The Vision for the CCPA

Outstanding Students

Students pursuing graduate degrees have often exhausted their financial-aid options, and many of them must strain their personal finances and go into tremendous debt to earn degrees beyond the bachelor’s. In addition, students who graduate from the College of Community and Public Affairs tend to enter professions that are traditionally not high paying, making it more difficult to pay off debt after graduation. The CCPA seeks funding for graduate fellowships and undergraduate scholarships to help our devoted and ambitious students afford the degrees that ultimately place them in governments and organizations they have been educated to serve. This funding would also allow students to take unpaid internships and field placements and serve a wider range of organizations in the community.

Dynamic Faculty

In the CCPA, we have extraordinary faculty members who are committed to teaching as well as research. We seek resources to support and encourage their important endeavors, as well as to retain the fine scholars who call the CCPA their home.

Institute for Intergenerational Studies

Through the Institute for Intergenerational Studies’ Center for Best Practices in Full-Service Community Schools, Binghamton University is designing a safer school environment for 28,000 kids in 10 Broome County school districts by developing programs to decrease drug use and establish social and emotional supports within the school. At the same time it will increase access to mental health services and school-readiness supports for pre-school children. This project embodies the goals of the center.

But that is only one dimension of the institute’s work. Its work on best practices in geriatrics responds to America’s explosion in the older adult population and the lack of requisite practitioners to serve them. And while the majority of social work students intend to serve children and families, research has shown that those who serve older adults before graduation often choose to make careers of it.

With generous funding from friends and members of the community, the CCPA will strengthen the institute’s mission of supporting the emotional and physical well being of the local population at every stage of life.

Civic Entrepreneurship

CCPA students engage with community organizations, schools and businesses as part of their education. By creating a civic entrepreneurship program that emphasizes building social and civic, as well as economic, capital, we will inspire students with an entrepreneurial spirit to create new services and businesses that benefit the community. The Civic Entrepreneurship program, which could also develop into an undergraduate major, will invite guest lecturers and provide funding for deeper and more frequent community engagement. Our ultimate goal is to encourage more CCPA graduates to remain in and serve the Southern Tier.