Moving from Access to Success- an Afternoon Student Conference

Wednesday, March 28, 2012
3:00 – 5 p.m.
Saxe & Banx Rooms, Worcester Public Library
3 Salem Square, Worcester, MA

To view the Save the Date flyer, click here.
Check back for registration information soon!

Transform the path from access to success.

•  Meet students with a passion for Higher Education Access!
•  Hear from graduates of college access programs who are now providing access services, as well as from experts in the field!
•  Gain skills and tools to:
  • Work effectively with middle and high school youth around access;
  •  Help access program graduates succeed in college; and
  • Transform your passion for service into a successful career.

Credit for the majority of this article goes to “Civic Engagement: Public Service, Personal Responsibility” from Rutgers University School of Public Affairs and Administration.

Maria sits in the waiting room of the WATCH Housing Advocacy Clinic, her energetic toddler sitting restlessly on her lap. It’s frigid for early November and freezing rain is pouring down the exterior of the windows in torrents. Maria didn’t want to venture out into this weather tonight, but she feels she had no other choice; conditions are worsening in her apartment and the cold weather is coming. She’s had no heat for over two weeks, the roaches infesting her apartment scamper away whenever she turns on a light, the lock on her front door is broken, and lately the landlord has been entering unannounced to “check on things.”

She has complained and objected to him about all of these issues repeatedly but is afraid to push too hard; she’s undocumented and fearful of the consequences. She’s already struggling to pay rent, and is at the end of her rope — overwhelmed but has heard from friends that the Advocacy Clinic might be able to help.

Maria is an all-too-typical client of the WATCH Housing Advocacy Clinic, a free drop-in service in a storefront along the busy downtown of Waltham, MA. The Advocacy Clinic assists clients with fair and safe housing issues, including addressing lead, asbestos and other environmental exposure risks often present in low-income housing, and preventing evictions and homelessness. A wide variety of clients seek help at the clinic; advocates assist single mothers and fathers, teenagers, the elderly, the mentally and physically disabled.

The Housing Advocacy Clinic also often provides the first critical point of contact for many in the low-income, often immigrant community for referral to other needed services such as food and fuel assistance, medical care, domestic abuse prevention and job training. In addition, the clinic serves as a link for clients to become involved with WATCH’s advocacy and organizing efforts for affordable housing, and connect them to weatherization programs, English and financial literacy classes, and free vouchers for the local community farms organic outreach market.

The clinic began in 2007 with Laura Goldin’s Brandeis University undergraduate Environmental Law class as a novel partnership with WATCH, the local affordable housing and community development organization, in collaboration with the Boston College Law School Legal Assistance Bureau. The goal was to meet a real community need for tenant advocacy by leveraging the learning and energy of college students. The clinic has operated continuously since that time, with 250+ students assisting at least twice that number of individuals and families in the local area.

The “staff”: trained students and student leaders from Goldin’s further community-engaged learning classes, along with assistance from the undergraduate Martin Luther King Scholars and Friends club and others who assist as translators for the many Hispanic, Haitian-Creole, and other non-English speakers.

Dr. Goldin is committed to this type of teaching because, “This is how I think students can learn in perhaps one of the best ways possible: tackling real-word, complex, multidisciplinary issues directly. They also can contribute significantly as they learn, building relationships and working together with the individuals and communities affected. This is the kind of learning that affects them deeply, requires development of understanding and skills to meet the real challenges, and remains with them as they continue to learn, graduate, pursue careers, and participate in their own communities as caring citizens.”

She is personally inspired “…to see students benefit from what I hope will be a profoundly meaningful and transformative experience, and overjoyed as they go on to contribute in their own right. If designed properly, it is also a wonderfully effective way to help local organizations meet identified, sometimes critical, needs of the community by leveraging the talents, creativity, and energy of students.”

Each semester and summer, two or three experienced student leaders serve as directed interns to supervise, organize, train, and direct the clinic’s day-to-day operation. These leaders are key to the Advocacy Clinic’s successful and sustaining operation. Some have initiated significant improvements and additions, including creating and raising money for an emergency fund to provide small amounts of financial aid to clients at imminent risk of homelessness or other dire needs. Other students have helped to target issues of concern brought to light by the clinic, including patterns of discrimination in rentals and multifamily buildings with lead contamination. The Boston College Legal Assistance Bureau has been an essential partner for referral of cases requiring legal assistance beyond the Clinic’s purview.

The Advocacy Clinic has become a bustling place in serving community needs in its 41Ž2 years of operation. On any night it’s not uncommon for both narrow Clinic rooms to be overflowing into even narrower hallways with a procession of 6-8 families. This need is no surprise; the densely-populated South Side of Waltham bordered by Brandeis and WATCH is home to more than half the city’s population and the majority of the city’s low-income immigrant families. According to the 2000 Census, nearly a third of those earn less than $25,000 per year (most who come to the clinic earn far less) and nearly 23% of South Side adults do not have high school diplomas. Twenty-five percent of South Side households with children are headed by single women, who historically face the highest levels of poverty.

The free clinic offers to that population and others a welcoming environment with caring student staff eager to educate and assist. To the students, it offers an opportunity to apply their learning and develop hands-on skills in housing law and legal research, interviewing and counseling, advocacy and more. It also enables them to become deeply engaged in the array of environmental and social justice issues faced by the richly diverse community surrounding the campus, and challenge themselves, often beyond their usual “comfort zone” to learn and grow as individuals.

Maria walks out of the Advocacy Clinic office after her hour-long visit with the students, knowing much more and feeling hopeful. She has learned that she has real rights as a tenant despite her lack of documentation, and avenues for immediate assistance to fix the critical problems in her apartment. She also has begun the application process for food stamps to ease her strained budget, connected with the utility company to restore the heat at reduced rates, applied for English classes, and learned about the many other resources available to her in the area. Most importantly perhaps, she has learned that she can solve many of her problems by asserting her rights, and that she herself can play an active role in joining with others to create a more just and empowered community.

For faculty committed to civic and community engagement, there are two major national awards: The Thomas Ehrlich Civically Engaged Faculty Award from Campus Compact, and the Ernest A. Lynton Award for the Scholarship of Engagement, from the New England Resource Center for Higher Education (NERCHE). Both awards value community collaboration as well as institutional impact and honor engaged scholarly work across the faculty roles of teaching, research, and service.