We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
The Community Engagement Academy: A Community-Campus Partnership Project to Improve Community Health and Academic Use of a Local Park.
- Authors
Quenichet, Karrie; Antonini, Amanda; Iacono, Tamara (Tam); King, Kristi M.
- Abstract
To increase the usage of a local park's numerous amenities, a park system in Louisville partnered with University of Louisville's Community Engagement Academy to allow interdisciplinary teams of graduate students and their faculty mentors an opportunity to practice community-engaged scholarship. During the pilot year (2015-2016) a needs assessment conducted by a previous cohort of Community Engagement Fellows indicated that utilizing the Outdoor Classroom to engage middle and high school students in outdoor classroom experiences can benefit student's academic successes as well as increase park usage. Building from the recommendations of the needs assessment, the current cohort of Community Engagement Fellows (2016-2017) are preparing a program proposal to the park director with the mission to provide educational and health programs to students in a safe and natural environment. The Generalized Model for Program Planning serves as the guiding framework to plan the proposal. The goals of the intervention are to provide interactive, field learning experiences and excursions for students, increasing attendance of students at the park, and improving student health attitudes and behaviors. Detailed interventions include "Snap into the Park" to increase physical activity and "Disconnect to Connect" to improve mindfulness and stress resilience. Measurement of the intervention's effectiveness includes park frequency usage as well as measures of attitudes and perceived challenges towards field trips at the park. Demographic and Theory of Planned Behavior constructs measuring health would be assessed as well. Once the interventions are implemented the evaluation surveys would continue as a means to measure objectives, student satisfaction, confidence levels with skills, and overall attitude toward behavior change. A program proposal will be presented to the park system director on behalf of the Community Engagement Academy Fellows in Spring 2017.
- Subjects
COMMUNITY involvement; PUBLIC health; STUDENT health
- Publication
Kentucky SHAPE JOURNAL, 2017, Vol 54, Issue 2, p58
- ISSN
1071-2577
- Publication type
Article