Imagine RIT
Exhibit Highlight
RIT Students Learn the Art of Being Good Neighbors
Community service learning through the College of Liberal Arts’ partnership with the NorthEast Neighborhood Alliance will be showcased at the Imagine RIT: Innovation and Creativity Festival May 3.
Past projects will be on display, including the RIT-NENA summer learning communities involving the Greater Rochester Urban Bounty, as well as on-going community research projects. The RIT-NENA exhibit will also highlight a project involving youth from the community called “Youth Guide to the Neighborhood.”
An important part of the eight-year-old partnership between RIT and NENA, is GRUB, a neighborhood revitalization initiative in northeast Rochester that includes the 2.69-acre farm known as The Vineyard and an agricultural educational center. GRUB plays a central role in the Summer Learning Community, a 10-week program that pairs students’ talents with the needs of the Upper Falls and Marketview Heights neighborhoods in northeast Rochester, and provides co-op experience and summer employment to RIT students.
“The biggest challenge is to try to coordinate this ever expanding project,” Ann Howard, NENA-RIT project director and professor of public policy/science, technology and society at RIT, told News and Events.
Community health was one of the main focuses of last year’s program. In response to community concerns regarding healthy eating and nutrition-related conditions such as obesity and diabetes, fourth-year nutrition major Stephanie Reigelsperger developed community-based material on nutrition education, food choices and preparation. Reigelsperger interviewed neighborhood residents and youth and documenting the community’s cultural mores about grocery shopping and food preparation, and access to fresh produce. Christine Kray, RIT associate professor of sociology and anthropology, helped guide the community-based research and data-collection efforts.
Under Kray’s guidance, Reigelsperger and other students who participated in the summer program, began compiling stories and recipes from community members for a second edition of the Greater Rochester Urban Bounty’s Garden of Delectable Dishes, first printed by members of PUB, an academic organization within RIT’s School of Print Media.
The NENA-RIT partnership initially began in 2000 with a three-year Learn and Serve America grant from the Corporation for National and Community Service. Since then, the collaboration has grown to include Summer Learning Communities, the student-produced quarterly newsletter Beyond the Classroom, the Student Leadership Corps and volunteer activities with the Greater Rochester Urban Bounty.