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At Lafayette, Bonnie Winfield, director of the Landis Community Outreach Center, seeks to build a direct partnership between the College and the surrounding Easton community.
She stresses the importance of working together for the betterment of one whole community, not two separate ones. Her current focus is Kids in the Community (KIC), a program she modeled after Philadelphia’s MURAL Project.
“[I would like] KIC to become a full-fledged community arts program because community arts programs are vital in gang prevention and academic enhancement. We can enhance the lives of the kids while enhancing the community at the same time,” Winfield says.
Winfield is also looking forward to the retreat for Landis Center staff, which will focus on getting to know Easton’s West Ward, by cleaning up and painting a pavilion in Jackson Street Park and working with the Shade Tree Commission to plant trees on Arbor Day.
She believes the mission of a college is to provide experience for civic engagement because it can change a campus and increase the dynamics in the classroom.
“John Dewey believed there should be a seamless tapestry between the community, the campus, and the students, and that learning happens in all areas of student life. Having a community outreach center directly relates students’ [classroom] learning to real life. Through community outreach centers students are also introduced to many different ways of knowing and diversity,” she says. “It also bridges the ‘town-gown’ divide. When members of the Easton community and Lafayette students are working side by side, there is a breakdown of the divide between College Hill and Easton. Nancy Cantor[, President and Chancellor of Syracuse University,] has a program called ‘The Soul of Syracuse,’ which integrates the arts and public service into the community. I feel the same way; the soul of Lafayette College needs to connect to the soul of Easton, and we can do this by directly linking them, using the arts and civic engagement.”
For Winfield, the path to Lafayette started in Nicaragua.
While spending time in Nicaragua, Winfield visited a mountain clinic, where she was moved by the collective consciousness of the Nicaraguan people, and their efforts to make their lives better. Inspired, she asked a local professor what she could do to help, to which he replied that she needed to go back to the United States and teach people about democracy, teach them how to reach out to others in this world.
Winfield did just that.
“I first went to college at the age of 35,” Winfield says. “I went right through from my bachelor’s to my master’s to my doctorate. I figured becoming a professor was the most effective way to reach people.”
Winfield attended Syracuse University, receiving a doctorate from its Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs in interdisciplinary social science (program on the analysis and resolution of conflict), a master’s degree in sociology, and a bachelor’s degree in liberal studies.
Before coming to Lafayette, she taught numerous public affairs and citizenship & commitment classes at Tusculum College, Binghamton University, and Syracuse University. It was during this time that she realized she wanted to move to a new place where she could bring the many parts of a college institution together.
“I wanted to start building bridges between academics, student life, and the community,” she says.
Under Winfield’s direction, the Landis Center has organized many events for the fall semester. Events include: