The start of something new

Girls in white T-shirts and blue jeans popped, locked, jumped, split and shimmied as Missy Elliott's "Lose Control" pumped out of the speakers.

The audience lost control. They heeded Missy's command to "hit tha floor" as they jumped out of their seats and started dancing in the Nicholas Orem Middle School cafeteria Friday.

The dance presentation was a do-it-yourself enrichment program showcase orchestrated through a partnership between the campus' Engaged University program, Nicholas Orem Middle School and the Maryland Multicultural Youth Centers. Part of a growing movement among universities across the country to partner with local communities to promote change, the Engaged program uses a series of enrichment programs to shorten the divide between the university and local communities, said program director Margaret Morgan-Hubbard.

The showcase was the final culmination of the four-week program, in which students used their creative talents to benefit the community. A graffiti class converted a plain wall on the outside of the school into a tribute to the school team, the Flying Falcons. Students and teachers in the gardening class prepared refreshments for the reception.

"It plants a seed for kids to think about what they want to do in the future," said Margo Humphrey, an art professor at the university and art instructor with the program. "Everything germinates with interest."

The program was launched four years ago after a series of meetings and lunches with community leaders and university faculty and staff, Morgan-Hubbard said. She originally targeted faculty to get involved with the program because of their permanent stake in the community, but later realized undergraduate and graduate students wanted a more active role in the community.

Jade Williams, a junior engineering major, said the program was unique because it gave younger people a link to the university and its students.

"Not only does it show the children that a great university is here in your community, you also have access to it," Williams said. "Perhaps these children have a stigma about college students, and they got to see that that isn't true. I was a tangible, real, model of student who was not too distant from where they are."

In the graffiti art class, students learned how to use graffiti to "beautify their community," class instructor Cory Stowers said. It was also a creative method of steering students away from gang writing and toward something more positive, he said.

"There's a huge interest [in graffiti] in this community because of gang writing, but it could be harnessed with graffiti writing," he said.

The Engaged program was originally funded by the university Democracy Collaborative, which provided the startup money and office space. But the organization couldn't sustain support, so the program found a new location this summer under the university cooperative extension center, Morgan-Hubbard said.

Now the program's funding is a combined effort from the university provost office and the Maryland Cooperative Extension. The provost provides financial support for salaries and the extension center funds the program's operations, said James Hanson, MCE's acting associate dean and associate director. The extension center hopes to obtain additional funding from private foundations to expand the program to other cities, Hanson said.

"This is a neat opportunity for College Park to invest in our community," he added.

Contact reporter Sharahn D. Boykin at boykindbk@gmail.com.