Community Outreach Partnership Center
The Community Outreach Partnership Center (COPC) is an initiative to apply scholarly research to community needs. COPC leverages campus assets to equip non-profit organizations with research that increases their capacity to effectively assess needs, analyze issues, build community, and impact change. COPC projects are guided by a commitment to “civic engagement.” This model of applied scholarship is widely-embraced by research universities across the country and promotes collaborative approaches to problem-solving using applied research, training and instruction, and public outreach to help address issues and support actions which build and sustain healthy communities.
To learn more about COPC, please visit their website.
Criminology Outreach Program (COP)
The Criminology Outreach Program was established in 1999 to address the needs of under-served students in the community through an education on the legal system. The mission is to create higher education aspirations for junior high and high school students from neighboring districts that do not send a high proportion
of graduates to college. The program acquaints students with college course content and procedures to familiarize them with the issues of student life and intellectual pursuit, and to involve the students in the type of policy debates that occur in the field of criminology. The Criminology Outreach Program emphasizes four elements: critical thinking, writing, library research, and oral presentation skills. During 2007-2008, the program reached 1,314 students at 9 schools through 36 UCI mentors.
To learn more about COP, please visit their website.
Urban Water Research Center - WIN Contest
The Water Innovation Now (WIN) project was launched in 2008 in collaboration with William Habermehl, Superintendent of the Orange County Department of Education (OCDE). A contest was open to K-12 students in Orange County public and private schools to design a project offering an innovative water conservation solution. The project could be presented in any medium, including a poster design, a video/public service announcement, a PowerPoint presentation, a science project, or a song. The competition was announced to 800 schools, 27,000 teachers and 500,000 students. Students got very creative, and submitted 560 different water conservation projects. See http://win.ocde.us/Home.htm for links to the winning entries and entry information.