TU faculty, staff highlight the power of place at national conference 

Towson University, Northeastern University and University of Louisville have all built, implemented and evolved fellows programs to support faculty in their growth as leaders of community engagement and partnership work. Each of these programs provide professional development opportunities to support and align community engagement work across campus. This presentation highlights each of these programs and common threads throughout and explore ways to expand faculty professional development and community engagement support at your institution.  

The United States faces a significant shortage of skilled trades labor, leading to increased risks, higher costs, longer lead times and a lack of essential knowledge for maintaining higher education campuses. The Skilled Trades Education Pathway (STEP) aims to address this gap through structured programs in HVAC, electrical, plumbing, carpentry and maintenance. STEP includes three programs: Professional Development Partnership for high school students, Trades Development Program for post-high school adults and Internal Development Pipeline for current employees. These initiatives provide comprehensive training, hands-on experience, and career advancement opportunities, ensuring a well-equipped workforce for the future.  

In recent years, students’ access to different types of gambling has expanded rapidly, especially given the growing prevalence of online sports betting. Despite this increase, gambling often goes unaddressed on college campuses. This session describes the impact of this growing issue on student well-being and discuss practical strategies for implementing prevention and treatment as well as securing funding for these campus efforts.  

The G.I.V.E. project at Towson University connects undergraduate and graduate student coursework to the writing needs of grassroots, Black-led nonprofits in the Baltimore region. G.I.V.E. students research, write, submit and track grants for partner organizations, striving to create a philanthropic standard that allows for every community to thrive in the competitive philanthropic economy. To date, G.I.V.E. students have raised over $1 million for partner organizations and have created content for countless websites, reports and newsletters. Session attendees learn how G.I.V.E. has impacted the Baltimore community and how it was made achievable through the leveraging and redistribution of local resources.  

With a loss of funding impacting nonprofit organizations across the U.S., it is important to find ways that universities can support their external partners and the continuation of their work. This session presents how Towson University has leveraged their resources to bring together constituents from all backgrounds to address barriers and advance the work of Greater Baltimore nonprofits—with an emphasis on Black and minority-led organizations. Outlining how stakeholders are integrated into the development and execution of the summit, how external partners are compensated for their time, what sessions and takeaways are provided, and how feedback is gathered and utilized. 

Capturing and tracking community engagement and partnership work between universities and communities is an ongoing process. At Towson University, we created the BTU Database using Salesforce to track how faculty, staff, and students are collaborating with the external community. The Database has evolved over the years and has become a crucial part of our work, helping us to identify possible areas of collaboration, understanding feedback from partners, and demonstrating TU’s impact across the region. Roundtable attendees will learn about best practices for collecting data, keeping the information up to date, and how to replicate this work at their institutions.  

As digital storytelling shapes public discourse, journalism and public relations faculty play a key role in fostering community-driven narratives through public scholarship and place branding. This roundtable highlights Baltimore-based projects — Maryland Curiosity Bureau (WYPR) and Stoop Storytelling — as models of engaged journalism and public relations. Exploring public scholarship and place-branding research, it examines how educators facilitate media collaborations that strengthen university-community partnerships and shape Baltimore’s narrative. The discussion emphasizes students as emerging professionals shaping public discourse. Attendees engage in conversations on public scholarship, media’s role in civic engagement, and storytelling’s impact on urban identity.  

When crafting a community-centered program, it is not uncommon for one leader to drive the program’s vision. Towson University’s Albert S. Cook Library has adopted a more collaborative approach. This panel consists of librarians who have contributed to community engagement initiatives in multiple ways. Panelists discuss creating robust internship experiences for local students, cultivating an interdisciplinary community of practice, advocating for open-access research publications, and measuring impact to solidify relationships. Attendees will be able to identify ways to collaborate with academic libraries to support community engagement and develop a distributed community-engagement model at their own institutions.  

Collegiate Recovery Programs support students in substance use recovery while they continue pursuing educational goals. Such programming aims to improve student achievement and wellbeing as well as collegiate retention. How can colleges and universities better support students navigating substance use recovery and facilitate improved recovery allyship across the institutional environment? In this session, presenters and attendees will share knowledge and experiences in an interactive, discussion-based format to further collective wisdom and growth in this area and cultivate community across diverse university environments.