leveland Mayor Jane Campbell called it “wonderful.” Alumnus Julian Severyn found it “inspiring.” Avon Lake (Ohio) High School junior Chris Bush confirmed that it “strengthened my impression of the University.”

It may sound as if these three were praising a spring theatrical triumph at Eldred Hall. Or maybe a première at the Mather Dance Center.

Who would figure that they had just devoted nearly six hours to a colloquium?

Yes, a colloquium. Formal introductions, speeches, questions, discussion. But underlying these, a call to action that distinguished the inauguration of President Edward Hundert as a momentous day in the history of CWRU. On January 30, “Great Universities and Their Cities” gave notice that President Hundert’s plan for a new Case Western Reserve is in motion, showcasing values he began to stress shortly after he accepted the presidency a year earlier. In an e-mail to the University community written months before he took office, President Hundert said that CWRU was “uniquely poised to rethink the research university and set a new standard for education, scholarship, and contributions to society.”

“Great Universities and Their Cities” elaborated, casting Case Western Reserve as a powerful resource committed to reversing Cleveland’s half-century of decline.

“President Hundert wanted the centerpiece of his inaugural celebration to be a forum exploring outstanding partnerships between academic institutions and cities,” explains Richard Baznik, CWRU’s vice-president for community and government relations. “We invited university presidents and mayors to share their strategies and help us create a collaborative model that will set a national standard.”

Nine groups readily accepted the invitation, coming from places as diverse as Chicago, St. Louis, New Haven, Nashville, Toronto. Each brought a success story relevant to urban renaissance: downtown revitalization, cultural and artistic development, race relations, public health, housing, education—all interrelated, none a source of civic pride for Cleveland.

The sold-out colloquium, hosted by President Hundert and Mayor Campbell, unfolded like a three-act drama. A welcome and keynote address in Severance Hall. Breakout sessions across campus focusing on each of the nine partnerships. And then a return to Severance for a comprehensive discussion and closing. If we were to name these divisions, we could easily adopt the key words that have become campus symbols for President Hundert’s new standard. Vision. Partnership. Leadership.




The colloquium began with numbers. In her welcome message, Mayor Campbell opened with a statistical summary of the challenges facing Cleveland, whose population has dropped from almost a million in the 1950s to 480,000 today. Then she turned to the future: “We ought not despair, but look happily toward opportunities ahead. That’s what this colloquium is about.”

When President Hundert took the podium, he issued a charge to the participants: “Instead of benefits, talk about barriers and how to overcome them.”

Crime-ridden New Haven, Connecticut, was littered with barriers when Yale faculty member Richard Levin, the keynote speaker, ascended to the presidency in 1993. As a sign of the recovery that has occurred since, Dr. Levin cited a recent New York Times article describing the city as an “irresistible destination.”

The comeback started with Dr. Levin, who made it a top priority and committed significant university resources that encouraged like-minded investments from government and businesses. To facilitate active urban partnerships, he established an Office of New Haven and State Affairs. He conducted an inventory of community outreach activities that revealed more than 100 campus initiatives on which to build. Dr. Levin created the Yale Homebuyer Program, offering subsidies to employees who bought New Haven real estate. Yale itself acquired blocks of blighted commercial property and attracted national retail firms to anchor a spectacular rejuvenation. It sponsored a new Summer Festival of the Arts and Ideas, headlined by such attractions as the Metropolitan Opera.

“We must help our cities to become what we aspire to be on our campuses,” Dr. Levin concluded. “A place where human potential can be fully realized.”




The breakout gatherings were next, with the 800 attendees flowing out onto campus and into the nine sessions, which presented case studies on model partnerships between universities and their cities. Below is a look at three: housing, cultural and artistic development, and K-12 and continuing education. Expanded articles on these and the other six sessions can be found on the website of CWRU Magazine, at www.cwru.edu/pubs/cwrumag. For a list of all nine sessions and participants, see the sidebar “The Cast.”




William Brody was candid. “We are not in the business of community building,” asserted the president of Johns Hopkins University during the breakout session on housing, for which he served as co-chair. So why would Johns Hopkins invest in the impoverished East Baltimore neighborhood bordering its medical campus? For starters, consider the $14 to $16 million the university was spending annually on security. Then there was East Baltimore’s detrimental effect on recruiting. “It’s not good when you have potential faculty come to campus, take one look, and turn right back around again,” said Dr. Brody.

Enter Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley, taking office in 1999 with a focus on reducing crime in East Baltimore. Enter also a pharmaceutical company, interested in spearheading a biotech park within walking distance of campus. Together, Dr. Brody and Mayor O’Malley devised a plan that would level 100 ravaged acres, enough for the new park, a retail district, green space, and 1,500 new mixed-income homes. Eight thousand jobs would be created as well, and some existing homes and commercial areas were slated for rehabilitation.

But how to accommodate existing residents? Enter the Annie E. Casey Foundation, whose CFO, Burton Sonenstein, joined Dr. Brody as session co-chair. The Casey Foundation devotes itself to creating public policy that meets human needs. Armed with $10 million to assist relocated families, the foundation championed people-centered priorities that advanced the East Baltimore agenda beyond bulldozers and promoted the enlightened view that a community’s true strength lies with the people who live in it.

Attendee Claudia Coulton, co-director of CWRU’s Center on Urban Poverty and Social Change and a professor at the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, notes that numerous CWRU programs to benefit local residents exist but have been piecemeal. President Hundert’s new emphasis on commitment and visibility is going to change that. Says Prof. Coulton, “It’s a good first step—to let people know that the University is reaching out to be a good neighbor and has an intention to open up that pathway.”




Forget art for art’s sake. The partnership between Toronto and York University is largely about art for the benefit of everybody. You can quote Lorna Marsden, co-chair of the breakout session on cultural and artistic development: “Dynamic business enterprises are attracted to the cities that have active cultural centers, because they know that the creative people, whom they want to employ, gravitate to cities that cater to their creative side.”

Dr. Marsden, president and vice-chancellor of York, would know. York has been instrumental in developing the cultural environment for which Toronto is widely admired. Fine arts faculty and students excel in performance as well as scholarship, lending their talents to low-cost international festivals at the city’s popular Harbourfront, among many other activities.

This level of outreach requires a compatible government partner, and in fellow co-chair David Tsubouchi, Dr. Marsden claims a gifted counterpart. An artist before he entered public service, Mr. Tsubouchi is chair of the Management Board of Cabinet in Ontario. He is also a champion of team building. “We all operate in silos—federal, local, state, university—with limited dollars,” he said. “Our biggest challenge is getting everyone to work together. And, being a politician, I can tell you that politics doesn’t always do the common-sensical, practical, smart thing.”

For example, he said, the smart thing involves finding means to immerse young people in artistic endeavor the way we now do in athletic competition. “People think of sports programs as a way for kids to break the cycle of dependency and poverty. That’s true to a certain extent, but not everyone has those abilities. The thought struck me that if we can use sports as a way to lever kids out of this cycle of dependency and poverty, why don’t we use culture that way?”

Georgia Cowart, chair of CWRU’s music department and faculty liaison serving the breakout session, found the Toronto examples inspiring. Can similar success come from a CWRU-Cleveland partnership? “We need the intensity and passion of the community, we need the resources of the University, and we need this to be a priority at the University,” Prof. Cowart says. “That’s what they had at York [from the start], and they had no more than that. All of this had been a combustion there that has benefited both the university and the community.”




In the session on K-12 and continuing education, James Caradonio had something to say about collaboration. “Collaboration is an unnatural act performed by unconsenting adults,” said the co-chair, who is superintendent of schools in Worcester, Massachusetts. Then he and fellow co-chair John Bassett, president of that city’s Clark University and former dean of arts and sciences at CWRU, built an impressive case for doing it anyway.

The University Park Collaboration between Clark and Worcester works miracles on a number of fronts, with education leading the way. Endowed with $8 million from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the University Park Campus School is a pilot program that university and city operate in concert for grades seven through twelve.

It is not a school for the privileged. More than three-quarters of its students qualify for free lunches; almost two-thirds come from homes in which English is not spoken. Noting that some students with superior quantitative skills initially couldn’t read well enough to tackle word problems on their math tests, Dr. Caradonio said, “We have to keep telling ourselves: ‘It’s literacy, stupid.’”

Now read about the results. The school ranked eighth statewide on the most recent Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System test, with all of its students passing the math and English portions.

Lacking a school of education, does CWRU have a means to interface with Cleveland’s public schools? Yes, says James Zull, professor of biology and director of CWRU’s University Center for Innovation in Teaching and Education (UCITE). He cites mutual advantages that grew out of a recent three-year collaboration with Kirk Middle School in East Cleveland.

“There was considerable benefit to our own teachers, as they began to think more seriously about learning. It became a sort of tutorial-discussion on learning, and since most of our faculty are not trained as educators, we were getting a lot ourselves from the sessions.”




Talk about strong partnerships. The plenary session created a dynamic thirty-person collaboration by assembling all of the visiting authorities on one stage. President Hundert and Mayor Campbell sat in the middle, listening intently. At the lectern, controlling the discussion, was Neal Conan, host of National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation.

“He really did an excellent job of weaving things together,” says Robert Adamus (GRS ’98, nutrition), referring to Mr. Conan. “During the breakout session on downtown revitalization, I noticed him come into the back, make a few notes, and say, ‘OK, I’ve got what I need.’”

Says attendee Julian Severyn (WRC ’79), “I was amazed to see how well the university presidents and mayors interacted. It was inspiring to hear people at that level brainstorm and conceive.”

At colloquium’s end, most in the auditorium understood that they had actually reached a beginning. The talk had taken effect. Now came the time for concerted action.

“You’ve set this all off,” said Mayor Campbell to President Hundert. “What’s really important is what happens next.”


Postscript: For “what happens next,” check CWRU Magazine, which will report on activities in future issues.

For expanded coverage of the breakout sessions from the colloquium, visit "The Breakouts."

For a list of lessons learned from the colloquium, visit "Lessons."

Additional reporting by Paula J. Baughn, Lois A. Bowers, Marsha Lynn Bragg, Ellen H. Brown, David Budin, Joseph Malcolm McClain, Lisa Srisuro, and George Stamatis.

CWRU Magazine staff writer Stuart Kollar is the University’s director of publications and advertising services.