The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee just announced a series of Social Compact grants that will fund partnerships between UWM professors and community nonprofits focused on tackling some of Milwaukee’s most
pressing issues. (UWM Photo/Troye Fox)
In 2015, the White House and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching recognized the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for its commitment to strengthening its hometown through partnerships with more than 4,000 schools, businesses, community groups, and other local and regional organizations. The university was named to the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll and received the Carnegie Community Engagement Classification.
In 2016, UWM is deepening its commitment to key Milwaukee neighborhoods by providing eight Social Compact grants of $25,000 each. The grants will be awarded to community organizations working directly with UWM researchers on quick-turnaround projects that address urgent issues facing the city.
“UWM can’t be divorced from the city in which we sit. We’re very identified with Milwaukee,” said Associate Vice Chancellor for Global Inclusion and Engagement Robert Smith. “Being engaged across the Milwaukee community is one of our values. This is what we do, and at the university, every day, we’re getting calls from people in the community saying, ‘Let’s partner.’”
The Social Compact funding, provided to UWM by the University of Wisconsin System, is one way to answer those calls with greater urgency. The Division of Global Inclusion and Engagement at UWM will administer the grants under the guidance of Smith and Peck School of the Arts Dean Scott Emmons.
“These grants complement our community-engagement profile,” explains Vice Chancellor for Global Inclusion and Engagement Joan Prince. “They’re like an injection of support to ideas that have immediate traction and impact.”
The Social Compact grantees include some familiar Milwaukee institutions as well as some relative newcomers.
One grant funds an expanded partnership among the Benedict Center, Milwaukee House of Correction and the Helen Bader School of Social Welfare at UWM to help women transition from incarceration to family and community living. Among its innovations is a screening process to help identify women who are dealing with co-occurring disorders, such as substance abuse and mental health issues.
Approximately half of the women in Milwaukee who enter and leave the corrections system do not have a high school education or GED, and they report an average annual household income of less than $10,000, according to research by UWM professors. The partnership aims to connect women to resources they need – job training, substance abuse treatment, transportation services and more – to help them stay out of prison and raise their families above the poverty line
On the northwest side, a partnership with engineering professors at UWM could get a technologically advanced, community-focused microgrid up and running. The microgrid is an emerging state-of-the-art model for distributing renewable energy more efficiently and at lower costs to consumers. Microgrids operate independently of massive privately owned or public utilities. With financial and technical support from UWM, this microgrid would provide energy to Milwaukee’s Garden Homes neighborhood.
The university will release the full list of Social Compact grant recipients in the coming weeks. Project partners will begin working together this fall.
“We know that we have researchers who are working closely with local leaders and local community organizations to respond to a range of challenges facing the city of Milwaukee generally,” Smith said, “and to disparate communities – however or wherever they are identified.
“Social Compact grants are another way we support community and university partnerships answering the call to do work vital to the city and region.”
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