Sharon Meagher

Sharon Meagher is a philosopher of the city and an advocate for socially responsible higher education. Formerly Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at Widener University, she is now Academic Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty at Marymount Manhattan College.

1. What civically engaged project(s) or work do you do with students?

I am involved in a range of projects that include undergraduate and graduate students. For several years, I have been teaching a class on women and development in Latin America where we work with Xasasti Yolistli, an indigenous women’s economic cooperative in rural Puebla, Mexico. We hire members of the co-op to share their stories with the class about the work that they’ve been doing. It’s an important civic engagement class because it helps motivate students; they learn about the incredible community impacts that these women have achieved with very few resources.

In the last three years, I have also facilitated multiple projects in City of Chester, PA, where Widener University is located. Two of the biggest projects are “Boundaries and Bridges” and “Building a Biography of a Block.”

Boundaries and Bridges is a multi-faceted, creative placemaking project that uses arts and humanities methodologies and practices such as storytelling, performance, painting, and photography to give voice to people’s hopes and concerns about university-community partnerships. We have found that when people create things together, they learn to hear one another and eventually trust one another. Boundaries and Bridges funded a series of “catalyst workshops” to bring Widener faculty, students, and staff together with Chester community members to learn about creative placemaking as linked to particular art forms, offering workshops on food, theater, writing, dance, and DIY public space creation. We then provided seed money grants for collaborative projects involving Widener’s College of Arts & Sciences and community members that emerged or developed more fully as a result of the workshop. “Sowing Good Seeds,” one of the most successful multi-disciplinary projects, brought together urban farmers, a local nutritionist, artists, and humanities and environmental students and faculty to provide public programing on healthy eating. We also sponsored projects that brought the community together in other ways, fostering new modes of creativity and expression. These included “Theatrical Bridges,” a theater and film festival in which community members made films on the theme of “boundaries and bridges,” and community builds in which people come together to improve the community by building sidewalk planters, bike racks, etc. Chester Writer’s House, a community writing center where people can drop in for assistance with any type of writing problem and/or join community writing groups, is another significant Boundaries and Bridges project. Widener offers a class that teaches students how to mentor writing center clients; community members can become mentors free by auditing the course.

Building a Biography of a Block is a current project implemented in partnership with the Pennsylvania Humanities Council as part of their Chester Made initiative. Widener’s history and anthropology faculty have developed public history projects that empower community members to learn more about the history of Chester, with specific focus on a block that local artists are redeveloping. Students work with local community members to uncover answers to questions, revealing multiple facets of public history (material culture, civil rights, etc.).

 

2. What is your role? Why did you choose to become involved?

In the case of the indigenous women’s work in Mexico, I became involved as the Chair of the Department of Latin American Studies and Women’s Studies at the University of Scranton. We wanted to develop a course that integrated the two programs in a meaningful way. In addition, a critical issue had emerged with our students: Scranton’s women’s studies program has a stronger emphasis on philosophy and social justice than do many, but students were reporting anxiety at graduation that they were not prepared to put their ideals into action. For this reason, we wanted to develop a class that inspired students with concrete examples of feminist social change. Then a colleague and I were in Mexico and met an indigenous women’s group that had just started an eco-tourism center. I thought, “This is how we should do this class—as a community-based learning course situated at their center!” This made sense as a way of supporting this group’s important work (they have reported that our class’s one-week stay provides substantive support to the community for 4-6 months!), and as a way of addressing our students’ needs. And so we developed and ran the course. After I moved to Widener University, I co-taught the course with a faculty colleague who directs the Gender & Women’s Studies program and also teaches Spanish language and Latin American culture classes. Now another graduate course at Widener also runs a course at the site. And I worked with Widener faculty interested in doing similar work in Costa Rica, where Widener University as purchased a property to use as a living/learning facility. Widener partners with local coffee farmers who are committed to sustainability and are working to organize a local women’s cooperative that will roast coffee beans. My dream is to help facilitate a global South-South exchange where our colleagues in Mexico could come to Costa Rica to share learning about feminist economic cooperatives.

I developed the Chester city projects in my role as Widener’s Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences. Widener University is nationally recognized for civic engagement, but the professional schools were more heavily involved than was the College of Arts & Sciences. I was hired to help bring more Arts & Sciences faculty and students in civic engagement work. I believe that the arts and humanities are the great equalizers, not only because they supply the content of the values that we must bring to civically engaged work, but because “expertise” does not function in the same way that it does with the professional schools. There is much more mutual learning that can and does happen when community members and students work together on a creative work, a public history, or a community development project than when a nursing class offers free blood pressure checks. While the latter is important, community building ultimately happens when we create things together and benefit from each other’s knowledge and learning.

 

3. Give an example of a successful project completed by students you work with.

In Mexico, my students regularly work on an eco-development project such as building a wood-saving stove in a co-op member’s home. It is important that our students do not think that they are doing something that the community does not do for themselves—in fact, most service projects slow things down since the students are not skilled at the work and the community members are. But we bring financial resources that make a difference. And the students learn about a valuable technology that can be utilized elsewhere, so skills and knowledge transfer occurs. Students also learn about the ecology of the area and the ethical and political imperatives that call for use of more eco-friendly technologies and solutions.

In Chester, students created events that brought community members out with Widener students, faculty, and staff. One such event was a night of sustainable thinking that featured Widener faculty and Chester residents offering a series of talks about all facets of sustainability. Another event called “Author’s Corner” featured writers from Chester in a night of readings and spoken-word performances.

 

4. What do you think students gain from doing this civic engagement?

It’s not enough for us to teach our students the concepts and values of social change; we also need to teach them the lessons of motivation, grit, and determination so that they will persist with their work even when it is difficult. But it is always important that students leave a community understanding its assets rather than thinking that the community has a problem that the students solved. I want students to be accountable to the community and to ensure that if they are working to address community needs, that those needs were identified by the community. It is also important that students learn to respect the resilience, determination, expertise, and hard work of the communities in which they are working. Students regularly tell me that they learned more from the community than they gave, and while I hope and want the exchange to be mutual, I think it’s a good thing when students leave humbled in that way. My goal is to ensure that students learn that solidarity and partnership is important, and that they have much to learn from those who have been engaging in social change work—both in terms of outcomes and in terms of needed personal qualities. They learn those lessons by working and living with community members, whether in Chester or Mexico.

 

5. What does the civic engagement project offer to wider communities?

It depends on the project, but this is an important question that must always be answered in advance of implementation (although one can hope that there will be additional unintended good consequences!). I always talk with my community partners to ask them what they want and expect from the project. In the case of the economic cooperatives in Puebla, our presence helps them financially and they also have asked for our help in spreading the word about their projects, which we have taken care to do. In Chester, community partners are interested in getting students, faculty, and staff comfortable enough in the city that they spend time and money at cultural venues, restaurants, and shops. Some partners have wanted a formal affiliation with Widener so that they gain the credibility that they need to do their work in the community, and we sometimes have been able to provide that (e.g., by naming someone an “artist-in-residence”). It’s important to do whatever we can to leverage our privileged access to funders, other community partners, etc., to help strengthen communities. And if there is a particular service or need that we can provide, we do it—but we try to do it in a way that builds community capacity. For example, the course that teaches community members as well as Widener students to be writing members at the Chester Writer’s House lets community members keep the writing center open even during school holidays.

 

6. If someone wanted to do these projects at their own institution, what steps or resources would you recommend?

Community-based projects require trust and relationships with community partners, and building both takes time and attention. We need to attend to community needs. Volunteer supervision is often taxing for community-based organizations, so it is important that colleges and universities bring sufficient financial and/or personnel resources to ensure that community-based partners have the support they need to work well and meaningfully with our students.

Building relationships means that we also spend time in the community even when we do not need help with a university-based project. I attend important cultural and other community events, and I encourage my faculty to do the same. Consistency and visibility are important keys to building trust. Respecting community assets and recognizing their value is critical if we are to develop just relationships with community partners.

 

7. How does this work connect to your own civically engaged philosophy?

I believe that institutions of higher education, as relatively resource-rich non-profit organizations, have great social responsibility. As a philosopher of the city, I have been drawn to metropolitan institutions that play a key role as anchor institutions in the community. I take that role seriously—we are educators and employers but we also should engage the community for mutual benefit. Colleges and universities need their communities and it is important to support them in every way that we can, advancing the work of socially responsible higher education.

 

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