UConn Makes Impact in Stamford Community

The Stamford community has seen quite an impact from UConn students in recent years, particularly through the Stamford Public Education Foundation’s partnership with the University’s satellite campus. With the assistance of UConn’s Service-Learning program, an academic initiative that integrates course content with meaningful service identified by the community, students have had the opportunity to perform various community services in Stamford. Sue Rigano, the Executive Director of the Foundation, has worked with the UConn Stamford Campus for a few years, with numerous professors. “Our partnership with UConn has been incredibly strong,” explained Rigano, who has worked at the Foundation since 2009. One faculty member Rigano has worked with in past years is Monica Miller, who teaches Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS) courses at the Stamford campus. Dr. Miller and Rigano have worked together on their Service-Learning course, HDFS “Low-Income Families”, for two semesters now. Students in the undergraduate course last spring worked with the Foundation on two service initiatives. One service project had the students and UConn mentors work on cleaning up the local park, while the other service worked with the Foundation’s mentoring program. As Rigano explained, the mentoring program is built around four objectives: setting goals, academic advocacy, extracurricular activities, and college readiness. “These are kids that are traditionally at the low end of the achievement gap, so this is really about providing them with the resources and conversations to help make them be prepared for success when the graduate,” explained Rigano. According to Dr. Miller, the college mentors benefit just as much from the program as the middle school students do, showing the true impact of Service-Learning. “I think that it helps to kind of create humanistic and realistic interpretations of what we read in the book. So, I think that it helps to bring everything full circle, and really helps them to see the concepts and the theories and the terms in practice,” explained Dr. Miller. The second group of UConn students worked with the Foundation outside of the classroom, more specifically at the Mill River Park in town. Local middle school students and UConn students went to the park to clean up the river, putting down mulch, and cleaned the park apparatuses together for an afternoon. “They were amazing, they were just absolutely fantastic. And at the same time, they were learning about the environment,” said Rigano, “They really had a great time.” “The Mill River staff talked to the students about ecological systems and how they work,” said Dr. Miller, adding that this service project focused more on civic engagement and civic responsibility. “It’s really exciting,” said Rigano, regarding the past and future service projects planned with UConn, “We’re not just talking about it, we’re doing it. It brings a lot of value and credibility to the work that we are doing.”