Dear friends, partners and supporters of CommUniverCity,
I am thrilled to present to you CommUniverCity’s 2014-15 annual report. This report marks a landmark anniversary for our community-university-city partnership, which started 10 years ago with a gleam in Dean Emerita Susan Meyer’s eyes. Over 200 partners and friends of CommUniverCity joined us in May at the Roosevelt Community Center to celebrate and to honor our dear friend Joan Rivas-Cosby with the third annual Golden Brick Award in recognition of her long-term dedication to the well-being of our downtown communities. We also honored 130 amazing CommUniverCitans of the Decade who have made the partnership grow from a small seed into the rich, prolific orchard it has become.
The 2014-2015 academic year bore many fruits in recognition of CommUniverCity’s work, most significantly SJSU and the City of San José’s commitment to provide ongoing financial support for our engagement with downtown communities in years to come.
Katherine Cushing, who joined us just last January as our Associate Director, submitted on our behalf a winning application to the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) for our community engagement efforts—and we are heading to State College, Pennsylvania, in September to compete with three other regional finalists for the national award.
Last year also marked an amazing victory for the newly formed BART Alum Rock Village Transit Advocates (BARVTA), who rallied up support from grassroots groups and community supporters from all over San José to make sure that the much awaited Alum Rock BART station will stay in the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority’s plans to extend BART to downtown San José.
Finally, I’d like to give special thanks to Mariaclara Zazzaro and Veronica Bliman who have worked endless hours to produce this superb report that we now want to share proudly with the world!
We look forward to working with you to make 2015-2016 another richly rewarding year for CommUniverCity and its partners.
In community spirit,
Dayana Salazar
Executive Director