A Close Call For Community Programs

Trinity College Preserves Neighborhood Outreach Efforts

August 11, 2005
By OSHRAT CARMIEL, Courant Staff Writer

For officials at Trinity College, the timing was unfortunate.

Several grants that paid for many of the college's well-regarded neighborhood outreach programs were to expire in June just as the college found itself in the middle of an unexpected fiscal crisis.

A committee of minds convened and weighed what to do.

Trinity can't afford to keep them going indefinitely, they agreed. But the school also couldn't afford to let those programs expire.

"Withdrawing all support from activities currently funded by expiring soft money would have severe effects on our relations with the neighborhood and city and our image in the media," reads the May report by the Trinity Urban Review Committee, colloquially called TURC.

And so, quietly, the college decided to merge some urban programs and fold their costs into the school's thin-stretched operating budget for the current fiscal year - a year in which staff and faculty will see no pay raises and tuition costs will rise.

"If an institution has a number of programs which it views as being good programs, you have to provide an external review of those programs and decide how and whether to continue them," said Paula Russo, vice president of planning, administration and affirmative action who also chaired the review committee.

Though no urban programs have been eliminated this year, the very existence of a report on their merit has reverberated in the world outside the college gates. Trinity's urban involvement - crowned by the construction of The Learning Corridor - has come to be seen as such a staple in its neighborhood, that any alterations command notice.

The report circulated through the community and made the cut for discussion on a morning news radio talk show, featuring Hartford Mayor Eddie A. Perez as a guest.

The programs in jeopardy when the college's fiscal year ended in June were: the Trinfo Café, a neighborhood technology and computer center; the Trinity Center for Neighborhoods, which uses students and faculty to help with neighborhood research and fact-gathering for the local community groups; and the Cities Data Center, which collects and maintains statistics about Hartford.

All were heavily supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, which provided grant funding to the college for urban programs since 1995, Russo said. The foundation grants, which Russo said are not meant to be perpetual, expired in June.

The committee decided that Trinfo Café and the Trinity Center for Neighborhoods were too important to let lapse. It recommended merging the two programs and supporting them through the college's operating budget. The cost is about $200,000, Russo said, which is dedicated largely to running Trinfo Cafe.

Also included in the operating budget is a staff salary for a full-time coordinator of the college's community learning initiative, which aims to connect classroom studies with the surrounding neighborhoods, Russo said.

The committee recommended that the initiatives be funded by the operating budget for up to three years while they search for other grants to sustain themselves.

The data center will be absorbed into the college, under the auspices of the library.

"I don't see it as pulling back [from Hartford], I see it more as recalibrating," said John Dougherty, associate professor of educational studies at Trinity, who was not a member of the review committee, but read the report.

The committee also evaluated other Trinity-affiliated urban programs, whose grant funding was not about to expire. The committee determined that programs such as Gateway to the Humanities and Academy of Lifelong Learning, which open classes up to low-income and adult learners, and Dream Camp, a summer camp for city kids, certainly have merit.

"However, in a time of limited resources, the committee believes that these programs have a lower priority," the committee report reads.

Once the grant funding expires for those programs, the college cannot consider paying for them with operating funds, the report said. Those programs must find outside funding to survive, it said.

Perez, who worked on urban initiatives for Trinity prior to his political career, said recently that he understood the initial measures taken by the college.

"That's what we do here" Perez said, referring to the city. "When we don't have enough money, we have to look at programs."

Still, he would like to chat with Trinity President James F. "Jimmy" Jones Jr. about any future changes to neighborhood involvement.

"I haven't called him yet, but I am going to give him a holler," Perez said.