Tuesday, April 07, 2015

Complete a Survey on Gallaudet Town Gown Relations

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Gallaudet's campus during a public festival

I received an email from Robert Siebert who is a graduate student in Gallaudet's Master of Public administration program. He's doing a capstone project exploring Gallaudet's town-gown relationship with the larger neighborhood. As part of the project, he hopes to gain a greater insight into the community's perspective of Gallaudet. He's asking folks to complete a very brief survey to help him out. It really only takes a minute, so please give it a shot when you get a chance. The deadline is April 13th.

4 comments:

A Streeter said...

I just did the survey. I hope Mr. Siebert posts his results to this blog.

I'm deaf myself and have had some serious interactions with Gallaudet over the years, but I don't sign and my perspective is ultimately one of a neighbor. I'm happy that Gallaudet is now, much more than in years past, engaging with its surrounding neighborhood -- both the university (especially its students) and the neighbors benefit.

Anonymous said...

Let neighbors use the playground!

Anonymous said...

The University doesn't do much for the neighborhood at all. Compared with other DC schools like Howard, Georgetown, or GW that have a heavy footprint in their neighborhoods.....

Anonymous said...

@Anon 9:14 - With the new Trinidad Rec Center playground, the need to use the one at Kendall Elementary should diminish. I saw some photos someone posted of the new one. It looks great but I have not heard when it opens.

@Anon 11:21 - I would tend to agree that other schools do more outreach but they are not as enclosed by walls as Gallaudet's campus. They have far larger footprints, some with multiple campuses like GWU and Georgetown. Also, the other schools noted have over 10,000 students (as high as 17,000 with Georgetown grad/under grad programs). Gallaudet has about 1,700 students plus kids in the elementary school. The scale is significantly different.

I've lived here a number of years and the first few of those, GU was a place you had to walk around to get to Union Market or pass to get to the metro. I've since taken classes (intro ASL), attended events at the theater or joined community outreach classes in gardening, regularly use the track or jog around campus (it's quiet, peaceful, and there are fewer cars from MD trying to run me over), and attended other community events for Ward 5 there.

Can the university do more? Definitely. Can residents reach out more? Yes. I think it goes both ways and for now I see the university reaching out more to neighbors to the West and South but not East and North. We all stand to benefit it we work together to find ways that the surrounding neighborhoods and the university can engage and interact. Sometimes it seems that events do happen on campus but neighbors are not looped in before they happen.

What would you like to see the University do for the neighborhood? What did the schools you all have attended do for the community? How can the school better communicate what is happening vis-a-vis the neighborhood?