Graduate School awarded AmeriCorps grant to develop nonprofit partner program

Graduate & Professional Studies

Graduate School awarded AmeriCorps grant to develop nonprofit partner program

The Marquette Graduate School has been awarded a $75,000 planning grant from AmeriCorps to develop the EXCEL Milwaukee Fellowship Program, which will place Marquette graduate students in local nonprofit organizations to create mutually beneficial relationships.

The Graduate School is embarking on a year-long planning process to develop the EXCEL Milwaukee Fellowship Program with the goal of earning a three-year program grant from AmeriCorps. A formal proposal for the three-year program grant will be submitted in the spring. Dr. Scott D'Urso, Maggie Nettesheim Hoffmann and Alisha Klapps Balistreri are serving as co-PIs on the planning grant.

In alignment with Marquette's strategic plan, Guided By Mission, Inspired To Change, and its theme of "Care for the World," this program would establish additional university and community partnerships, build capacity for nonprofit organizations in Milwaukee and provide research-informed support for nonprofit programs, outcomes and systems.

This initiative will complement the Trinity Fellows program by providing support for additional nonprofit partners.

The year-long development process includes three main steps:

1. The Graduate School will engage in a "Theory of Change" workshop with a consulting firm, Four Corners Global Consulting, to bring together university and community stakeholders. This workshop will establish important questions that will guide the program's design.
2. The Graduate School will host a series of community listening sessions that will define the scope of its intervention for the fellowship in collaboration with the nonprofit partners. The Graduate School aims to build an ethical bi-directional research endeavor co-designed with its community partners.
3. The Graduate School will create a community advisory board with members drawn from the nonprofit sector. This group will meet once per month during the planning grant year and will use these gatherings to listen and engage with nonprofit leaders. The leaders' needs and goals will be incorporated into the program's design and evaluation metrics.

The grant planning team includes:

• Dr. Scott D'Urso, acting vice provost for graduate and professional studies and dean of the Graduate School
• Maggie Nettesheim Hoffmann, Director of the Career Diversity Initiative and director of the planning grant team
• Alisha Klapps Balistreri, Assistant Director of the Trinity Fellows Program
• Lizzie Kerrick, Community Engagement Coordinator for the EXCEL Milwaukee project and admission systems specialist in the Graduate School
• Karolyn Burns, Ph.D. student in philosophy and Career Diversity Assistant in the Graduate School

The proposal to build the EXCEL Milwaukee Fellowship is based on developing support for the Graduate School's community partners and graduate students through "research practice partnership" models. These models have a demonstrated success of building "long-term mutually beneficial collaborations that promote the production and use of research," and when utilized across more than one institution "have garnered support as a promising solution to improving programs, outcomes, services, policies and systems."

The Graduate School is embarking on this endeavor during a transitional period for graduate education. According to recent studies, nearly 50% of students entering doctoral programs in the United States will not enter faculty careers after graduating, and many more will leave their program before completing a degree. As a result, higher education professionals are developing graduate education reforms to meet the evolving career needs of students.

The Graduate School has addressed this changing landscape with its career diversity initiative - which encourages students to explore a wide variety of paths grounded in their values and interests - and with an added emphasis on graduate training.

The program would also build strong relationships between students and local organizations, increasing the likelihood of students staying in our communities after graduation.

Related Articles