Illinois Institute of Technology’s Community Outreach Initiatives

July 2014 | Volume 2, Issue 2

IN THIS ISSUE:

Grantee Spotlight: HUD-Funded E2 Initiative Helps Entrepreneurship Flourish in Jersey City
Anchor Institutions: HBCUs Leading the Way to Community Transformation
Illinois Institute of Technology’s Community Outreach Initiatives

Illinois Institute of Technology’s Community Outreach Initiatives

Photograph of an IIT professor standing before a display board in a meeting room, with a seated high school student listening to the professor’s comments.
Mentoring and tutoring has long been a part of IIT’s community outreach programs, including judging science fairs in Chicago’s public schools. Image courtesy of IIT Office of Community Affairs. “IIT is not only in the community, but also an integral part of the community,” says the mission statement of the Office of Community Affairs and Outreach Programs (OCA) at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), reflecting the university’s commitment to serving the community surrounding the campus — Bronzeville, including the Greater Grand Boulevard and Douglas neighborhoods. With this guidance, OCA has joined partnerships and projects that have benefitted both the community and the school’s faculty, staff, and students. A significant investment was made in OCA’s efforts in 1998 when IIT received a 3-year, $395,000 Community Outreach and Partnerships Center (COPC) grant from HUD. The university used the grant to help establish the Center for Community Development and Technology and support its activities in education, economic development, and housing. IIT further partnered with local organizations and secured additional funding from other public and private sources.

Improving Opportunities for Residents of Bronzeville

At that time, efforts were already underway to improve test scores and graduation rates in Chicago’s public schools. The Center for Community Development and Technology complemented those efforts by providing opportunities for college students to contribute to the education of Chicago youth. Under the center’s numerous mentoring and tutoring programs, over 300 work-study students, interns, and other IIT students aided elementary school students in Bronzeville with their studies. IIT also paired undergraduates proficient in technology with public school teachers in Bronzeville to help them use computers and other technologies more effectively in their classes. In addition, IIT helped establish the Young Women’s Leadership Charter School, Chicago’s only all-girls public school; housed on IIT’s campus, the school includes an emphasis on mathematics and science. The center’s community development activities included the creation of a database of investments in Bronzeville and a website that identifies community resources. Along with adult education in mathematics and science and job retraining, IIT partnered with Northeastern Illinois University’s Center for Inner City Studies to prepare Bronzeville residents for employment in neighborhood agencies and institutions.

IIT also used the COPC grant to support its economic development initiatives. As part of its efforts, the center’s employment partners, including Support and Training Result in Valuable Employees (STRIVE), provided job training and job placement assistance to more than 400 local residents by the end of the grant’s third year. In addition, IIT launched the Community Employment Initiative in collaboration with the African American Contractor’s Association to provide job opportunities for Bronzeville’s residents. IIT also established a Minority/Women Business Enterprise task force to reach those local businesses when procuring goods and services.

For the COPC grant’s focus on housing, IIT supported the creation of a community development corporation to encourage real estate development in Bronzeville. In addition, IIT and other community members participated in the preparation of design and financial plans for redevelopment of the Chicago Housing Authority’s Stateway Gardens housing project, and IIT offered forgivable loans of up to $7,500 to university employees who purchased homes in the redeveloped mixed-income community.

IIT’s Recent Outreach Efforts

Since the COPC grant ended, IIT has remained committed to revitalizing the Bronzeville community. OCA’s recent efforts have focused on economic development. The office has leveraged IIT’s substantial resources and collaborated with schools and departments of the university, including the Stuart School of Business, School of Applied Technology, and the University Technology Park, to provide technical assistance to small businesses.

Photograph of approximately 10 adults looking at information on several tables manned by approximately seven IIT students. One resident is using a colored marker to provide comments on a diagram of commercial facades. The activity is taking place on a sidewalk of the street in the diagram. In the background are several commercial buildings and vehicles parked and moving in the street.
IIT’s economic development activities in Bronzeville have included students assisting with community participation in planning for 47th Street and other neighborhood commercial corridors. Image courtesy of IIT Office of Community Affairs. With a grant from the U.S. Small Business Administration, OCA created the TechAdvantage@IIT program (TAI) in 2009 that provided assistance to more than 64 minority- and women-owned businesses primarily in the area surrounding the university’s campus from 2009–2011. The program’s services focused on improving business operations in the field of clean energy and green technologies, software and information technologies, and biomedical technology.

The TAI program was succeeded by OCA’s Enhancing Technology for Small Business (ETSB) program. Observations from the TAI program showed that the solutions their clients implemented were often not technology-based, resulting in ineffective processes which in turn impeded growth. Sponsored by J. P. Morgan Chase, the ETSB program provides assistance to small businesses operating in the communities surrounding the IIT campus on integrating technology with their operations. The ETSB program offers one-on-one consultations with business people that address their specific technology-related challenges; workshops where IIT faculty and industry experts discuss ways to use technology to improve the efficiency of business operations; and opportunities to connect with technology vendors and lenders.

OCA plans to launch a new initiative called the Business Technology Assistance Program (BTAP) that will focus on providing technology-based assistance to small businesses, and minority- and women-owned businesses located in the area surrounding the IIT campus. OCA’s experiences with its earlier initiatives have helped in designing BTAP, which will include self-assessment of their operations; one-on-one consulting sessions; interactive learning modules; and webinars that address challenges faced by businesses at different stages in their growth. In addition, BTAP will include boot camps that will help improve the soft skills and business skills of individuals, improve the business product, and enhance the growth of businesses.

OCA’s efforts align with its mission “to create, connect, collaborate, and share with all communities.” The office’s past housing, economic development, and education efforts under the COPC grant, as well as current initiatives aimed at supporting small businesses, are fostering collaboration with members of Bronzeville and other nearby communities. Although the activities associated with the COPC grant were completed over a decade ago, OCA continues to partner with other organizations and capitalize on IIT’s knowledge base in technology to support the surrounding community.

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