Call to Service
A UT community-partnership program descends the ivory tower, enters the community and joins with one of the university's oldest research centers.

By David Brill

            In parts of the state, the University of Tennessee (UT) is regarded first and foremost as a football powerhouse and second as a fully accredited academic institution.

And although academics don’t fill Neyland Stadium with fans, in the communities of Cocke, Morgan, Anderson, Knox, Blount, Johnson, Meigs, and Hancock counties, UT is known for both football and community service, thanks in large part to the efforts of the university’s Community Partnership Center (CPC).

CPC was established in 1994 to engage university professors and students in projects rooted in the region’s low- to moderate-income communities. Then as now, these projects support sustainable economic growth and development, environmental justice, education (particularly involving at-risk youth), adoption of new information technologies, development of tourism and recreational assets, water quality, and heritage and historic preservation.

CPC has joined UT’s Energy, Environment and Resources Center (EERC), a multidisciplinary research organization that supports a number of service-oriented projects and programs that directly benefit the state’s residents.

Says EERC Executive Director Jack Barkenbus, “CPC fits well within our traditional environmental protection activities, since economic development and good environmental quality are increasingly linked throughout Tennessee.” 

According to CPC Director Tim Ezzell,  “CPC was founded at a time when there was growing awareness that UT was an under-utilized resource and that the university’s students, faculty, and technical capacity could contribute significantly to the growth and development of communities throughout the region.”

Though the center wasn’t established specifically in response to new federal funding opportunities, Ezzell says that the center’s grassroots-level community involvement helped fulfill the public-participation requirement found in many, if not most, federal requests for proposals.

Among the federal funding opportunities that helped launch CPC was an initiative created by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Office of University Partnerships. The HUD initiative sought to establish links between urban institutions like UT and the surrounding communities.

CPC applied for funding and was in turn designated by HUD as one of the first Community Outreach Partnership Centers in the state.

“With the COPC designation and funding,” says Ezzell, “CPC became increasingly involved in community development and designed the participatory planning process for Knoxville’s Empowerment Zone, designated by HUD in 1998.” The Empowerment Zones program was created in 1994 to rebuild communities in America’s poverty-stricken areas through incentives to entice businesses back to the inner city.

Though active in numerous counties, Ezzell insists that CPC’s efforts in Cocke County are most emblematic of the center’s overarching mission and goals.

Under a Collaborative Research and Teaching Project funded by the Appalachian Regional Commission, for instance, CPC initiated an environmentally sustainable community-planning and decision-making process in the county, among the poorest in the state. The process resulted in creation of decision-making guidelines and a plan for recruiting “green” industries to the county. CPC hopes to introduce the process to other rural counties in Tennessee.

“Through our efforts in Cocke County, we engaged residents of a distressed community, introduced them to the concept of sustainability, and developed a stakeholder-driven plan,” says Ezzell. “Then we utilized technology, UT resources, and a wide range of partnerships to help implement the growth strategy.”

Ezzell and CPC Program Coordinator Eric Ogle, who grew up in Cocke County and who once served as the county’s director of tourism, are now working to create a wireless community network in the city of Newport. The network will not only offer wireless Internet access to anyone in the downtown area, it will also create a local network, increase intra-community communication, and help spur business development.

“Think of it as a localized Internet, where users can learn about local resources and interact with local business, government officials, and other users across wireless broadband,” he says. “Through this project, Cocke County residents will become part of the first wireless community network in the nation.”

“The county is geographically well positioned to capitalize on its potential for sustainable economic development,” says Ogle. In fact, Cocke County boasts five exits from I-40, one of the nation’s major east-west routes, and all are within minutes of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the nation’s most visited national park.

The Emerging Technologies staff, part of UT’s Office of Information Technology, is assisting Ezzell and Ogle with the project, as are Intel, Gateway/Waitt, and other private-sector firms.

“Rural America is full of possibility but often lacks the technical expertise to develop efficiently,” says Tom Rosberg, executive director of the Newport/Cocke County Chamber of Commerce. “UT’s Community Partnership Center has the experience, talent, and resource to make ours a successful journey.”

Meanwhile, in Meigs County CPC is helping residents develop cultural and environmental tourism, with an emphasis on migratory bird watching. Meigs County embraces the Hiwassee Wildlife Refuge, which hosts one of the world’s largest populations of Sandhill Cranes.

A similar project will help Morgan County capitalize on its wealth of recreational assets, including a Wild and Scenic River system, hiking and horse trails, and some of the best natural rock-climbing walls in the Southeast.

In Clinton, Tennessee, CPC has engaged at-risk youth in a program to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1956 Clinton Desegregation Crisis. The “crisis” refers to the civil disturbances that occurred after a court ordered Anderson County schools—including Clinton High School—to desegregate. Anderson county students are using digital technology to record the oral histories of local civil-rights leaders.

In Knox County, CPC is working with Knox Heritage, Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the county’s architectural heritage, to identify and preserve historic buildings.

In Blount County, one of the fastest growing counties in the region, CPC is working with citizens and business leaders to promote improved water quality in the Little River Watershed. The river’s headwaters originate in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Though the character of the counties CPC serves varies widely, Ezzell contends there are common links among these communities.

“They’re all dealing with important resource issues, they’re concerned about future development and growth, and they’re seeing an influx of new residents, particularly retirees,” he says.

“There also tends to be a lot of mistrust in these communities toward higher-education types. They often view us as interlopers who are using them to advance our own careers,” Ezzell says. “Many of these communities have shelves full of research that was conducted on their communities but never implemented. They remember other researchers who came, made promises, conducted research, published articles, then left and were never heard from again.”

CPC’s heavy reliance on UT graduate and undergraduate students enrolled in service-learning courses has helped break down some of those barriers.

“Students are known for their enthusiasm, which can really energize a community,” he says. “But they’re also not very intimidating to people, and they often help us get access to a community.”

While CPC occasionally confronts initial resistance on the part of the communities it serves, the center also contends with some barriers within the university itself. Ezzell points to long-held attitudes among some university administrators and department heads regarding the value of community-service work.

“Universities offer little incentive for faculty or staff to get involved in community outreach, and as a consequence, it plays only a minor role in the tenure process,” he says. Meanwhile, he points out, “the poorest people in the state pay some of the highest sales tax rates in the nation, and they see very little return on that.

“We try to give those communities something back, we try to improve their quality of life, we help them achieve better opportunities for the future,” he says. “I think we owe them at least that much.”

For more information contact Tim Ezzell, CPC, The University of Tennessee, 311 Conference Center Building, Knoxville, TN 37996-4134, call 865-974-4251, or email tezzell@utk.edu. Contact Eric Ogle at 865-974-4562 or eogle@utk.edu.

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