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The Community
Pulling Together
Service learning allows us to engage the community and enhance our students’ educational experience. Here, one of our students works with students at Leggett Elementary School.

In 2006-07, more than 1,000 students and 36 faculty and staff members served 2,100 University Park residents through service learning projects made possible by a Community Outreach Partnership Center grant.

Alliance
UPA Investments to Date In 2004, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced a three-year, $400,000 grant – the maximum permitted by the department – for the creation of a Community Outreach Partnership Center to help increase housing and revitalize neighborhoods within the University Park area. The University’s work with UPA and other community partners earned it a place on the inaugural President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll in 2006, and honors at the 22nd annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Celebration led by Ohio Governor Ted Strickland in 2007. Our shared vision of transformation, combined with active and decisive collaboration, is creating a new future for Akron.
Companies and foundations, like taxpayers, tend to vote with their wallets. And recent “votes” have moved the University Park Alliance (UPA) – a multipartner initiative to revitalize a 40-block area surrounding campus and integrating downtown – from the vision stage into implementation.

CONSIDER:

• On Oct. 19, 2006, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation announced a $10 million grant to further support the University Park Alliance. The foundation helped establish the alliance in 2000 with a $200,000 planning grant, and provided an additional $2.5 million grant in 2001. The foundation’s latest grant to the UPA is the largest, single grant ever awarded by the Knight Foundation.

• In February 2007, the Akron City Council approved the sale of five-acres on East Market Street to developers to build a long-term, acute-care center for a partnership between Akron General Medical Center and Summa Health System. The same developer is converting the adjacent historic Charles Mayer building into office space for Summa Health System.

The two projects represent a combined investment of $30 million, and will bring about 400 jobs into the University Park area. They also signal advancement of the city’s “Biomedical Corridor” project to unify Akron’s healthcare assets into a single planning district. UA’s biomedical materials research capability is viewed as another asset that will attract more partners to the corridor.
Strong civic and cultural institutions are leading the way
The senior partners of the University Park Alliance include, from left: Dr. Luis M. Proenza, president, The University of Akron; Thomas Strauss, chief executive officer, Summa Health System; Hon. Don Plusquellic, mayor, city of Akron; Ken Stapleton, UPA executive director, The University of Akron; Vivian Celeste Neal, program director, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.