CCCE Assistant Director for Community Impact Erica Zweifel recently sat down with CCCE fellow Lillian Lee ‘26 to reflect on her journey working with local community engagement efforts during her past three years at Carleton.
EZ: How did you learn about the CCCE and get involved?
LL: In my first year at Carleton, I volunteered as an afterschool tutor at the Faribault RISE program with a CCCE fellow (Adi Satish ‘22) who told me that I should apply to work for the CCCE as a fellow. Having the opportunity to do more of it was exciting to me, so that’s why I applied.
EZ: What’s your motivation for this type of work?
LL: I think just general reciprocity is a good thing. I think it’s important to know the place you’re living and working in and be a part of it. Human connection is cool and when you’re removed from that, it’s kind of sad. I value being involved in the community, building relationships with people and getting to know my neighbors a little bit better.
EZ: You’ve been involved in a couple of different types of engagement through the CCCE: with an Academic Civic Engagement (ACE) class, being a volunteer, being a Fellow, being part of program work, and being part of more initiative work with the Housing Minnesotans Everyday (HOME) project. What are some of the highlights of those different types of engagement for you?
LL: My favorite thing is the small-town feel of Northfield; you get to know people in different settings. Someone who came in and spoke to my ACE class, I’m later meeting for coffee to talk to about housing. Someone I saw give a presentation at the Housing & Redevelopment Authority meeting island and then saw them again at the food shelf. You can get to know people across all these different contexts and build relationships with them. I think that’s awesome.
EZ: What surprised you most about community engagement work?
LL: I came from a bigger city where I felt sort of removed from the larger decisions that were happening. At Carleton, with the HOME programming specifically, it’s like everything that is happening you can watch unfold right in front of you. You can be involved as it unfolds right in front of you. I was thinking about the word accessible when you asked. If you have the time and the interest in going to meetings and following up with people, a lot can happen.
EZ: One thing that we noticed as a CCCE staff is that you don’t just attend the meetings and the events, and receive information in a class. You take the time to follow up and create those relationships. This can be challenging yet you do it so well. What is your advice for students who want to go deeper into that relational work?
LL: It is challenging, especially when people are busy and things can fall through. I think it is really rewarding if you can get to a place where you have stable existing relationships with the people that you work with. Something that’s helped me maintain those relationships is getting to know people’s work, but also getting to know them as a person.
It is such a very baseline step, but knowing how someone’s kids are doing, or they know how my study abroad was, or I know that they were just on vacation so they’re probably a little busy and I shouldn’t reach out right now. The small things like that — what’s going on in someone’s life — are also really important to be able to work well with them in a highly specific work setting.
EZ: What are you most proud of in the work that you’ve been doing?
LL: As I spend more time here, I think that the stuff that I get most excited about is when community initiatives work. For example, The Wallflower opening is fantastic. [Northfield Union of Youth transitional housing project]. The fact that the NCEC food shelf runs smoothly every week, in large part due to committed Carleton students during the academic year, is another great success
I think something that’s become super apparent to me is the importance of fostering those relationships. I think it is important, and exciting socially, to be a part of the place where you live and work. It is an awesome opportunity – knowing the people that you work with or that live around you just helps everything run so much more smoothly. I think all of that is meaningful and important for community work, but also just any work that you might want to engage within the world.
EZ: What do you think it takes to build trust in community engagement work?
LL: Starting from Carleton, there already is some initial credibility, but then being consistent about showing up for meetings and following up with people via email and being responsive to people’s needs is so important. I think it’s also really important to show that you’re a reliable person who is easy to work with and wants to engage with the work that is being done.
It’s really important to do this kind of thing and be reciprocal in the community that is housing and feeding me for four years. Surely, I have something to do and contribute that’s not extractive, right? It’s awesome.