UMSI students can hone valuable information skills and impact communities by participating in learning experiences or volunteer service activities that involve partnering with local and global community organizations. 

As a result of long-term, reciprocal relationships developed and maintained by the Engaged Learning Office, students have the opportunity to develop and apply the skills and knowledge in the classroom to information challenges identified by communities and organizations.

Examples of previous community engagement projects include the following:

Share Food Network, Washington, D.C.

“Our mission for the four-day-long project at SHARE Food Network in Washington, D.C. was to evaluate the usability of the current financial and warehouse management software that SHARE Food Network heavily relies on and to provide recommendations on alternatives. In addition, we studied the operating model of SHARE's counterparts in Philadelphia, Iowa and several similar programs, then produced a detailed social media presence plan to expand its social influence. At the end of the project, we provided an objective and comprehensive presentation, which will hopefully raise the attention of Catholic Charities to update SHARE's outdated systems. By doing all these, we hope SHARE can be more sustainable as a social enterprise.”

Ivy Lin, MSI ’19

The Heidelberg Project, Detroit, MI

“I worked with The Heidelberg Project over spring break making a digital version of an exhibit that they had hosted in one of their art houses in 2016. The first stage of this project was getting digitized photos on the Google Cultural Institute platform. The second stage was exhibit design. My supervisor and I decided to not make an exact replica of the 2016 exhibit, so I had freedom to curate the exhibit and locate new photos to tell the story of the organization's history.”

Carol Schuitema, MSI ’19 

Field Museum, Chicago, IL

“I created a library guide that collected in one place the Field Museum's publications on Louis Agassiz Fuertes, an early twentieth-century ornithologist and bird painter. I went through bibliographies, photographs and archival materials to create a guide. I also indexed a vertical file of his correspondence and wrote a short biography for inclusion in the guide.”

Claire Marshall, MSI ’18

Homeboy Industries, Los Angeles, CA

“Homeboy Industries is a not-for-profit organization providing hope, training, and support to formerly gang-involved and previously incarcerated people and helping them redirect their lives and become contributing members of our community.

We migrated their online shop from its existing platform to the Shopify platform. We:

• Exported inventory data from the existing platform, cleaned and reformatted the data and imported the data to the Shopify platform 
• Chose the theme and redefined the information architecture
• Created documentation and Youtube tutorial videos to guide their staff to move forward and keep the consistency.”

Kenji Kaneko, MSI ’18

Working with Student Organizations

The Engaged Learning Office partners with UMSI and U-M student organizations to help meet the information needs of community-based organizations. The Engaged Learning Office can provide the following resources to students organizations that seek to regularly incorporate community-based work into their organization’s mission and activities:

• Training of leadership and members to ethical engage in community-based projects
• Community connections and developed volunteer projects
• Funding for project completion, transportation and reasonable stipends
• Professional mentors for project guidance and development

Student organization leaders interested in learning more should email umsi[email protected].

UMSI Service Week

UMSI Service Week is a week-long event dedicated to participation in service projects in Ann Arbor and surrounding communities. The entire UMSI community is invited to engage with local community partners by working on identified service projects throughout the week in non-profit organizations around the Ann Arbor area. These projects leverage a wide range of skills from the UMSI community, from painting and archiving to cleaning and conducting quick usability analysis.

When: Fall (usually November)

Eligibility: All UMSI students, faculty, staff and alumni

Interested in any of these programs? Email [email protected]