Small towns like Oneonta, which also may be considered a “college town,” have unique qualities. These include a natural blend of intellectual aspirations and lofty ideals with common sense self-reliance and community altruism. There is also a drive for success along with a sense of looking out for one another.
For students who choose college in a small town, there are advantages. These include more things within walking distance, it being easier to know one’s neighbors, the quality of bonding experiences is said to be enhanced. During the academic year when students are here, the age of the population skews younger. This provides increased opportunities for good experiences across generations whereby younger and older adults interact more and learn from one another.
This mutual interaction across generations is a two-way street. When college students experience new learning, they generate enthusiasm, high energy and excitement which engages those who are older. Likewise, students have older adults from whom they can learn in addition to their professors. This shared experience represents what social scientists identify as eudaimonic experiences, which is a fancy term from the ancient Greeks describing how pleasure may be derived from meaningful, longer-term goals and experiences.
Our local community suffered many setbacks due to the COVID-19 shutdown and the aftermath consequences related to the COVID-19 challenges. The SUNY Oneonta community, students, faculty and staff suffered and were negatively impacted. Local community service agencies also suffered, and many of these agencies still experience post-pandemic staff shortages. Local research shows that distress levels for both college students and clients at local community agencies are much higher than distress levels before the pandemic.
These are the current conditions that inspired a new project that links students at SUNY Oneonta with several health and social service agencies in the community. The Compass & Linkages Project of SUNY Oneonta’s Department of Psychology has just been funded by the Otsego County Community Foundation. This project provides many benefits to our community and our students, such as capacity-building for participating agencies and sharing expertise among agency leaders and faculty. The “compass” portion of the project involves data collection, small targeted needs assessments and community-level research. The “linkages” portion of the project involves collaborative efforts between faculty, students and staff at the local agencies. Some of these efforts include development of toolbox-style of curriculum manuals for student-peer coaching. The plan is to form a “collaborative consultant group” focused on improved client services and solutions to local problems.
Among the agencies are those that target substance abuse addiction, homelessness, poverty, food insecurity and mental illness. During the first year of the project, students will work with leaders and staff at four agencies: Crossroads, LEAF, Catholic Charities and Bassett Healthcare. These engaged learning experiences are referred to as high-impact practices (HIP). Research demonstrates that HIP benefit all college students, yet these HIP practices are particularly beneficial for underserved and underrepresented student groups such that HIP boost academic motivation, college retention rates, student GPAs and college graduation rates. HIP also provide a sense of meaningful engagement for students.
This project will include student interns who are already hosted and trained at local agencies, and add a variety of service-learning activities. Service learning is a hybrid of part classroom training and part applied real-world experience. Students will learn skills and techniques in the classroom, which prepare them for applied skills at local agencies. Trained students boost an agency’s capacity for service delivery, program evaluation and data collection from client respondent surveys. This project will also add independent student research projects to be nested in-house at participating local agencies. Included in this project are new pathways for students to actively participate in community building and post-pandemic healing.