Siena’s Center for Academic Community Engagement (ACE) has long had a strong working partnership with the United Way of the Greater Capital Region.
To further cement that relationship, Siena President Chuck Seifert, Ph.D. and the ACE team visited the United Way’s Blake Annex in downtown Albany on July 10 to explore the community co-working space and sketch out future collaborations.
Peter Gannon, president and CEO, and assistant Allison Clark ’16 gave the guests a tour of the 25,000-square foot office at 1 Steuben Place, which features conference rooms, classroom space, a podcast/vlogcast studio, a rooftop deck and more.
“Our team enjoyed the tour and the chance to connect with the United Way leadership,” said ACE Director Allison Schultz. “We look forward to brainstorming back on campus to generate some further ideas on how we can continue to partner with this transformative organization.”
“The Blake Annex is a United Way thing, but also a community thing, and it’s a great way for local businesses and nonprofits to interact,” said Gannon. “Everybody uses the space a little differently. The premise is flexibility, and the richness comes from the community.”
The United Way and Siena collaborate on a number of initiatives to support the Capital Region and give Saints the opportunity to enhance their classroom education, chief among them:
- The Summer Associates Program connects students with local nonprofits that support youth development, address food insecurity, and other anti-poverty initiatives. Previously funded through an AmeriCorps VISTA grant and the United Way, members in have the ability to participate in either direct, hands-on service or indirect, capacity-building service. Siena students worked in the program during the past three summers, and it is hoped that government funding can be restored for 2025.
- SPIn is an intensive summer program that connects faculty, students, and community organizations in multi-year participatory action research projects. SPIn starts with the assumption that our region’s most entrenched problems should be addressed through interdisciplinary and collective impact processes and that meaningful change requires a long-term approach. SPIn’s three-year model allows for projects to grow over time: the United Way has partnered with ACE since summer 2022 on the Summer Meals Collaborative, which brings together health and human service organizations, community partnerships, families, advocates, researchers, and local governments to leverage resources and to ensure kids stay active and don't go hungry when school is out.
- Partnerships with two Siena economics professors – Ashley Provencher, Ph.D. and Pelomi Dasgupta, Ph.D. – to combine the theoretical and the practical to help their students understand the nature of financial hardship. The United Way presented the action research framework Asset Limited Income Constrained, Employed (ALICE) to the classes and is engaged in providing curricular feedback.
