NEWS INFORMATION FROM

THE OFFICE OF MAYOR STEPHEN R. REED
City of Harrisburg
King City Government Center
Harrisburg, PA 17101-1678
Telephone: 717.255.3040

FOR IMMEDIATE USE
5 May 2004

MESSIAH COLLEGE LAUNCHES HARRISBURG INSTITUTE PROGRAM IN CITY—BRINGING STUDENT HOUSING AND VOLUNTEER WORKERS TO DOWNTOWN

Harrisburg, PA—An innovative effort to connect Messiah college students with the urban environment was launched today by Mayor Stephen R. Reed and Messiah College Provost Kim Phipps as they dedicated the College’s newly-established college facility at 251 North Street in the downtown. The new headquarters facility will house Messiah’s “Harrisburg Institute”, the newest component of Messiah’s larger Harrisburg Initiative program, which provides student housing, charitable and civic engagement and academic enrichment for Messiah students.

Reed and Provost Phipps said the unique new “Harrisburg Institute” was first established in 2002 by Dr. Joseph Jones, Dean of the School of Education and Social Sciences at Messiah College, to help students view their lives as part of a larger divine purpose. The first completed phase of the Harrisburg Institute is the establishment of residential housing for more than two dozen Messiah students in the downtown. The housing units are located in and around the newly established Harrisburg Institute headquarters facility, which will eventually house up to fifty students, along with staff offices, classrooms, meeting space, community areas and an art gallery. Resident students are required to provide volunteer service to downtown non-profit facilities for a minimum of three hours per week.

“This is an exciting and very well designed effort by Messiah College to actively engage students in community life,” said Mayor Stephen R. Reed, “and we are delighted to welcome Messiah College back to its original home city.” Messiah College was founded in Harrisburg in 1909 by S.R. Smith at a N. 12th Street location.

“Messiah College is both pleased and proud to partner with the City of Harrisburg in providing enhanced educational experiences for our students, with the added benefit of helping the community in a variety of ways,” said Provost Phipps. “Messiah’s mission is to develop strategies and solutions that address urban community concerns and help students, educators and community partners in the Capital Region learn from each other.”

Reed and Phipps said the Harrisburg Initiative is being funded in part by a $2 million grant from the Lily Endowment, which allowed Dr. Jones and the College to undertake an exhaustive survey of nearly 1,750 community and service organizations in the Capital Region, of which 250 were selected for further outreach, networking and program development. A U.S. Department of Education grant of $200,000 was also secured by U.S. Senators Arlen Specter and Rick Santorum for the Harrisburg Institute portion of the program. Some of the existing programs and activities being funded include:

• The Agape Center for Service and Learning, which links students, faculty and the community through service work;
• The Boyer Center, which fosters educational community enhancement in school and society through various programs and consulting research;
• The Collaboratory for Experiential Learning—a comprehensive body of academic programs and projects where students, faculty and community partners apply academic knowledge and hands-on experience to address pressing regional and international issues;
• The Harrisburg School District P-16 Council, which partners the school district with local institutions of higher education to address educational issues and enhance teacher development;
• The Lilly Endowment Initiative, which enriches curriculum to help students view their lives as part of a larger divine purpose;
• Multicultural outreach programs designed to create partnerships between the college and minority populations in the region;
• The Wellness Center, a nurse-managed clinic located in Hoy Towers, a public housing complex in Swatara Township, which Messiah College opened in 1998 in partnership with the Dauphin County Housing Authority

Students will additionally be involved in art and music education, program assessment and evaluation, crime prevention and justice issues, neighborhood revitalization, economic development, grant writing assistance, faculty and student consultation services, community based research and engineering community projects.

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