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Won't You Be My Neighbor? University Partnerships with Jamilah Ducar · Partnership Work

0:00
Jamie: Pittsburgh is the home of Fred Rogers, of Mr. Rogers, right?
0:04
Jamie: And so we are a city that always asks, "Won't you be my neighbor?" Right?
0:12
Jamie: And being neighborly is one of the things that we really aspire to here as a city.
0:19
Jamie: I think it's just part of our city brand.
0:21
Jamie: So Pittsburgh has officially gotten me, right? I've been here for long enough,
0:25
Jamie: but also literally I'm talking about our neighbors.
0:30
Paul: Hey, welcome to Partnership Work, a podcast about how we move from isolation to action.
0:41
Paul: I'm Paul Kuttner. That neighborly voice you just heard is Dr. Jamie Ducar.
0:46
Paul: Jamie is the Associate Vice Chancellor for Engagement and Community Affairs
0:50
Paul: at the University of Pittsburgh.
0:52
Paul: I asked her on to tackle a question that a lot of folks in higher education are working on.
0:57
Paul: What does it look like for a university to be a good partner with its surrounding communities?
1:03
Paul: There's plenty of discussion these days about the value of higher education,
1:06
Paul: usually focused on rising costs and whether college prepares students for gainful employment.
1:12
Paul: These issues are critical, but they are only a part of the picture when it comes
1:16
Paul: to the potential value that a university can bring to a city or a region.
1:21
Paul: Historically, town-gown relationships have often been contentious,
1:25
Paul: with too many institutions putting their needs before those of the larger community.
1:29
Paul: But people have been working hard over the last few decades to turn that around,
1:33
Paul: and the University of Pittsburgh is at the cutting edge of that work.
1:36
Paul: As Jamie explains, when universities become true partners with their neighbors,
1:40
Paul: they can bring their people and resources to bear in ways that benefit everyone involved.
1:45
Paul: In our conversation, Jamie describes Pitt's approach to partnership,
1:50
Paul: an approach that begins with listening, that centers relationships,
1:53
Paul: and that asks the humble question, how can we help?
1:57
Paul: Jamie shares the early lessons she learned working in the service industry and
2:01
Paul: human services and the influence of her family on her trajectory.
2:05
Paul: She talks about rebuilding trust with communities that have been impacted by
2:09
Paul: displacement from the historical growth of the university.
2:13
Paul: We talk about the skills and knowledge you need to do partnership work in higher
2:16
Paul: ed and how universities can coordinate across all their different offices and
2:21
Paul: departments and centers to have a stronger impact.
2:24
Paul: This episode marks the beginning of Partnership Work's second season.
2:27
Paul: And we've got some really great guests lined up for you in the coming months.
2:30
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2:34
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2:37
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2:43
Paul: and all our episodes, transcripts, show notes, and more can be found at partnershipwork.org.
2:49
Paul: And now, Jamie.
2:52
Paul: Thank you so much for joining me on Partnership Work, Jamie. It's good to see you.
2:58
Jamie: Thank you, Paul. I'm really excited to be doing this with you.
3:02
Paul: So we have a lot to talk about. I want just to give a little bit of context for people.
3:09
Paul: So you're at the University of Pittsburgh, and you are the Associate Vice Chancellor
3:13
Paul: of Engagement and Community Affairs. So that's a lot. That's a big title.
3:18
Paul: What's the kind of quick and dirty way that you explain this work to people?
3:24
Jamie: Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. So at least at the University of Pittsburgh,
3:30
Jamie: our office is proud to sort of be the stewards of positive relationships between
3:38
Jamie: our broader communities and the university wherever possible.
3:42
Jamie: So we think about that in lots of ways with our neighbors close to campus,
3:47
Jamie: with communities of impact,
3:51
Jamie: communities of geography, any way that you can think through the ways that people
3:56
Jamie: come together to solve problems, right, and learn more about each other.
4:01
Jamie: We try to be at the table and ensure that Pitt's at the table.
4:05
Paul: What does it look like? Can you give us an example of kind of a partnership
4:08
Paul: or a project that really excites you and maybe a couple of things that you've
4:12
Paul: learned working with it?
4:14
Jamie: Yeah, yeah. So there's been some, I think, really fun, really fun partnerships throughout the years.
4:22
Jamie: One that I'll share just sort of as a moment of historical reference,
4:27
Jamie: right, is that as part of my role at Pitt, I now serve as chair of our Oakland Taskforce, right?
4:35
Jamie: It's a place-based group of all of the organizations that have a footprint in our neighborhood.
4:42
Jamie: It got established in like the 1970s. And so my former boss,
4:47
Jamie: Paul Supowitz, was a former chair.
4:50
Jamie: It was as part of his tenure that Oakland Taskforce oversaw the redevelopment
4:58
Jamie: of what was a large parking lot,
5:03
Jamie: right squat in the middle of our civic center of Oakland.
5:07
Jamie: It is now a public green space called Schenley Plaza.
5:12
Jamie: It now hosts music festivals, vintage clothing stores do pop-ups in the tent
5:21
Jamie: that's available there.
5:22
Jamie: You can sort of lay out, get food on a nice day.
5:26
Jamie: Our students are just out, right? It is a beautiful public asset, place of respite.
5:34
Jamie: This body, right, the Oakland Taskforce was composed of the right folks with
5:41
Jamie: the right relationships to sort of help that swap happen, right?
5:45
Jamie: To sort of force everyone to sort of think beyond the pain of the sort of actual
5:52
Jamie: redevelopment to what it could be.
5:55
Jamie: For the future of our Oakland Taskforce, we've got what we're calling our Oakland
6:01
Jamie: Neighborhood Plan, and we've got all sorts of goals and recommendations.
6:07
Jamie: And so part of my job has been sort of with my chair hat sometimes and with my pit hat sometimes.
6:15
Jamie: What I've been doing is sort of sharing out within the university to see how
6:23
Jamie: it is we can show up as a partner in helping this larger plan happen, you know.
6:31
Jamie: Economic development. We've got faculty. We've got anchor leads here.
6:37
Jamie: We've got finance and operations specialists.
6:40
Jamie: We've got connections with our city and county counterparts that are thinking
6:46
Jamie: about economic development broadly, right?
6:49
Jamie: It is where I think I am most proud to see our university sort of in action, right?
6:56
Jamie: When I can tap one of my colleagues and say, hey, would you be willing to sort of join this group?
7:02
Jamie: They're thinking about public art quite deeply. And I know you've got some expertise
7:07
Jamie: here, you know, like, would you be willing to support for something that's a
7:12
Jamie: bit more sort of like neighborhood driven, right?
7:15
Jamie: I think that we've done some amazing work in being able to support our young people.
7:26
Jamie: And so as part of our office, we have what we call the Gismondi Neighborhood Education Programs.
7:33
Jamie: They're a set of out-of-school time and in-school tutoring initiatives that
7:41
Jamie: align with our neighborhood commitments.
7:43
Jamie: We started off with, I think, our most structured, our most formalized program
7:49
Jamie: focused on growth in literacy and math for first through fourth graders.
7:57
Jamie: That program then started to inform how we were thinking about how we talk to
8:06
Jamie: our other sort of neighborhood partners, right, around what they wanted to see for their young people.
8:12
Jamie: So we started in Homewood, right, and then we had.
8:19
Jamie: What we called our STEAM studios, right?
8:22
Jamie: Where we worked with our neighbors and our schools to think through what would
8:27
Jamie: be helpful from Pitt for us to support young people, right?
8:31
Jamie: Like what are those STEAM concepts that you're looking for us to offer?
8:36
Jamie: And so out of that, we started a STEAM
8:39
Jamie: Saturdays program where we're able to take a cohort of Pitt students that have
8:46
Jamie: a faculty advisor and they are running through sort of one-hour blocks of enrichment
8:53
Jamie: with our young people in the Hill District.
8:57
Jamie: And we've continued to sort of go through this process of partnering with people.
9:06
Jamie: An out-of-school time program, right, or community organization that's already
9:12
Jamie: deeply working with young people go through this process of sort of what is helpful to you, right?
9:18
Jamie: And now we've got this set, this beautiful set of programs across four neighborhoods, seven schools.
9:26
Jamie: We anticipate hiring as many as 100 students, Pitt students next year to drive
9:36
Jamie: the heart of this process, right?
9:39
Jamie: And so that all started with what was a very small group of folks thinking through,
9:47
Jamie: how can we help the children in Homewood get to proficiency?
9:52
Jamie: And it's now this amazing opportunity for not only the young people that we're
10:01
Jamie: working with in all sorts of contexts to feel like they're a part of Pitt,
10:05
Jamie: that Pitt students care about them, that the university is investing.
10:09
Jamie: In their neighborhoods, but also a great opportunity for our students, right?
10:15
Jamie: Like to make a competitive wage and do something that they might care about intrinsically.
10:25
Jamie: I didn't feel like I had that opportunity as a college student.
10:29
Jamie: And so, you know, what would it have meant to be able to do something like this
10:35
Jamie: and realize much earlier what
10:37
Jamie: my career pathways could be as a person that deeply cared about community?
10:43
Jamie: And so that is not a partnership, right?
10:47
Jamie: But I think it's this network of partnerships that all work in concert with one another.
10:54
Jamie: And it wouldn't be possible without the university taking a listening-first
11:02
Jamie: approach and really centering relationships and partnerships is how it is we get it done.
11:10
Paul: Those are really good examples. I think they show these are not things that
11:15
Paul: the university is trying to own.
11:17
Paul: It sounds like these are things where you're trying to figure out:how can our university play a role?
11:23
Paul: What is the appropriate role? How do we fit into these larger efforts?
11:27
Paul: I think that comes out very strongly in those examples.
11:31
Paul: One thing I notice is you use the word neighbor or neighbors a lot.
11:36
Paul: Is that like the metaphor or maybe it's not even a metaphor,
11:40
Paul: but is that kind of the framework for how you think about what you want Pitt
11:43
Paul: to be in the city, like a good neighbor?
11:49
Jamie: Of course, I want us to be a good neighbor. You know, Pittsburgh,
11:52
Jamie: if maybe your listeners don't know, but Pittsburgh is the home of Fred Rogers, of Mr. Rogers, right?
11:59
Jamie: So we are a city that always asks, "Won't you be my neighbor" Right?
12:07
Jamie: And being neighborly is one of the things that we really aspire to here as a city.
12:14
Jamie: I think it's just part of our city brand. So Pittsburgh has officially gotten
12:19
Jamie: me right. I've been here for long enough.
12:21
Jamie: But also literally, I'm talking about our neighbors.
12:24
Jamie: Like I am, I am talking about the folks that live in Oakland.
12:29
Jamie: It's 1.5 square miles.
12:33
Jamie: It's a it's a small neighborhood with a lot of big organizations and a lot of
12:40
Jamie: long, long standing residents.
12:42
Jamie: So we are actually spending time with our neighbors, walking to their homes,
12:48
Jamie: walking to meet them for coffee wherever possible.
12:53
Jamie: I actually just missed coffee with one of our neighbors this morning because
12:57
Jamie: I wasn't feeling well, but I'll catch up with her.
13:01
Jamie: But yeah, it is a Pittsburgh thing, but it is also literal.
13:07
Paul: Yeah, I love that.
13:20
Paul: So I want to get back into some of the details of that. But first, I want to ask about you.
13:25
Paul: So you started your career in sort of direct service work, right?
13:32
Paul: Working with families in the community.
13:35
Paul: What were your early jobs like? What were you doing?
13:39
Paul: And what I'm really curious about is, what did you learn doing that work that
13:43
Paul: is still relevant to the work you do today?
13:46
Jamie: Yeah, so I think, right, even before I sort of jumped into the fray with child
13:53
Jamie: welfare, right, I came to Pittsburgh, not really knowing the city at all, right,
13:58
Jamie: having really no idea what it might be like, what the people were like.
14:02
Jamie: And so I felt a bit isolated from the city when I first came here for college.
14:09
Jamie: And I took a couple of funny sort of early jobs, right, to make sure I had money.
14:15
Jamie: And so I worked at a retail clothing store at the waterfront,
14:20
Jamie: right, which is sort of this outdoor shopping development here in the area.
14:25
Jamie: And I also served as a waitress.
14:29
Jamie: And so I think that...
14:32
Jamie: When you've worked in the service industry, right, when you see folks that are
14:37
Jamie: coming in and in all types of moods for all types of reasons, right,
14:42
Jamie: that you start to get a sense of a place, you start to get a sense of sort of
14:47
Jamie: what sort of matters to people.
14:51
Jamie: And so I think that it was actually that job, right?
14:56
Jamie: Being a waitress, working down in Station Square.
15:00
Jamie: I think I was 19 years old, right?
15:03
Jamie: Sort of navigating the city through this very bizarre sense of like not having very much money,
15:09
Jamie: but that sometimes having way too much money and being irresponsible and sort
15:13
Jamie: of going out and learning what felt like more about the real Pittsburgh.
15:21
Jamie: And then sort of taking a professional journey
15:24
Jamie: of then sort of dialing in on the nonprofit sector as a way that I could take
15:32
Jamie: my approach to building relationships broadly and start to apply that to what I was seeing day to day,
15:42
Jamie: which was that some folks were having what felt like very fine but transient
15:51
Jamie: experiences with the city, right?
15:53
Jamie: Like, I'm going to be here for this set amount of time, do my thing, and I'm out.
15:57
Jamie: And so I had sort of reconsidered what does it mean to actually care about this
16:02
Jamie: place in the same way that I care about where I grew up and the people there.
16:07
Jamie: I especially was thinking about mothers because I was raised,
16:13
Jamie: you know, latchkey kid with a mostly single mother.
16:17
Jamie: I had sort of a more traditional two-child, two-parent experience with my father
16:23
Jamie: in the summers and over holidays.
16:26
Jamie: But really my day-to-day was my mother and I, and she worked really,
16:32
Jamie: really hard to provide for me.
16:34
Jamie: And one thing I learned very early when I started to sort of unpeel some of
16:39
Jamie: the layers in Pittsburgh is there were a ton of households here that looked
16:44
Jamie: like mine growing up, right?
16:45
Jamie: A mother as head of household trying to make it work.
16:50
Jamie: And I wanted to sort of better understand what it might mean to support those
16:57
Jamie: women in some way, right?
17:00
Jamie: And so I worked in a program called Family Group Decision Making where the entire
17:05
Jamie: framework is asset-based family development, right?
17:11
Jamie: That a family has had this system enter their lives and largely it's because
17:18
Jamie: of something that has already sort of been deemed lower risk when you think
17:24
Jamie: about the risk to a child.
17:26
Jamie: And so being able to sort of help families acknowledge their own strengths,
17:33
Jamie: pull in some natural support, right, have honest conversations with the explicit
17:40
Jamie: and stated goal of let's get these systems out of your life, right?
17:44
Jamie: Like we were here to sort of ensure that you feel like you have what you need
17:50
Jamie: and the people you need to be able to figure this out without us the next time.
17:58
Jamie: And so that was a super eye-opening experience to have as my first real professional life.
18:06
Jamie: Super high touch, right? I was with my families twice a week.
18:10
Jamie: And so you start to really then get, I think, a better sense of where folks
18:18
Jamie: miss our safety nets, right?
18:21
Jamie: What types of behaviors from large organizations sort of lead to these missed
18:30
Jamie: opportunities for families.
18:33
Jamie: And so I pull a lot of that with me in the work that we do here at Pitt, right?
18:40
Jamie: The sense that if we slow down a little bit and sort of look around us,
18:46
Jamie: right, and stay in constant conversation with as many folks as we can,
18:50
Jamie: that we'll be much more agile when it comes to taking action and also much more
18:59
Jamie: agile and sort of being relevant in the conversation at all.
19:03
Paul: It sounds like when you showed up in Pittsburgh, you already had a tendency
19:06
Paul: toward relationship building, commitment to families and wanting to see families
19:11
Paul: succeed and the challenges they face.
19:14
Paul: Sort of where, maybe looking farther back, like are those things that you really felt growing up?
19:20
Paul: Like what about your background, your family kind of fostered those things in you?
19:26
Jamie: Yeah, I think it comes from several places. So, one, I again sort of really
19:34
Jamie: am grateful to my mother for...
19:39
Jamie: What she emphasized with me as a young person, right, which was that our families
19:45
Jamie: and our family stories were really, really important.
19:50
Jamie: So her family is from Greenville, North Carolina, and my grandparents were part
19:58
Jamie: of the Great Migration north, right?
20:00
Jamie: So they sort of packed up their bags as soon as they graduated high school and
20:06
Jamie: headed up to New York City.
20:07
Jamie: But I knew my great grandparents and their home in Greenville was our family's sticky center, right?
20:18
Jamie: I got to meet all of my second and third and who knows, like maybe not even really cousins, right?
20:25
Jamie: But they're the cousins. And I got to help my great-grandmother sort of,
20:33
Jamie: I wouldn't help to pluck the chickens,
20:35
Jamie: but I would help to sort of pluck the chickens that she was sort of like right
20:42
Jamie: from the backyard, right?
20:43
Jamie: And I think the experience,
20:47
Jamie: it's very different, right, than this just mom and me dynamic in a very urban
20:54
Jamie: place to then have this sort of warm extended family,
21:00
Jamie: right, where it feels like my family is half of the town and you just naturally
21:07
Jamie: have to approach everybody that you meet as family, right, as a potential family member. Right.
21:14
Jamie: To then thinking about, you know, how because she was a working parent,
21:21
Jamie: right, a working mother, I needed places to be as a child.
21:26
Jamie: And so for me, church was sort of one of those places that I spent a lot of my time.
21:34
Jamie: So my Girl Scout troop, right, was based in my church community.
21:39
Jamie: It's where I got to meet people that I didn't know through my school connections, right?
21:47
Jamie: And again, get the sense of just knowing my place and my town better.
21:53
Jamie: But I didn't think about it as a kid this way. Now I realize that my mom had
21:58
Jamie: sort of set up this protective network for me, right?
22:01
Jamie: So that she could do what she needed to do when she was off working.
22:07
Jamie: But, you know, being part of a community as a kid that spent a lot of time alone,
22:16
Jamie: right, it was really important to me to then have that other side where I sort
22:23
Jamie: of was naturally part of something bigger than myself.
22:26
Jamie: And my mom did a great job facilitating that for me.
22:41
Paul: What I'm curious about is what the challenges and the hurdles are to getting to that point.
22:48
Paul: We hear so much about town gown tensions and distrust of institutions,
22:53
Paul: you know, and some of those things have really been kind of on people's minds
22:57
Paul: and in the news recently, but really longstanding tensions.
23:01
Paul: So my question for you is, you know, to what extent do you face distrust and
23:05
Paul: skepticism towards what the university is doing?
23:08
Paul: How do you address the kind of challenges and people who might be reticent to
23:13
Paul: work with you or concerned about things that the university has done in the
23:16
Paul: past? Is that a reality in the work you're doing?
23:20
Jamie: Yeah, I think anytime you're working with people, you're working within pretty
23:26
Jamie: broad conceptualizations of trust building.
23:29
Jamie: There are histories, very real histories, of the university being extractive
23:37
Jamie: of the university's sort of whether purposefully or inadvertently causing harm.
23:44
Jamie: And it is a reality that our actual campus footprint is much larger than it
23:51
Jamie: was in the lifetime of many of our partners close to campus, right?
23:57
Jamie: That they have direct memory, oral tradition, friends and family that are no longer there.
24:06
Jamie: So that's very real.
24:08
Jamie: Holding on to our histories, being the sort of keepers of the flame, that was powerful.
24:16
Jamie: The part of the role that I learned once I got to Pitt.
24:21
Jamie: It was something that was really important to my mentor, Dr. John Wilds, right?
24:27
Jamie: That if we can show that we've done our homework and we understand where there
24:33
Jamie: is rightful cynicism, where there might be some resistance.
24:38
Jamie: Where our goals might be in tension with another community's or organization's goals,
24:44
Jamie: you name those things and work through them, right, in the hopes that there's
24:50
Jamie: still something there for us to come to the table around, right?
24:55
Jamie: So you can acknowledge it. You can even facilitate a process of learning,
25:01
Jamie: right, for others to be sure that folks know and have good information.
25:07
Jamie: And then together, you're hopefully then focused on what's next.
25:13
Jamie: From my vantage point, we do a really good job of recentering on the path forward.
25:22
Jamie: Yes, it is difficult to work with an institution that may have directly had
25:29
Jamie: a negative impact on a place, on a family, right?
25:35
Jamie: And so showing up as a person within that organization that's willing to sort
25:42
Jamie: of then work together to tell a new story,
25:46
Jamie: I think is something that can thaw even the iciest relationship and hopefully
25:55
Jamie: start to rebuild capacity in ways that are helpful.
26:01
Paul: So I want to make sure we put aside some time to talk about the research project
26:05
Paul: that you and I are involved in, that you are helping to lead.
26:08
Paul: And maybe we should start with the term. So the project is focused on community
26:16
Paul: engagement professionals, CEPs, which is a term that could be applied to you and me.
26:21
Paul: Could you just start by defining what is a community engagement professional?
26:26
Jamie: Oh, so we're going to get into our inclusion-exclusion criteria here.
26:31
Jamie: We're going to go straight into the weeds, right?
26:35
Jamie: So a community engagement professional for the purposes of this book,
26:40
Jamie: right, is someone who works for a higher education institution or is an organization
26:48
Jamie: that partners closely with a higher ed institution to support,
26:56
Jamie: community-university engagement. And so we are specifically thinking about staff
27:04
Jamie: roles, right, rather than, for example,
27:08
Jamie: faculty or students, the staff roles that are directly facilitating some level
27:16
Jamie: of partnership work for the university.
27:22
Paul: Great. Could you give just a little bit of background on the goal of the project?
27:26
Jamie: Yes. So the goal of the project is to refresh the Community Engagement Professionals
27:34
Jamie: Guidebook that was published in 2018.
27:38
Jamie: This book provides really the essential framework to think through the knowledge, the skills,
27:49
Jamie: right, the dispositions, and the critical commitments of roles that support
27:56
Jamie: community engagement and higher ed.
27:59
Paul: Yeah, so I really, I think there's a lot of connection between this project
28:03
Paul: and this podcast. So I really wanted to ask you about it.
28:07
Paul: You know, I interview people who do partnership work and really trying to figure
28:11
Paul: out what does it look like and what does it take?
28:13
Paul: And I feel like this project really gets at the heart of what does it take?
28:17
Paul: What do you need to know? What do you need to be able to do to really build partnerships?
28:20
Paul: And so I'm wondering, I know we're not done with the project,
28:25
Paul: but so far, what have you seen as some of the main skills or knowledges or capacities
28:31
Paul: that people really need?
28:32
Paul: What have really stood out as the central pieces to you?
28:37
Jamie: Honestly, what is standing out for me are things that,
28:43
Jamie: maybe we take for granted, right, as folks that are actually in the work.
28:49
Jamie: So I'm working on the core chapter of this book,
28:54
Jamie: which is intended to provide a little bit of a narrative of what the through
29:02
Jamie: line will be through the functional chapters.
29:05
Jamie: And so I've had the opportunity to look at the early research of the other 10
29:17
Jamie: chapter teams and zoom out a little bit.
29:21
Jamie: And so for me, this deep sense of shared purpose and understanding of what it
29:33
Jamie: takes to create resilient relationships.
29:38
Jamie: Was something that was very meaningful for me,
29:42
Jamie: to be able to sort of be affirmed in that that is something that is central and core,
29:50
Jamie: no matter what your role might be in enabling community engagement for higher ed, right?
29:58
Jamie: That it isn't just a, "Oh, it just so happens to be, you know, you're my people."
30:05
Jamie: Like, no, it is something where folks either have come into the work,
30:13
Jamie: right, with a lens of public purpose or are very quickly sort of able to connect
30:20
Jamie: public purpose to their functional roles in some way.
30:24
Jamie: So that, for me, is an insight that I love that I get to sort of expound upon for sure.
30:32
Paul: Yeah, that's a great one. Resilient relationships. It's not just about it all
30:36
Paul: being happy and everyone liking each other.
30:38
Paul: It's about building enough trust and connection that when tough things happen,
30:43
Paul: when maybe even harm is done to that relationship, those relationships can bounce
30:47
Paul: back because they are strong and deep. I really like that.
30:51
Jamie: Yeah, yeah, right? Right. Resilient relationships acknowledge that there can
30:57
Jamie: be some conflict in there.
30:59
Jamie: And so with some functions more than others,
31:03
Jamie: you're sort of actively managing conflict on behalf of the university and sometimes
31:08
Jamie: feeling this sense of having more than one accountability core.
31:14
Jamie: That you need to be attentive to your professional role,
31:20
Jamie: but you're also attentive to yourself and your own internal values access as
31:30
Jamie: you're navigating this work.
31:43
Paul: I do want to ask about one other piece. So one of the challenges I know that
31:47
Paul: I've seen personally in higher ed working with communities, it's often very atomized.
31:54
Paul: I think a lot of universities are thinking about how do we better connect and
31:58
Paul: coordinate across all of these different relationships with communities and
32:02
Paul: institutions outside the university.
32:04
Paul: This is something you've thought very deeply about, studied in your dissertation.
32:08
Paul: So we don't have a ton of time, but I'm really curious,
32:15
Paul: as you've kind of moved up the ladder in higher ed,
32:20
Paul: and you've been charged with institutionalizing and structurally sustaining
32:24
Paul: this work across an entire university,
32:26
Paul: what are one or two of the biggest lessons that you've learned about what it
32:31
Paul: takes for a university to take these commitments on as a whole in a coordinated and connected way?
32:38
Jamie: So I know we don't have a lot of time, but I'm so excited that we got here, right?
32:45
Jamie: So I am going to pull on the dissertation framework, right?
32:49
Jamie: And I absolutely love that I was able to, again, learn from some amazing community
32:57
Jamie: engagement professionals in thinking about full participation, right?
33:02
Jamie: And so in looking at that work around full participation, I sort of pull this
33:10
Jamie: concept of organizational architecture into the frame, right?
33:14
Jamie: And so organizational architecture, it necessarily means that organizations
33:20
Jamie: make intentional choices, right, about how it is they structure themselves and resource themselves.
33:28
Jamie: And so if you think across infrastructure, right, design and conditions and
33:37
Jamie: invest in all three areas.
33:40
Jamie: I have directly seen and also studied, right, that you're able to build a really
33:48
Jamie: resilient core for partnership work, for community engagement.
33:53
Jamie: And that means that, yes, you need on the infrastructure point,
33:58
Jamie: right, like those easy things. How are we capturing what we're doing and how?
34:04
Jamie: How are we able to find one another and learn more about one another?
34:08
Jamie: How do we find who else might be intersecting with a community that's important to me?
34:15
Jamie: And the design is just being willing to share, right?
34:18
Jamie: What pieces of roles are most helpful together, right?
34:24
Jamie: What does it mean to actually scope out a position that can be helpful to the
34:33
Jamie: larger ecosystem of partnership work at the university?
34:36
Jamie: And, of course, the conditions, right, the cultural stewardship of, "You might
34:43
Jamie: have done it differently somewhere else.
34:45
Jamie: Here, I would love to tell you about how it is we do things here."
34:50
Jamie: Celebrating your colleagues' wins, right?
34:55
Jamie: Creating communities internally that are able to support one another and have this sense of,
35:02
Jamie: "Yeah, I have a group of folks that I turn to as my community across disciplines,
35:10
Jamie: across even positional identity, right?
35:14
Jamie: And together, we are doing this great work for the University of Pittsburgh."
35:20
Paul: We've talked about a lot, and I want to make sure people can follow up on these
35:24
Paul: ideas if they're interested.
35:25
Paul: Are there any particular places online, particular things people could read
35:29
Paul: or listen to if they wanted to learn a bit more about what you've been talking about?
35:34
Jamie: Yeah, so our team's website has a peek into our community engagement framework at Pitt.
35:42
Jamie: So our website is just community.pitt.edu.
35:47
Jamie: I am on LinkedIn. I don't do as good of a job as I would have hoped in posting
35:55
Jamie: regularly about what's sort of hot right now.
35:58
Jamie: But I'm very open to emails, to chats.
36:04
Jamie: If folks want to follow up. And then, of course, you found where I really took
36:09
Jamie: the deep dive in my dissertation.
36:11
Jamie: So I've been thinking about sort of what's next on that front as well to keep
36:18
Jamie: that work top of mind. So hopefully more to come.
36:21
Paul: We mentioned there is a dissertation dish video of you sharing your framework online.
36:28
Jamie: Yes, yes. Yes, it was awesome to do the dissertation dish.
36:33
Jamie: And so folks can find that.
36:36
Jamie: I'm actually not sure which website.
36:39
Paul: I'll put it all in the episode notes.
36:42
Jamie: Okay, perfect.
36:44
Paul: Thank you so much for joining me, Jamie. It was just a pleasure to talk to you.
36:48
Jamie: Thank you, Paul. I really appreciate it. This was fun.
36:54
Paul: Thank you all for joining me today. Partnership Work is an independent podcast.
36:59
Paul: It's produced with the support of the wonderful organization Urban Media Arts
37:03
Paul: here in my hometown of Malden, Massachusetts.
37:06
Paul: Check them out at urbanmediaarts.org. I'll see you next time. Take care.