Community Engagement
A leader in community service learning, SF State's influence extends far beyond campus borders. In total, the University has more than 100 centers, institutes and special programs that address such varied issues as the health of San Franciscans, K-12 student skills, small business success and science skills for inner-city youth.
In 2009, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and President Robert Corrigan announced the creation of SF Promise, a public partnership between the city and county of San Francisco, the San Francisco Unified School District and SF State that guarantees admission to SF State for any qualified graduate of the San Francisco Unified School District.
A pioneer in learning through community, SF State offers more than 500 courses that combine academic study with community involvement through the Institute for Civic and Community Engagment (ICCE). SF State is one of 62 colleges and universities to receive the Carnegie Foundation’s Community Engagement, Outreach, and Partnerships classification, which recognizes SF State’s dedication to community service learning and to collaborative partnerships that are mutually beneficial to scholarship and to the community. SF State is one of about five universities nationwide, and the only CSU campus, to include community service learning credit on student transcripts. In 2007-08, about 36 percent of all SF State students took part in service learning classes, contributing 532,267 hours to the surrounding community. That contribution would add up to about $4 million if paid at the California minimum wage of $7.50 an hour.
In 2006, SF State was among the recipients of the first President's Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll Award, presented by the Corporation for National and Community Service, in recognition of the University's community service efforts.
In 2007, the University transformed an on-campus student apartment into a model for sustainable, eco-friendly living. Other sustainability accomplishments at SF State include energy conservation measures supported in part by $1,057,177 in grants and incentives from PG&E, composting of food waste from the student dining center, and a pilot recycling program with a 75-percent diversion rate.
The Village Dancers was founded in 2000 by dance professor Albirda Rose. It is a community-service learning program, designed to help low-income children work through their challenges and harness their personal power through movement, singing and dance performance. Students from SF State use dance as a medium to teach discipline, leadership, inter-cultural communication, and socialization skills to children ages 8-16.
The Willie L. Brown, Jr. Leadership Center at SF State educates and prepares students to meet the 21st century challenges of governing and managing cities, counties and regional governments and organizations. Through a variety of programs and activities such as internships, the Willie Brown center encourages and creates opportunities for students to meet and work with politicians and policymakers. It brings elected officials and other distinguished individuals to campus and provide forums where they can interact with students, faculty and the campus community.
MacArthur Fellowship ("genius award") recipient Ralf Hotchkiss has dedicated his career to the social integration of people with disabilities. The founder of Whirlwind Wheelchair International based at SF State, he has brought improved mobility to more than 15,000 people in Africa, Asia and Latin America by creating a global network of wheelchair inventors, designers, users and manufacturers to address the need for wheelchairs in the developing world.
The Confucius Institute at SF State aim to promote understanding of the Chinese language and culture through facilitating instruction. The institute works with the Colleges of Education, Humanities, and Extended Learning to provide professional Chinese language training to the community, well as training for teachers of Chinese as a foreign language, develops teaching materials and curriculum, and promotes educational exchange, research, and cooperation between the United States and the People's Republic of China. SF State iis the first Western United States home for the Confucius Institute.
Business Professor Gary Selnow founded a nonprofit organization WiRED (World Internet Resources for Education and Development) to bring computer hardware, software and training to areas worldwide ravaged by disease or conflict. In the war-torn Balkans, he has focused the technologies on teaching children about cooperation and enhancing their access to educational materials. In Nicaragua, Internet cafes provide free information access to healthcare workers and the poor -- and a source of revenue for helping land mine victims. And in Africa, nine new community health information centers provide life-saving information on HIV/AIDS, malaria and other illnesses.
SF State is tackling the No. 1 cause of California children's hospitalizations and missed school days with leadership of a statewide program to fight asthma. Community Health Works, the educational partnership between SF State and City College of San Francisco, has been tapped by The California Endowment to coordinate a $12 million, statewide program to fight asthma at its sources: where children live, learn and play. CHW coordinates a dozen community-based partnerships across the state that identify and reduce asthma triggers.
One of the few nonprofit research organizations in San Francisco to focus on key economic and community development issues, the Institute for Civic and Community Engagement at SF State addresses workforce preparation, urban environmental restoration, inner-city education and health. The Institute uses the research and analytic resources of the University to build collaborative projects with businesses, labor, city agencies and community organizations.
The Marian Wright Edelman Institute for the Study of Children, Youth, and Families, named in honor of the founder and president of the Children's Defense Fund, focuses on the needs of children and adolescents. The Institute drives collaborations between SF State and the community, fosters child-centered research and offers an interdisciplinary program on child and adolescent development that prepares students for work with children and families or in research and public policy. The Institute became the first university affiliate of the national Jumpstart organization in 1997. Today more than 50 college students are working with Jumpstart to build the literacy and learning skills of 3- to 5-year-olds in San Francisco's Bayview-Hunters Point, Mission, Marina, Richmond and South of Market neighborhoods.
SF State's Romberg Tiburon Center for Environmental Studies is headquarters for the 3,700-acre San Francisco Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, working to restore tidal marshes and protect estuarine habitat through research, monitoring and educational programs. Dedicated in 2003, the SF Bay NERR is the third such reserve in California and one of 26 nationwide.
Internationally trained health professionals gain a foothold in California's job market with help from the Welcome Back program, operated in partnership with City College of San Francisco. The nonprofit functions as a counseling, education and job placement service for immigrant health professionals, helping them navigate the state's licensing system and obtain the necessary credentials to work in the United States. Made possible through a $2 million grant from The California Endowment, Welcome Back also aims to increase the numbers and ethnic diversity of health professionals practicing in medically underserved areas. In 2008, the center was selected from a pool of more than 1,000 national applicants as a finalist for the prestigious Innovations in Government Award, which acknowledges creative approaches and solutions to problems in the public sector.
The SF State Institute on Sexuality, Inequality and Health conducted the first-ever study of physical and mental health outcomes of lesbian, gay and bisexual youth who disclose their sexual orientation to family members during adolescence. One of the first research studies to focus on the youths' families and their responses after the youths "come out," the three-year study uncovered ways that families can best support gay, lesbian and bisexual youths and help foster their resiliency.
SF ROCKS (Reaching Out to Communities and Kids with Science in San Francisco), an SF State-based project aimed at increasing the number of students of color who enter college as geosciences majors, helps San Francisco high school students learn about environmental hazards in their own neighborhood while at the same time piques their interest in the geosciences, among the least diverse of all disciplines. Thirteen Burton High sophomores in the program shared their research at the 2003 annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the first time the AGU invited high school students to present scientific posters to its more than 9,800 attending scientists from around the world.
The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in the College of Extended Learning offers courses, lectures, symposia and travel programs geared specifically toward enriching the lives of the Bay Area's older learners and tapping the students' experience and knowledge to help solve local and statewide problems.
California Poets in the Schools, the largest writers-in-schools program in the nation, began at SF State in 1964 as the Pegasus Project which arranged poetry readings in Bay Area classrooms. Now a statewide organization reaching 29 counties, California Poets in the Schools estimates it has introduced more than a half million K-12 students to the creative writing process.
Each year since 1952 SF State's Morrison Artists' Series presents a series of free recitals by prominent chamber music ensembles, which San Francisco Chronicle music critic Joshua Kosman describes as an "indispensable" and "invaluable" contribution to the local music scene
The SF State President's Medal honors men and women who have made long-lasting, widespread contributions to SF State and the city of San Francisco. Recipients include legendary jazz bassist Vernon Alley, service learning scholar Thomas Ehrlich, arts patron Jane Hohfeld Galante, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, philanthropist Richard Goldman and August Coppola, dean emeritus of the SF State College of Creative Arts.
