When Father Shanley became president, he was eager to expand upon the College’s longstanding commitment to community outreach. The Providence After School Alliance (PASA), an initiative of Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline, offered another way for PC to help make a lasting, transformative impact within our city.
PASA is an initiative of The Education Partnership, a collaboration of business and education leaders committed to improving Rhode Island ’s K-12 public education system. The alliance received its initial funding from the Wallace Foundation; Providence is one of only two cities in the country to be a part of Wallace’s Learning in Communities initiative, whose goal is to help redesign local systems’ out-of-school learning opportunities. The Wallace Foundation and Bank of America awarded PASA five-year, $5 million and $1 million grants, respectively.
Seeking to expand and improve afterschool opportunities for the city’s middle school youth, PASA divided the city into five “neighborhood campuses” called AfterZones. AfterZones—which include public and private schools, recreation centers, libraries, and other non-profit institutions—use a holistic approach to provide quality after-school programming for adolescents.
The network of public and private partners in each AfterZone coordinates services and transportation, leverages resources, and combines skills to enrich existing activities and create new initiatives. The AfterZones’ ultimate goal is longterm, sustained quality programming to support students academically, socially, and emotionally, and to cultivate leadership skills in the city’s adolescents.
The College’s contributions
Providence College is the only college partner in the city’s North End AfterZone and has stepped up as a leader within the zone’s Coordinating Council. Administrators from the College’s Feinstein Institute for Public Service, Division of College Relations and Planning, and Balfour Center for Multicultural Affairs regularly attend planning meetings.
A PC representative served on the search committee that hired the North End AfterZone ’s full-time coordinator and the College is providing him with an on-campus office and computer support. In addition to hosting the zone’s council meetings, the College will sponsor the AfterZone’s special culminating events. PC also offers PASA its greatest resource—dedicated undergraduate volunteers who will devote their time and talents to enhance current after-school activities and develop new programs.
The College sees the chance for middle-school youth to meet PC students and visit the campus as a potentially eye-opening experience. These inner-city middleschoolers could see themselves as future college students—a prospect they may have never considered otherwise.
Providence partners: the College, the city, and the state
In addition to the PASA program, Providence College has partnered with the City of Providence to enhance the landscape of several city neighborhoods, including the Elmhurst neighborhood adjacent to the College. PC co-funded with the city significant safety improvements and beautification efforts on Huxley Avenue between Admiral and Eaton streets, including road resurfacing, installation of new crosswalks, signage, signal lights, curbing, sidewalks, and landscaping.
The College committed $75,000 to the city to help fund this approximately $400,000 project, which also included new sidewalks on nearby River Avenue . This fall, incoming freshmen participated in the College’s 16th annual Urban Action community service program, working with the city’s Parks Department at six sites throughout Providence in one of the program’s most ambitious and far-reaching projects to date. Students tended to city-planted trees, restored parks, renovated trails, painted guardrails and fences, and performed general clean-up and street-side landscaping. In
addition, Urban Action volunteers painted rooms at Sophia Academy , a private, non-denominational middle school for girls from low-income Providence families.
A few miles away downtown, PC has been working with the state and the R.I. Convention Center Authority (RICCA), which purchased the Dunkin’ Donuts Center—the home court of Friars’ men’s basketball—from the city in December 2005, to position “the Dunk” as a national venue for intercollegiate sports. The extensive $62 million in renovations by the RICCA will provide Friars’ fans with a more entertaining experience, allow PC Athletics to raise additional monies from seat-licensing agreements, and enhance the reputation of the College and its athletics program for student recruitment purposes. “The extensive refurbishing of the Dunkin’ Donuts Center will enable Providence College once again to become a full economic development partner in bringing national attention to our city and state,” said Father Shanley.
And this partnership has already paid off. With support from the RICCA and the BIG EAST Conference, PC submitted a winning proposal to host the first and second rounds of the 2010 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament on March 18-21, 2010. Since the Dunkin’ Donuts Center first opened, PC has produced 10 winning proposals to bring NCAA Tournaments to Providence , generating economic revenue for the city. Father Shanley affirmed that PC “will be very aggressive long-term in developing a number of other proposals to bring national basketball and hockey tournaments to the state.”
President’s Council Mentoring Program
In another effort to reach out to the local community, the President's Council is piloting a mentoring program, matching PC students with students from San Miguel School , an inner-city, all-boys middle school in Providence . President’s Council members are “opening doors”—as a result of their professional affiliations—to provide monthly field trips (a TV studio, a children’s museum, a courtroom, etc.) for the San Miguel students and their PC mentors.
Beyond Rhode Island : Hurricane Katrina outreach
In the wake of last year’s Hurricane Katrina, Providence College reached out to offer tuition-free enrollment to Rhode Island students attending New Orleans-area schools devastated by the hurricane; seven Rhode Island residents enrolled. PC also invited out-of-state students at colleges and universities in the affected areas to attend the College for academic credit for the fall 2005 semester for normal tuition costs; two non-Rhode Island residents enrolled.