Point of Pride: USF's Good Deeds in East Tampa

[Ricky the Bull]

Today's Tampa Tribune editorial:

USF's Good Deeds In East Tampa

Published: Jan 27, 2006

Nearly 1,000 University of South Florida students fanned out across east Tampa last Saturday for a day of planting bushes, picking up litter and leaving things prettier because they were there. It was a heartening display of the remarkable relationship between USF and east Tampa that has become a model for how urban universities and their communities can help one another.

Two years ago, USF and Tampa leaders decided to try using the university's resources to help revitalize east Tampa. Professors sent architecture students to historic 22nd Street to help with the redevelopment plan, communications students to help residents document their stories and computer science students to schools and community centers to make sure computers were running properly.

The effort is remarkable because at so many urban universities, students spend their days reading case studies about social issues, while their professors study statistics, but not the faces, of urban ills.

USF has had similar outreach programs in seven communities, including Suitcase City, the neighborhood immediately surrounding its main campus, and St. Petersburg's Midtown. Judi Jetson, director of the USF Collaborative for Children, Families & Communities, shows USF's ambitions know no boundaries when she says: "If we learn how to do this right, we can do it in every community in Tampa Bay."

http://www.tbo.com/news/opinion/editorials/MGBCEH3XXIE.html

[bulls96go]

nice story