Imagining America (IA), a national consortium of colleges and universities supporting public scholarship, has featured Carleton in their most recent newsletter. They highlight the work done by Adriana Estill’s Latina/o American Studies course, which discussed the local implications of census data with residents from Viking Terrace, a mobile home park in Northfield.
The newsletter also quotes Adrienne Falcon, director of Academic Civic Engagement about the kind of relationships Carleton is forming with the community
“The sustainability of our civic engagement programs is
intimately linked to the sustainability of our
community partners. If one enters into genuinely reciprocal partnerships, which is what we attempt to do, we are only as strong as our community partners. Social sustainability means asking organizations to partner in ways that don’t drain them of their resources. In Carleton’s rural location, with its limited number of community organizations, partnerships typically span years with the same group of people. Our projects develop over time, and students appreciate contributing to a larger whole.”
The full newsletter can be found on the Imagining America website. IA is holding their national conference in the Twin Cities and is highlighting the civic engagement work of member institutions like Carleton.