Symposium on North St. Louis Seeks Abstracts

01/29/2019

A symposium dedicated to making a difference in North St. Louis is seeking abstracts from SLU community members, and the deadline to submit has been extended to Friday, March 15.

Saint Louis University, with its urban location, Jesuit tradition and mission, commitment to social justice and history of service to the under-served, is in many ways uniquely positioned to address social, economic, education and health disparities that exist in North St. Louis.

A number of faculty, staff members and students currently partner with community organizations on a number of program, service, and research activities. The University’s North Side Initiative group seeks to coordinate these activities through a community-focused SLU initiative could help crystallize these efforts, providing a home for enhanced service learning activities and a base upon which to build future research.

Principles of the North St. Louis Initiative

• Members of the community regularly request that SLU work with them.
• Partnerships between SLU faculty, staff, and students are key to the initiative.
• Activities include education, service, and research that are consistent with the Jesuit mission.
• SLU will have a physical presence in the North Saint Louis community.

Purpose of the Symposium

While the North St. Louis Initiative has yet to be formalized with dedicated staff and resources, its organizers would like to offer faculty, staff, and students from across the campus the opportunity to gather and share their actual or proposed work in northside neighborhoods. The “Making a Difference in North St. Louis” Symposium is step toward continuing the momentum for work in North St. Louis that was developed during 2013’s Atlas Week.

Symposium Objectives

• Highlight projects, service, or research conducted in North St. Louis through poster presentations.
• Encourage collaboration among faculty, students, staff members and community members on current or future projects, service, and research in North St. Louis.
• Introduce current community partners to University community members and to the work that is being done with North St. Louis in order to increase and strengthen community partnerships with the community.
• Generate new community collaborations.

Partnership Principles

• Community-Campus Partnerships for Health has adopted a set of principles of “good” community-campus partnerships. Some of those principles relevant to this project are:
• The relationship between partners is characterized by mutual trust, respect, genuineness and commitment.
• The partnership builds upon identified strengths and assets, but also works to address needs and increase capacity of all partners.
• The partnership balances power among partners and enables resources among partners to be shared.
• Partners make clear and open communication an ongoing priority by striving to understand each other's needs and self-interests, and developing a common language.

Abstract Guidelines

• Consistent with the objectives of this symposium, the following should be included in the abstract.
• Mission of the community partner and its alignment with SLU’s mission.
• Description of the partnership between SLU faculty, staff, or students and the community partner.
• Challenges and/or opportunities that the partners addressed (or plan to address).
• Description of the project in North St. Louis.
• Demonstration that SLU personnel and community partners jointly participated (or will participate) in the project.
• How the project extended (or will extend) to scholarship and community change.
• Photographs and/or videos are encouraged.  Presenters will be responsible for providing their own computer to show a video.
• Although this is not a juried competition in the usual sense, the organizers expect that authors will include all of the components listed above. If components are not addressed, the symposium organizers will work with the authors to assure they address all aspects of the project in their poster.

Submit abstracts to Darcy Scharff, Ph.D., by Friday, March 15.

The symposium will be held Monday, April 8.