Blog

CHER January 2021 Newsletter

For more than twenty years Trinity’s Office of Community Service and Civic Engagement has organized two annual holiday drives — the Thanksgiving Drive and Sponsor-a-Snowman drive — to partner with Hartford organizations providing food and toy donations in the city.

The Center for Hartford Engagement and Research is pleased to debut project web pages that were created by our 2020 Community Learning Research Fellows.

Trinfo.Café will host a Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) clinic for the third year, opening on February 9th.

CHER shoutouts recognize students, alumni, staff, faculty, and community partners who contribute to CHER programming. Today we’re recognizing Bea Dresser ’22 for her valuable participation in many CHER programs, as well as her recent service on a CHER hiring committee and in recruiting community-engaged prospective students to Trinity.

Cynthia Mena began as program manager at Trinfo Cafe and the Office of Community Relations in November 2020. Trinfo's student social media specialist Wendy Salto '22 interviewed Cynthia to get to know more about her and her new role. 

In Rebecca Pappas' online Community Learning course "Performing Hartford," students learned about local arts infrastructures and “nested arts ecosystems” that allow artists to emerge outside of traditional organizational structures.

Newsletter for late fall 2020

We've had a few new team members since the summer. Abby Fisher Williamson joined as CHER's director in July and Gabby Nelson joined as Assistant Director of Urban Engaged Learning in October.

This semester the COVID pandemic has prompted us to think about community engagement, including Community Learning courses, creatively and often in entirely new ways.