Academic Civic Engagement (ACE) offers students the chance to work with community partners to assist with needs these partners might not have the resources to meet. The Key, a local hub for youth in Northfield, found a friend in an unexpected department: Computer Science.
The Key is an after school drop-in center for youth ages 12–20 that offers daily programming and confronts issues such as mental health, homelessness and chemical addiction. Despite this large and vital portfolio of services, as a small non-profit, their budget is extremely tight.
“The Key is a substance-free youth center that is kind of like a home for many people, myself included…. It is a great place to meet a lot of great people.”
A teenager in a gray beanie says this with conviction, looking away from the camera. This is the first scene in a film about the youth center. The film was created by a group of Carleton students as an ACE project in Cinema and Media Arts Professor Laska Jimsen’s Nonfiction course. Many of the videos that the students in this class produce for community partners are used as fundraising tools, allowing non-profits to tell their story more effectively to potential donors. In this case, however, the intent of the film was to help parents of the teenagers who frequent The Key to understand why this space is so important to them.
The Key is no stranger to collaborations with Carleton. Because comps work is spread over two terms for Computer Science students, Professor Amy Csizmar-Dalal wanted to involve seniors in an extended engagement project where the community partner’s needs extended beyond ten weeks. Students worked in teams during fall and winter of their senior year to design an app to allow The Key to track youth participation. This collaboration permitted the organization to expand their capacity without diverting funds from services for the youth they serve.
Out of her previous professional experience of working as an engineer, Professor Csizmar-Dalal says she “is always interested in exposing her students to real world problems.” In the past, her students had designed coding projects using simulated scenarios and potential users, but she has found there is a different level of commitment when students are accountable to the goals and requirements of real people. In addition to filling a demonstrated need for a valuable under-resourced organization, working with The Key as a community partner has helped these students think more holistically about why they were solving the problems they were solving.