Four years ago, NCA announced its partnership with the
Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Campus Compact (CC), and the American
Association for Higher Education (AAHE) in their efforts to fight hate and
hate crimes through a project called Communicating Common Ground (CCG). In
2003, 15 new partnerships, along with the 54 inaugural partnerships, met at
the NCA national convention in Miami. NCA members are now invited to submit
proposals for the creation of CCG community partnerships that foster
tolerance and respect for diversity through communication instruction. These
partnerships should involve a communication program/department or a faculty
member and his or her course and a K-12 school, classroom, or community
group. The deadline for submitting proposals for 2004-05 partnerships to be
included in the fourth-year effort is August 15, 2004.Why get involved
in CCG?
These partnerships will place your
communication program in a leadership role in higher education’s efforts to
engage communities, to promote P-16 partnerships of post-secondary and K-12
education, and to increase the quality of undergraduate learning. Your
students will “learn by doing” and become more engaged in their communities.
Your CCG partnership, like others, could be promoted in the national and
local press, on your campuses, and at NCA, SPLC, and other national
meetings. Your partnership program will receive priority in future efforts
to expand extramural funding from foundations and public agencies concerned
with diversity, service learning, and P-16 initiatives in higher education.
Finally, when you become a CCG partnership, you automatically qualify for
seed funding from the SPLC.
What is involved in a CCG partnership?
The partnerships link communication faculty and
students with teachers and students in K-12, or with adults and youth from
community groups. The purpose of the partnership is to develop learning
activities designed to advance multicultural education, appreciation of
diversity, and the creation of communities in which hate, hate speech, and
hate crimes are not tolerated. Suggestions for the learning activities can
come from past years’ CCG participants, the Teaching Tolerance program
staff at SPLC, and NCA scholars working in related areas.
Partnership proposals may take various forms,
depending on the goals of the local groups and the content of the
communication course that is involved. You are urged to develop projects
that are creative, do-able, and adapted to your department, students, and
local contexts. In 2003-2004, CCG’s newest members are doing the following:
• Students in the basic communication course at
Shippensburg University, PA, will participate in an Affective Communication
Project in collaboration with elementary school students at the Grace B.
Luhrs University Elementary School.
• Communication students at Delta College will
work together with Bay City Central High school students to develop training
skills in order to lead workshops at a local career training center.
• University of Nebraska at Omaha students will
work with the Omaha Hate Crimes project to lead dialogues and workshops
designed to help area youth fight hate crimes.
• At John Carroll University in Cleveland, OH,
students enrolled in the interpersonal communication course will tutor
children and lead workshops focusing on issues of stereotyping, prejudice,
and fighting hate in an after-school program at the Goodrich-Gannett
Neighborhood Center.
• Johnson & Wales University students enrolled
in a communication skills course will do research on hate crimes and hate
speech and conduct a half-day workshop at the Sopia Academy in Providence,
RI.
Other project ideas are provided in the
activities reports of previous CCG participants on the NCA home page at
http://www.natcom.org/Instruction/CCG/reports.htm.
Timeline for Participation
Partnership proposals should be submitted and
postmarked not later than August 15, 2004. Selected partners will be
notified by September 15, 2004 in time to make plans to attend the NCA
convention events for CCG.
An orientation and training session will be
held at the NCA convention on Wednesday in Chicago. Partnerships will be
expected to begin work no later than January 2004. Partners will be invited
to report on project work at the 2004 NCA conference in Boston. If you need
any other information to get started, visit the NCA homepage at
www.natcom.org for more details. Or, contact the project director, Barbara
Clinton at bclinton@hcc.ctc.edu.
Submission Guidelines
If you plan to become a partner in
“Communicating Common Ground,” please submit a short proposal that contains
the following information, postmarked by August 15, 2004 to:
Leda
Cooks
Department of Communication
Machmer
Hall
University of MA, Amherst
Amherst, MA 01003
(413)
545 2895
leda@comm.umass.edu
1. A description of the
partnership’s goals and proposed activities, with some discussion of plans
to extend the effort and its impact, linking where possible to other school
or community efforts with similar goals.
2. Documentation of the
willingness of the relevant college/university/department members and
community partners involved to participate (a mutually signed letter will
suffice).
3. A commitment for
some representation of the partnership at an orientation and training
seminar to be held at the Miami NCA convention. (The inaugural partners
recommend that at least two individuals from the university/college level
attend. We also recommend that community partners attend, if possible.
However, at this point, funding for community members is not available.)
4. Indication of
willingness to participate in an assessment of the project.
Get involved
Join Communicating Common Ground to help: fight
hate, enhance your communication program’s national visibility, increase
student learning, demonstrate the value of communication knowledge to an
important social problem, and, become an engaged member of your community.