Skip to main content

MCC Daily Tribune Archive

MCC Students Learn by Helping City


The Democrat and Chronicle carried a Speaking Out piece by Associate Professor Paula Fahy in our Human Services Department that addresses the impact MCC students are and will make in the city of Rochester - as the culture of human services evolves into a Community Development Model. Below please find the essay; in Friday's paper you also will find her essay accompanied by a lovely headshot taken recently by Ray Treat. 

MCC students learn by helping city

By Paula Fahy

(June 9, 2006) — As Rochester leaders look toward creating a new vision for the city, Monroe Community College students on the Damon City Campus are already preparing to meet the challenges ahead and implement the newest model for community transformation. Students in the Department of Human Services are learning new methods for addressing social problems and mobilizing community resources to initiate and sustain positive community change.

The community development model emphasizes building on community resources and human capital. It is based on coordination among service providers and collaboration within the community. The goal is not to expand but to better coordinate and streamline services and, more importantly, to change the underlying conditions that erode self-sufficiency.

At MCC, human services faculty challenge students to identify resources and to see themselves and clients not as consumers but as contributors. Contributors take ownership and feel powerful. Mayor Robert Duffy's "Clean Sweep" initiative exemplifies the power of community development. A contractor could have been hired to clean our neighborhoods, but bringing in an outsider to fix our problems would have only reinforced the myth that we can't do it ourselves.

Introducing human service students to a community development model has yielded tangible benefits. Students have demonstrated that they are not only consumers of education but contributors. Over the past few years, they have hosted four conferences on community issues. These conferences provided students and professionals the opportunity to explore innovative and effective programs and to be exposed to best practices. Recently three MCC students have been elected to serve as student officers for the Mid-Atlantic Consortium for Human Services, part of a national organization that represents practitioners, educators and students.

One of the first assignments in my Human Service Systems seminar is to send students into their neighborhoods to take stock of community resources. Students come back with lists of treasures, including libraries, museums, parks, tree-lined streets, houses with big front porches, Nick Tahou Hots and the Rochester Public Market. Taking such an inventory does not compensate for problems, but it helps us as a community to acknowledge potential.

Currently the North East Area Development (NEAD) is mobilizing resources for a community development initiative focusing on housing, family and neighborhood stabilization. Plans are under way to involve MCC students in implementing this initiative. Students will have the opportunity not only to learn about community change, but to bring it to fruition.

Fahy is an associate professor of human services at Monroe Community College.

Dianne E McConkey
College and Community Relations
06/12/2006