on vanderbilt\u2019s campus, it\u2019s easy to forget that there exists a world outside of it. but all around us is nashville, a bright, bustling city that\u2019s one of the fastest-growing ones in the u.s.a. and as sarah suiter is showing, it\u2019s filled with opportunities for students to engage with community partners.<\/p>\n
suiter has had an overwhelming response from community partners. for each community partner, she assigns a group of students who develop a program evaluation plan across the course of the semester, directly translating concepts learned in the class into their plan. importantly, the community partner is an active part of this process, with a representative attending classes and helping ensure that the plan that the students develop is a good fit for their organization. at the end of the class, the community partner leaves with a fully developed, ready-to-implement evaluation plan. while the implementation is not part of the course and not all of the organizations go on to use their evaluation plans, many do. in fact, some students stay in touch with the community partners they worked with and go on to help them implement the plans they designed, either as volunteers for or employees of the organization. past and current community partners include the find design<\/a>, the nashville food project<\/a>, and gideon\u2019s army<\/a>.<\/p>\n
working with community partners gives students real-life experience and soft skills and is a great example of a \u201cstudents as producers<\/a>\u201d project embedded in a course. these kinds of projects tend to be highly meaningful to students because they provide an opportunity to tackle an open-ended problem with some autonomy for a real purpose. in this case, students get to see the implications of their work while forming network connections with the nashville community. the community partners directly benefit as well and they also receive a small stipend as compensation for their time through funding from the meharry-vanderbilt community engaged research core (cerc).<\/a><\/p>\n
program evaluation is a course that naturally lends itself to working with community partners thanks to the external motivation of organizations to evaluate their programs. however, for other classes looking to work with nashville organizations that might not be able to offer community partners tangible products, suiter still sees an opportunity for collaboration. community partners have told suiter, they appreciate working with vanderbilt classes as it provides them \u201cspace and time to think and learn.\u201d the conversations between vanderbilt and nashville are worth it, both for students and the community.<\/p>\n
learn more about the course and its outcomes in suiter\u2019s article \u201ca co-learning model for community-engaged program evaluation<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n