09/15/2020

How Higher Ed Can Support Local Ecosystems of Innovation

Supporting innovation should not be a top-down approach

In the summer of 2017, Dwight Hall—Yale’s Center for Public Service and Social Justice, one of the oldest collegiate public service institutions in the nation—met with several community leaders in the Greater New Haven area for a series of listening sessions, to ask one question: What can Yale administrators do to facilitate town-gown programming that offers clear learning objectives for students while fulfilling specific community needs?

Time and time again, the same words came up: Reciprocity, Commitment, Love.

Since higher education is increasingly playing a leading role in developing the next generation of policy and social entrepreneurs, we must develop a cooperative framework to guide them. Students need a working understanding of what on-the-ground work with neighboring communities looks like, and how to center community needs. The same stories were repeatedly told when speaking with community leaders, organizers, activists, and nonprofit leaders. We heard about students coming in under the guise of good intentions, but centering their own needs, research, and privilege without taking the time to understand the histories and traditions of the community or organization they wish to serve. In a few instances, we even heard about how students even created competing organizations based on the group they worked with. This anecdotal evidence went back decades, frequently from New Haven leaders with no connection within the University to find a just recompense.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR).