The University's Community-Based Learning Initiative (CBLI) was recently awarded a three-year $1.3 million grant to expand its service offerings and share its expertise with other campuses hoping to start similar programs.
The grant was given by Learn and Serve America, a program of the Corporation for National and Community Service. Princeton was one of 27 institutions of higher education and associations to receive grants, which totaled more than $9.1 million.
CBLI allows students to pursue research requested by community partners, such as hospitals and advocacy groups. Previous projects have included studies on gun control technology, the safety of power plants, health problems like obesity, and the history of the black community in Princeton.
CBLI assistant director Trisha Thorme said she hopes the grant will expand CBLI both internally and externally, creating more courses centered completely on community-based research. Currently 12 to 15 courses each semester include an option for students to integrate CBLI projects, but it is not required that every student taking the course complete a project.
In sociology professor Patricia Fernandez-Kelly's CBLI course this semester on the evolution of modern cities, students work with prison inmates to produce an educational magazine called "Inside Out."
"CBLI is not just about volunteering; it's about conducting research. It gives students a very different perspective," Fernandez-Kelly said.
Irit Rasooly '07, an anthropology major, participated in a CBLI-based writing seminar her freshman year before taking professor Joao Biehl's Medical Anthropology CBLI course her sophomore year.
"You realize the people on the ground have something important to say, and you build a relationship with them," said Rasooly, who is writing her senior thesis in conjunction with CBLI and will be receiving money by the University to complete field work.
She added, "It's good to break the barrier between school and the rest of the world."
The grant will also fund the National Community-Based Networking Initiative, through which Princeton will support the development of similar CBLI programs in 20 colleges across the country, including Duke, Rice, Washington and Lee, Notre Dame and Yale.
Princeton plans to create a template to help other universities develop their own CBLI programs since "at least once a month a school calls us for advice," Thorme said.
The University has "one of the strongest community-based research programs in the country," Vice President of the local Bonner Foundation Robert Hackett said.
People find it compelling, he added, when Princeton students who are stereotyped as living in an "ivory tower" do good deeds at the local level.
This is the first time Princeton has applied for a full grant.
The University received startup grants in 1997 and a follow-up in 2000. Only one in 10 applications for full funding was approved this year, Thorme said.
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