Widener University

The Office for Community Engagement and Diversity Initiatives advances Widener’s mission to contribute to the vitality and well-being of the Chester community. The office serves as the information and referral point for the President, academic and administrative departments, and other internal and external constituencies to build community relations and strategic partnerships with the local community.

The Office supports internal constituencies engaged in community outreach activities, including faculty service-learning fellows, Civic Engagement Council, Chester Alternative Spring Break, and Project Pericles. The Office promotes civic engagement initiatives through fostering university and community partnerships with schools, business and civic leaders, and faith-based organizations; collaborates with and supports faculty engaged in service-learning and community-based research; broadens staff volunteerism in the community; and assists in the development of short and long-term strategies that address the social, economic, and educational needs of the local community.

Additionally, the Office for Community Engagement and Diversity Initiatives serves as a resource to strategize, plan, and collaborate with faculty, staff, and students in all academic and administrative units on the definition, recognition, and introduction of multicultural institutional initiatives and provides leadership to expand and strengthen diversity initiatives and programs that advance the mission of the university.

University outreach programs, both those spearheaded by this office and other campus units, include:

• Junior-Senior Summer Challenge in Chester: In July 2008, Widener collaborated with the Chester Upland School District and the Chester Education Foundation to develop the Junior-Senior Summer Challenge to help 30 promising Chester High students.School teens develop public speaking, organizational, and study skills; PSAT and SAT prep and job readiness were also part of the five week program. The goal is to help Chester teenagers to succeed in college, return to Chester, and become the next generation of business and civic leaders.


• Financial Literacy for Latin American Students in Wilmington: Widener School of Law students spent a week during the summer teaching financial literacy classes to children enrolled (kindergarten through sixth grade) at the Latin American Community Center in downtown Wilmington. A generous gift from Bank of America provided the law students with a stipend for their work. The law students were chosen by the School of Law's Public Interest Resource Center.


• Law & Inequality Project: In April 2007, 14 Widener Law students went from learning about law on the Delaware Campus to teaching about law in several Delaware high schools. The law students taught students in the Wilmington Christian School, William Penn High School, A.I. duPont High School, and Concord High School about the case of Parker v. University of Delaware, a 1950 Delaware Court of Chancery ruling that declared segregation, as practiced by the University of Delaware at the time, was unconstitutional. The Parker case was later included in Brown v. Board of Education, the famous landmark Supreme Court decision that declared segregation was unconstitutional in higher education. The initiative was undertaken through the Law & Inequality Project, in cooperation with the Delaware Law Related Education Center.


• Creative Writing Summer Camp: During July 2008, Professors Michael Cocchiarale, Kenneth Pobo, and Jayne Thompson — alongside Widener students Heather Astorga and Jennifer Pinel — taught poetry and short story writing to eighteen Chester High School juniors who participated in Widener's first Creative Writing Summer Camp. The Chester High students are enrolled in The Achievement Project (TAP). After three, three-hour sessions of writing and revision with the Widener professors and students, all the high school students recited one poem or read their short story to the class in the last session.


• Ecology Camp for Girls: During the summer of 2007, fifteen girls from public and charter schools in the cities of Chester and Philadelphia and Widener graduate students taking ED 575 learned about science and nature while on a field-trip at the John Heinz Wildlife Refuge (near the Philadelphia Internal Airport). It was part of the Widener's Ecology Camp for Girls, a five-week educational enrichment sponsored by Widener's Science Teaching Center, a joint project involving faculty from the College of Arts & Sciences, and School of Engineering.