and different levels of involvement with the center to understand the scale and scope of relationship management.
- Mapping current relationship management practices and schedules, and thinking through the process for bringing in new partners in a systematic way.
- Researching existing models of relationships management at other community engagement centers, and in other related fields (for example, large nonprofits that work with many community organizations, etc.)
- Program Design which may include curriculum development. The intern will propose a training or onboarding curriculum for the case management system(s) they recommend
Time Commitment and Stipend
Start date: Flexible but could start as early as late May
End date: Flexible but would need to wrap up by August 15
Hours or days per week: 20 hours a week
Duration: 12 weeks, with some flexibility (for example, we would be open to a student working a higher number of hours for a shorter period of time)
Stipend: $4,800
About the Organization
We are a community and civic engagement center with a mission to cultivate and steward equitable partnerships between communities and the University of Michigan in order to advance social change for the public good. Based upon this mission, our vision is for inclusive democracy; thriving, diverse communities; and equity and social justice.
We accomplish our work by
- Empowering students to engage in positive change through social justice education, leadership development, and meaningful civic and community engagement experiences.
- Supporting faculty and academic program staff efforts to connect socially just civic and community engagement experiences to coursework, research, and programs.
- Connecting community organizations with students, faculty, and staff that are invested in positive social change.
The Ginsberg Center’s mission and purpose are premised on spanning organizational and institutional boundaries in service to social change. Recognizing our three strategic areas of focus, the Ginsberg Center is positioned within Student Life, reflecting our commitment to student education and development; we are formally connected to the Office of the Provost, reflecting our focus on faculty and academic partners, and Government Relations, reflecting our community engagement beyond campus.