On August 12, 2022, Professor Mike Hendricks received $195 in funding from the Center for Civic Engagement’s Community Engagement Learning Grant to host 13 guest speakers this fall semester in his graduate seminar in community development. Hendricks will use the grant money to purchase t-shirts from the Stevenson Center for Community and Economic Development that he will give to the guest speakers as a gift for their participation in the course.
Hendricks designed the course to allow his students to discover and research specific topics within the community development field that provides them with an understanding of what the concept and practice of community development means to them (at this stage of their professional life). One way he does this is by inviting guest speakers to class.
At the beginning of each class session, students have the opportunity to interact with a guest speaker who works or has experience working on the topic of community development that they learn about that week. For example, during the eighth week of the semester, “Housing, Revitalization, and Gentrification in Development,” Kristen Buhrmann (board president) and Bruce Clark (board secretary) agreed to discuss their roles with the West Bloomington Revitalization Project. The students enrolled in this course are typically not from the Bloomington-Normal area. However, it benefits them to learn about their new communities from people working directly in them, while applying what they learned from their weekly readings.
In addition, it helps first-year Applied Community and Economic Development (ACED) students to learn from second-year ACED students (i.e., advice on the first year in the program and working in their placement organization). For instance, in week seven, “Community Development in Urban vs. Rural Areas,” second-year student Manda LaPorte will join the class virtually to discuss her work at the Housing Assistance Council, which will focus on rural housing, in Washington D.C. and her advice for first-year students in the program.
As part of their assignments, students must come to class prepared with questions for the guest speaker that connect what they learned from their weekly readings to the guest speaker’s community development experiences or responsibilities in their current position. Hendricks encourages the students to ask these questions to the invited speakers.
