Develop opportunities for all partners to learn, lead and serve collaboratively

The Fitz Center for Leadership in Community advances its mission through collaboration between community partners, students, staff, and faculty. It is important that all partners, internal and external, have the opportunity to engage with the Fitz Center and with one another in ways that are purposeful and in line with the University of Dayton’s Catholic Marianist traditions and identity along with the Fitz Center’s Practiced Principles. 

Student Strategies

• Develop a servant leadership curriculum for all Fitz Center programs to help students live the Center’s Practiced Principles.
• Ensure diverse leadership opportunities exist for students to engage in community based learning activities throughout their University of Dayton career—from orientation through graduation.
• Build partnerships with other University of Dayton programs to promote opportunities for curricular and co-curricular community-based engagement opportunities inclusive of all students and ensuring a diversity of perspectives for varied interests and commitment levels.
• Create community engagement scholarship opportunities focused on increasing diversity and support for students with demonstrated financial need.

Faculty and Staff Strategies

• Integrate community engaged learning opportunities into Common Academic Program (CAP) courses.
• Advocate and serve as a resource for Promotion and Tenure (P&T) policies that recognize community engaged scholarship, teaching and service.
• Intentionally work with and provide support to faculty and staff from departments, colleges and offices from across the University’s campus.
• Formalize opportunities for Fitz Center staff to support, teach and engage in the classroom with faculty.

Community Strategies

• Facilitate relationships between community and University partners to develop a shared agenda and ensure high quality engagement and continuity of engagement from semester to semester and year to year.
• Build on a solution-oriented framework to convene community and university partners regularly for shared and sustained dialogue focused on the identified needs in the Dayton community.
• Develop asset-based strategies to promote economic opportunities, housing stability, education, strong families, and environmental stewardship for all.
• Host a Community Fellow in the Fitz Center.
• Create a shared office space utilizing the Rubicon House for student and nonprofit organizations to collaborate, share resources, and co-create community-based solutions.

Strengthen and build reciprocal partnerships to cultivate student leaders and just communities

The Fitz Center for Leadership in Community was built on reciprocal partnerships and all faculty, staff, students, and community partners have engaged in work with and on behalf of the Fitz Center, since its founding, to ensure that Fitz Center values are upheld in all partnerships/collaborations. 

Student Strategies

• Develop a student advisory council to inform Fitz Center operations and build connections across Fitz Center programs.
• Create opportunities for students to transition into engaged Fitz Center alumni.
• Ensure that students provide resources, plans, and connections that are shared at the University to provide continuity in programs, services, and relationships that last beyond their time at the University of Dayton and interaction in the community.
• Educate students on ways to create change through their work and their experiences with community.

Faculty and Staff Strategies

• Facilitate relationship and program building across departments and disciplines to ensure continuous engagement with community partners.
• Collaborate with similarly focused centers and programs on the University of Dayton campus and in the Dayton community to reduce redundancy and address the community’s needs in the most effective manner.
• Create multi-disciplinary, multi-partner collaborations in partnership with community (learning communities, living-learning communities) focused on addressing an issue in partnership with one another.

Community Strategies

• Create a Fitz Center Advisory Board with community partner and campus-based partners that represent connections to all Fitz Center programs.
• Convene community and university partners to address identified community issues from multiple perspectives.
• Build practices that support relationships with the Fitz Center as an organization, not only with specific programs.
• Develop Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) with key partners to ensure reflective practices and sustainability through shared dialogue and written documentation.
• Develop regular communication processes to share and receive information from internal and external partners.

Demonstrate the impact of the Fitz Center's work through critical, reflective evaluation, research and scholarship

To ensure integrity in all work in which the Fitz Center for Leadership in Community engages in, it is critical to have an intentional process to evaluate and understand the impact and outcomes on all engaged in the work. This evaluation, and related research, should inform future practices and be shared through appropriate community and scholarly presentations and publications.

Student Strategies

• Identify and measure universal student learning outcomes across each Fitz Center program.
• Evaluate the immediate and long-term impact of Fitz Center programs on students and alumni.
• Encourage student engagement in community-based research activities.
• Create a student fellows’ program to allow students to develop further their work in community-based evaluation strategies.

Faculty and Staff Strategies

• Support faculty in their research and scholarship as it aligns with community-based learning and the scholarship of engagement.
• Provide a series of faculty development opportunities to meet faculty where they are on the community engaged teaching, service and research continuum (workshops, Faculty Learning Communities, one-on-one consultation, Faculty Fellows program).
• Support Fitz Center faculty and staff in teaching, research, and scholarship.
• Engage a faculty advisory group to advise on strategies for impactful community-engaged teaching and scholarship.

Community Strategies

• Ensure that Fitz Center programs are meeting the community’s needs, not causing harm, and contributing to solutions through regular, effective, efficient and consistent program evaluation and monitoring.
• Create a community partners fellows’ program to allow community partners to further develop their work in community-based evaluation Strategies.
• As appropriate, and when financially supported, provide consultative and evaluation services for community organizations.

Ensure sustainability and continued success for the Fitz Center through the promotion of services and stewardship of resources

To build on its history and ensure future success, the Fitz Center for Leadership in Community must focus on helping all current and future stakeholders understand the full scope and impact of its programs. 

Strategy 1

Ensure alignment of all practices and programs with Fitz Center Mission, Vision, and Practiced Principles.

Activities

• Review all current Fitz Center programs to ensure alignment.
• Evaluate all Fitz Center programs and similar programs on the campus, on neighboring campuses and in the community. Identify and articulate what makes the Fitz Center programs unique. In the case of similarity, consider opportunities for partnership, collaboration and dissolution.
• Pursue spacing relocation options that would allow all Fitz Center programs and staff to be in one location on the university campus and optimize opportunities for collaboration with other offices.
• Provide and support opportunities for life-long learning practices for all Fitz Center staff members to ensure they can fully execute the Fitz Center mission and goals outlined in this plan.

Strategy 2

Maintain a sustainable and diverse revenue model to maintain and grow Fitz Center programs and resources.

Activities

• Create and implement an advancement plan to engage new and existing donors in supporting the Fitz Center.
• Explore opportunities for federal, state and local grants to support and build programs that align with the Fitz Center mission.
• Develop a fee for service infrastructure to offset costs related to outreach programs including RiverMobile and evaluation services.
• Sustain financial support from the University of Dayton and the College of Arts and Sciences.
• Position the Fitz Center to be a priority in the next University campaign.

Strategy 3

Develop marketing and communications plans to ensure consistent and strategic messaging about the Fitz Center.

Activities

• Align Fitz Center marketing and communications activities with College and University marketing initiatives.
• Build an internal marketing campaign focused on increasing the awareness of the Fitz Center amongst students, faculty, staff and administrators.
• Create an external marketing campaign to increase awareness of Fitz Center programs amongst nonprofit, government and funding organizations in the Dayton community.
• Integrate existing marketing and communication plans into future Fitz Center marketing where appropriate.
• Further develop opportunities for students to lead marketing efforts for the Fitz Center and its programs.

Support and lead community engaged learning and scholarship initiatives of the University’s strategic vision

Strategy 1

Advocate for greater sustainability and stewardship as a riverfront campus.

Action Step: Determine the best institutional home for the Rivers Institute/RiverMobile at UD and establish a formal partnership with the Hanley Sustainability Institute. 

Strategy 2

Develop, in partnership with the University’s strategic vision, a neighborhood centered resource for entrepreneurship and innovation through community engaged learning and scholarship.

Action Step: Facilitate a working group of faculty, student, staff, and community partner to (add from charge) 

Strategy 3

Increase University of Dayton in national leadership designations for community engaged learning and scholarship, anchor institutions, and community-centric leadership.

Action Step: Ensure UD fulfills next steps for the Carnegie Classification process in community engagement.