Editor's Note: This is the third in a series of features this month that highlights the contributions of Eastern Michigan University employees to United Way agencies. The University's United Way campaign runs through Oct. 29.
For nearly 14 years, Eastern Michigan University faculty and students have helped children at the Forest Knoll/Arbor Manor complex improve their reading and writing skills through the Ypsilanti Student Literacy Corps program.
The United Way funds the program, which is administered by EMU's Institute for Community and Regional Development (ICARD). ICARD is a public service unit of EMU. Its purpose is to make the expertise and capabilities of the University available to governments, community agencies and businesses. It is part of an overall effort by EMU to establish a closer working relationship with the communities it serves and to aid them in meeting their needs and in solving their problems.
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A HELPING HAND: Eastern Michigan
University faculty and pre-student teachers
help children who live at Forest Knoll/Arbor
Manor with their literacy skills. EMU's
Institute for Community and Regional
Development (ICARD) runs the Ypsilanti
Student Literacy Corps, a program funded
through United Way. |
From October through April, Eastern Michigan faculty and pre-student teachers spend time after school two days a week at the public housing complex's community center, where approximately 50 children per year -- mostly elementary school students from the complex -- come to improve their literacy skills.
"The United Way approached us about providing tutoring at this particular site because they were losing their another program on the south side of Ypsilanti," said ICARD Director Chuck Monsma, explaining the origins of EMU's involvement in 1990. "The program there actually started with a federal two-year literacy grant. When the grant expired, the United Way eventually took over the funding."
While that literacy program has helped children and their families in that community, what spawned from that modest United Way effort is benefiting even more children.
With the help of funding from the state Department of Education, ICARD has, for the last two years, provided a similar program for the Willow Run School District, but on a much larger scale. Instead of two days per week, ICARD sends faculty and pre-student teachers out five days a week to Kaiser Elementary and Willow Run Middle School. Up to 40 students at each school not only receive help improving their literacy skills, but also obtain assistance in the areas of math, science and technology.
"We try to make it something that reinforces what they do in school during the day," Monsma said. "These programs are for districts with lower scores. That's where this funding is targeted."
Because EMU personnel spend more time with the Willow Run students, ICARD can gather more data and use measurement techniques to gauge what effect the program is having on students' test scores, Monsma said
"The model we used for the United Way program is the same model we used and expanded on for the Willow Run program," Monsma said. "The Ypsilanti Student Literacy Corps program is a small United Way program, but it triggered a much larger, much more extensive program. Without the United Way funds at Forest Knoll/Arbor Manor, we wouldn't have had the experience to get the Willow Run project funded."
Monsma is hopeful more can be done to help students at the public housing complex in south Ypsilanti and points to the local management corporation of the complex and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) working with ICARD as a key development.
Together, they plan to wire and computerize the community center, which currently only has a few computers for use.
"This will not only provide technology for students, but for older youth and adults in the community," Monsma said.
For further information, contact ICARD at (734) 487-0243.
