An Affair to Remember

In the last few weeks, students have become aware of great news: we are getting new computers in our Humphrey computer labs before the school year starts! The best part is that student organizations, PASA and CHANCE, are working together to make sure the computers are not recycled by the University, but that they are donated to various Cedar-Riverside neighborhood non-profit organizations. The Humphrey Institute is behind this effort, but we still need to fill out all the paperwork and go through the proper processes within the university system. It is going to take some time before we actually have permission to donate the computers, BUT, it should happen as everyone at the Humphrey is positive about the idea of donating our computers to the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood. Will Bear is acting as the Institute contact for the remainder of this project. A meeting will be held on Monday, July 21st with Will Bear to continue the process.

If you are curious, the policy for donation at the University can be found here: http://www.policy.umn.edu/groups/ppd/documents/Procedure/property_proc3.cfm.

Community organizations are being notified of the possibility for donations and are being asked for letters which would state how the computers will benefit their organizations and the community. A small committee of PASA members and CHANCE members will be formed to review the requests from organizations and decide how many computers each organization will receive.

This is an exciting opportunity to continue to support and foster our university and community partnerships. PASA and CHANCE will work to keep everyone up-to-date on how things proceed!

The Affair to Remember blog has received a design and structural backend refresh! I updated the blog templates to the latest version being used by all of the other Humphrey blogs, to make sure all of the blogs are easy to maintain once I leave our fine institute.

This summer, following graduation, I have been working for the Dean under the supervision of Will Bear to strengthen the blog project and get it on a sure footing for my departure at the end of the summer. So far I have redesigned and relaunched Smart Politics with HHH post-doc Eric Ostermeier and the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance, revamped the Humphrey blog digest as well as most of the other center blogs, and brought Prof. Jerry Zhao's "Fiscal Issues and Geeky Stuff" to the UThink system from it's previous home at Blogger.

It's been a great opportunity for me to work with a lot of people at the Institute across policy areas and from all generations. Next up: launching a blog called "Regionalities" with the State and Local Policy Program and collaborating with the Public and Nonprofit Leadership Center to create a blog with them. I will also be working with IT and Communications to integrate the blog content with the official Humphrey website, which will help better position the blog content as well as reduce the effort needed to keep the "official" website up-to-date.

If you're interested how the blog project began, how it has been executed, and where it is heading in the future, please check out my professional paper on the subject. You can find a PDF of my paper at the Humphrey blog digest on its About page.

PASA's "An Affair to Remember" blog was the first public blog created as a pilot for the project, and I am happy to see that the 2008 executive board has really taken it and run with it. I hope it works as a great resource for students for years to come.