I came across a nice piece in the Huffington Post: Rural Colleges Are The Best by Noah S. Leavitt, a dean at Whitman College. His post discusses the vibrant campus community rural campuses offer, but focuses on opportunities for engagement with the local community…in this case Walla Walla…He wrote about a recent campus screening of the documentary “Paper Tigers,” that focuses on efforts by a local high school to break the cycle of poverty and violence that prevent students from furthering their education. More about the film here: http://www.papertigersmovie.com
"Immediately prior to the screening, an important local foundation, The Sherwood Trust, convened a high-level meeting of several dozen local business, non-profit, and civic leaders to talk about collective impact approaches to improving outcomes for local youth. During that meeting, a Whitman faculty member and two of her student interns presented an upcoming theater production they are developing that engages audiences to deepen their understanding of poverty and therefore create a foundation for how to address that challenging social reality just beyond our campus. After the meeting, everyone – business leaders and students, social service directors and professors, funders and students affairs staff – together went off to see the film.
The screening was an extraordinary success, with every single one of the 1,300 seats in Whitman’s largest auditorium filled and another hundred or so people standing in the aisles. More importantly, we gained hundreds of new supporters for the trauma-informed approach to education depicted in the movie."
At any rate, an interesting piece, well worth reading.
Full post can be found here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/noah-s-leavitt/rural-colleges-are-the-be_b_8730272.html