Teaching Asset Mapping through Community-Engaged Projects

Join us for a free workshop with Prof. Andrew Nurkin

Thursday, October 30, 1:30 - 3:00 p.m.
Event location: Brodhead 067
[Registration link]

Faculty, staff, students, and community members are welcome!

When Professor Andrew Nurkin talks about asset mapping, he’s not just describing a teaching tool—he’s inviting us into a new way of seeing communities. “The mind shift,” he explains, “is moving from viewing communities as places of need or lack to places of abundance and assets—assets that may be improperly connected, but that could be connected in new ways to create greater thriving in the future.”

This fall, Nurkin, Hart Associate Professor of the Practice and Director of the Hart Leadership Program, will lead a workshop on how faculty can integrate asset mapping into their own teaching, advising, and research. The October 30 session, hosted by Duke Service-Learning, is open to faculty, staff, students, and community members.

From Problems to Possibilities

Asset mapping is part of the broader discipline of asset-based community development, which begins with the conviction that every community has resources, strengths, and forms of knowledge to contribute. Nurkin introduces his students to six categories of assets: individuals, associations, institutions, local businesses and exchanges, physical environment, and culture and history. Instead of asking “What’s missing here?” students learn to ask “What’s already here, and how can it be connected differently?” For Nurkin, this shift is crucial to training future leaders. 

"Leadership is not about how do I come in and fix it for you," he says. "It's about how might I collaborate with, be with, partner with, walk alongside communities that are working to reorganize their assets so that they can address their own challenges."

Learning Through Crisis: How Students Mapped Musical Assets After Hurricane Helene

This approach is central to many of the courses Nurkin teaches at the Sanford School of Public Policy, including service-learning courses such as Developing Leadership for a Better World (PUBPOL 298) and Arts Policy, Leadership, and Engagement (PUBPOL 213) where students collaborate with partners ranging from Durham nonprofits to Americans for the Arts.

After Hurricane Helene devastated western North Carolina, one student team partnered with the North Carolina Music Office to document musical assets across rural communities. Their task was to capture the region’s musical heritage — from front-porch jam sessions to small recording studios — and show how it had been impacted by the storm. As Nurkin explained, “If the front porch is gone, there’s no place to get together and make music. Those are the places where community is built, and we need to understand that.”

Projects like this illustrate the power of mapping to capture both tangible and intangible resources, helping communities see not only what they have but how those assets are connected.

What Participants Can Expect 

The workshop on October 30 will introduce participants to the fundamentals of asset mapping and its applications in community-engaged teaching. Attendees will see concrete examples of student work, including the Western North Carolina music mapping project, and will be invited to brainstorm how asset mapping might apply in their own fields.

Nurkin promises that the session won’t just be theoretical. “Faculty will leave with an understanding of asset mapping as a skill—and some practical ideas for assignments or lessons they can adapt right away.”

Just as importantly, he frames asset mapping as a form of pedagogy. “I also view my classrooms as collections of assets,” he explains. “My job is to draw them out and connect them in interesting ways.”

That philosophy extends to service-learning courses across Duke: by treating Durham itself as a map of assets, faculty and students can reimagine the university’s relationship with its home community.

That spirit of possibility is what participants can expect to carry forward from this session. Whether you teach policy, science, humanities, or professional practice, asset mapping can spark conversations, surface community knowledge, and create collaborative ways to connect resources and relationships.