Beginning in fall of 2025, the Sabo Center entered into an active collaboration with the East Phillips Neighborhood Institute to bring EPNI staff to campus to share their ways of working, knowledge, and experiences. This provides the opportunity for our campus community to learn from people actively working in their communities, offers professional development and entry points into movement work for students and others. This work supports expansive ways of teaching that bring the practices and perspectives of working community members into curriculum, creates more engagement opportunities for our campus communities to get involved in work in our neighborhoods and provides opportunities to provide meaningful support for work in our neighborhoods.
We hosted EPNI staff on campus in Fall 2025 for a series of nine talks and workshops on a wide range of topics, including Urban Agriculture and Building Community Power, Political and Community Organizing, Making Movement Art, and Indigenous Food Sovereignty. We are now accepting proposals from our campus community, including students, staff, and faculty, for projects to be completed in collaboration with EPNI in the spring semester.
These projects work to build relationships with EPNI staff and community members and bring their knowledge and experience to campus while providing experiential and community engaged learning experiences for our campus communities. Proposals may be organized around an event, course development, lesson plan, campus project or whatever else you might imagine.
Some examples for potential projects might include:
- connecting a student group or class to work with Forest Hunt to revitalize the Indigenous Student Plot in the Community Garden
- bringing Sean Lim to your class or student organization to collaboratively plan and complete an art project (banner, screen prints, stickers, buttons) around an issue or event
- invite Kieran Morris to class to talk about the uses and importance of community gardens and urban farms for building and sustaining communities
Applications will be accepted until Friday, January 2nd. Please submit your proposal using this short Google Form or email Jenean Gilmer to discuss your ideas. You can find additional details in the form to submit proposals. Please reach out to Jenean with any questions or concerns at gilmerje@augsburg.edu.
Sabo Center staff manage the project with support from the Sabo Center Community Engagement Council. Questions can be directed to Jenean Gilmer, gilmerje@augsburg.edu.