On August 28, 2022, Professor Mike Hendricks received 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 designed the course to allow his students to discover and research specific topics within the community development field that provide 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.
Hendricks will use the grant money to purchase gift cards that he will give to the guest speakers as an appreciation for their participation in the course. Hendricks will buy the gift cards from Crossroads, a local establishment in Bloomington that sells unique and handmade products from countries around the world and the U.S. and focuses on fair trade by “provid[ing] equal opportunity, living wages and sustainable living for artisans, their families, and communities in poverty around the world.”
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 learned about that week. For example, during the week on “Housing, Revitalization, and Gentrification in Development,” Bruce Clark (board president) agreed to discuss his 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, during the week on “Community Development in Urban vs. Rural Areas,” second-year student Melody Rosche will join the class to discuss their work at the Illinois Farm Bureau and their advice for the 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.
