Duke Service-Learning hosted its annual Context and Connections tour on October 7th. Context and Connections offers new Duke faculty and staff interested in deepening their own knowledge of and relationship to Durham’s communities an opportunity to explore connections with their teaching, research, and service.
Service Learning once again was honored to have Sam Miglarese (Director of the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership), Mayme Webb-Bledsoe (Neighborhood Coordinator with the DDNP), and Barbara Lau (Director of the Pauli Murray Project) to be tour guides based on their extensive and complementary knowledge of Durham. From them, participants heard many of Durham’s untold stories, as well as highlights of Duke’s past, present, and future involvement in the community.
The bus followed a route designed to provide a chance to slow down and learn about both the history and current profile of many Durham neighborhoods, and participants disembarked at North Carolina Central University and Lyon Park Community Center. At NCCU, participants heard about the history of the university and its evolving relationship with its neighbors, as well as how NCCU supports community outreach for students.
At Lyon Park, a former school transformed into a hub of neighborhood activity, participants learned about programs including tutoring and mentoring services, sports programs, coding for youth, a broad range of mature adult activities, and a clinic to meet the health needs of the community. Tour members found the Center an inspiration and good example of repurposing a facility to serve a neighborhood in meaningful ways.
The tour ended with an informal lunch with community leaders downtown. Nonprofit leaders, elected officials, municipal employees, activists, small business people, and educators joined the group for discussion about Durham’s assets and challenges, and the relationship between Duke and Durham.
Over the course of the tour, lunch, conversation and final reflection, participants had a chance to gain a deeper sense of what makes the Durham community tick. Some found places where their personal and scholarly interests fit in, and how they might begin to develop or strengthen partnerships, as reflected by the following comments.
“Thanks again for organizing such a great event,” said Matthew Johnson, research scientist at the Sanford School of Public Policy. “I learned an enormous amount and was inspired by the event to integrate community engagement into my academic and personal life. For how small the city of Durham is, I loved learning about the rich histories within each very local neighborhood.”
Lukas Brun, research analyst at the Duke Center on Globalization, Governance and Competitiveness was also inspired to imagine new research possibilities, observing, “Going on the bus tour underscored for me why engaged scholarship is so important. The neighborhoods we visited showed exciting progress on many fronts, but that unintended consequences have occurred as a result of Durham’s recent growth. In particular, longstanding residents have had to struggle with the burden of increased property taxes due to higher property values. As a researcher, I now want to investigate how other municipalities have addressed how long-term residents - who give the neighborhood its character and feel - can remain in neighborhoods without having to sell their property just to meet higher property tax payments… Better research can be part of the solution here, and the time spent on the tour helped illustrate once more how university researchers can contribute to the goal of an improved quality of life.”
Jules Odendahl-James, Director of Academic Engagement, Arts and Humanities and Lecturer in Theater Studies, was reminded how much there is to learn about Durham. “Thank you all for such an invigorating experience today. It is always good to remind myself of what I don’t know and what I want to continue to interrogate, even as I think I already know about places, spaces and communities. If this isn't a mandatory part of new faculty orientation, it SHOULD BE.”
“Context and Connections” is hosted by Duke Service-Learning with the support of Trinity College of Arts & Sciences, the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership, the Pauli Murray Project, Trinity College’s Forum for Scholars & Publics, Cook Center on Social Equity, and Duke Office of Civic Engagement.
