NC State University’s departments and faculty reach into almost every community inthe state, including the university’s host city, Raleigh, the state’s largest urban area. There have been many opportunities for faculty and students from many schools to help urban Raleigh, both its local government and its citizens.

Urban Oral Histories

The Citizens Advisory Council (CAC) of Southeast Raleigh, for instance, had a pressing need for help: the city’s urban growth in the downtown area was pressing into the historically African-American neighborhood, threatening to swamp its identity and history. The CAC wanted help in documenting the unknown stories of their community and the significance of certain places, and to find ways of telling these stories in their physical environment.

Contacting NC State, the CAC was directed to the university’s Downtown Design Studio, in the College of Design. The Design Studio’s mission is to provide students with opportunities to employ urban design solutions to help communities statewide improve their quality of life.

The Design Studio, under the direction of Dr. Celen Pasalar, agreed to help the CAC. They worked with the people to identify residents who could recall historical details. The collaboration between the CAC and the Studio made it easier to hold effective meetings and workshops. The meetings brought up new ideas that were adopted and put into play. Community members recorded oral histories and put up an exhibition of local history. With student and faculty help, they used signage to highlight places of significance within the community. They introduced a heritage walk that enabled residents to learn the background and history of the neighborhood.

“We listen and share,” says Dr. Pasalar about the students’ work with Southeast Raleigh’s CAC. “We don’t just disappear and then reappear with a ‘solution.’ We are partners.”

“We don’t want our neighborhood lost, regardless of the negative factors such as poverty that have affected it over a period of years,” said Lonnette Williams, a resident of South Park. “We want to preserve the good things about it so that people will understand the value of it and try to make sure it doesn’t get wiped out. And that is the key: not only preserve the history but also make people aware of it.”

Reducing Urban Conflict

How do you get two sides equally passionate about their points of view to sit down and negotiate? That’s what NC Cooperative Extension, based at NC State University and NC A&T State University, was tasked with recently when Wake County was developing ordinances to protect its water quality from stormwater runoff. After 14 months, the debates over the standards to be used in these ordinances had deadlocked into two opposing camps—development interests and environmental interests. These stakeholders had failed to reach an agreement.

That’s when Brent Henry, Wake County Extension director, was contacted by Britt Stoddard, Wake County’s Water Quality Director. Could Henry recommend someone from the university who was skilled in mediation? Henry recommended Stephen Smutko, an Extension specialist with Agricultural and Resources Economics who was trained in techniques of group problem solving. Smutko attended several meetings, and then proposed a way to get people to lay their main issues out on the table and discuss them frankly. He got them to work through their issues so that at the end, the group was able to present a stormwater ordinance with the unanimous support of both sides. The planning board and county commissioners adopted the plan.

“Mr. Smutko was very upfront when we started,” says Stoddard. “He said that sometimes you just can’t reach a consensus. But this one turned out great. Without Brent’s and Steve’s help, we wouldn’t have reached agreement on what is an innovative ordinance. It was exactly what we needed at the time we needed it.”

Non-Profit Management

Another collaboration that has borne fruit for Wake County nonprofits was between Wake County Human Services and NC State University. Nonprofit organizations often suffer from ineffective boards that are plagued by poor communication skills. Jessica Katz Jameson of NC State’s Department of Communication had already wanted to work on a project involving board governance when NCSU faculty and Wake County Human Services officials met to discuss how to increase partnerships between them. Jameson’s interests in board governance coincided with the interests of several nonprofits to better their communications. Consequently, four nonprofits—Triangle Radio Reading Service, the Women’s Center, Meals on Wheels and NAMI Wake—joined with NC State to form the Wake County Nonprofit Board Communication and Development Initiative. Its purpose was to develop communication tools for better deliberation, decision-making and relationship-building.

Jameson’s group spent intensive time with the nonprofits for a year and partnered with them on a board communication training program, which was piloted with the Wake County organizations.

“They were easy folks to work with,” says Linda Ornt of the Triangle Radio Reading Service about Jameson’s group. “They came to our board meetings but they were not at all intrusive. They knew how to step back and observe and allow the board to do its thing. Having Jessica to point out our foibles was very valuable to us.”