Social Impact Fellows program places students at WNY nonprofits

BUFFALO, N.Y. – Though she’s just beginning the law portion of her JD/MBA coursework at the University at Buffalo, Emily Dickey already knows the kind of lawyer she wants to be. She wants to connect with the community she is trying to help, “not just study it from a distance.”

Enter UB’s Social Impact Fellows program. Like other fellows before her, Dickey embraced the program’s in-depth, nuanced, hands-on approach to addressing and advancing the mission of nonprofit partners in Western New York.

Dickey says her passion is strategic advocacy and collaborative engagement across disciplines. She found exactly that working with three other UB graduate students this summer at Habitat for Humanity Buffalo.

Her experience is just one success story from a summer program that Tom Murdock calls “uniquely UB.”

“With its interdisciplinary focus and real-world application, the program is really without peer across the country,” says Murdock, clinical associate professor in the School of Management and program co-leader with Michael Lynch, clinical associate professor in the UB School of Social Work.

“Our fellows value the opportunity to work with and learn from students from other backgrounds,” says Murdock. “And our nonprofit partners appreciate the practical impact our student teams are able to achieve.”

Since 2017, more than 200 UB students have taken part in the Social Impact Fellows program in more than 70 different internships in the Buffalo area. 

The program draws students from the School of Management, School of Social Work, College of Arts and Sciences, and the School of Public Health and Health Professions.

Once accepted, students form multidisciplinary teams and spend eight weeks interning with local mission-driven organizations.

They spend Mondays through Thursdays at their host site. While there, the fellows learn about pertinent issues, meet with those working on or affected by these problems and develop solutions to address them. They gather Friday mornings with UB faculty members who coach them on identifying, defining and generating solutions for social challenges.

In addition to Habitat for Humanity Buffalo, other nonprofit partners this summer were the Michigan Street African American Heritage Corridor, Buffalo Center for the Arts and Technology, CCNY Inc., and the Collaborative Center for Social Innovation.

Dickey and her team built a strategy to address housing issues on Buffalo’s East Side. In this section of the city, which has some of its oldest housing stock, less than half of the houses are owner-occupied and many sit vacant, Dickey says.

The team worked on two initiatives. The first was Emerson Glenwood, a 16-unit affordable housing development led by Habitat. The other was Bailey Green, which is a group of community partners focused on improving the neighborhood bordered by Bailey Avenue and Scajaquada, Colorado and Genesee streets.

The central question the team examined, she says, was: How do you build the community knowledge these neighborhoods require without pulling capacity away from the work of actually building and placing homes?

The team ultimately produced a 35-page report with four parts. The first reviews previous housing analysis and findings. The second and third are a community survey of neighborhood residents, and a homeownership survey that may help current homeowners apply for grant funding. The last section lays out future strategies.

Dickey and her collaborators also created a “collaboration blueprint,” which includes a list of organizations and contacts to start with that is tied to the strategies they developed.

“Everything was built to shorten Habitat's learning curve in these communities without adding staff or slowing down operations,” she says.

Social Impact Fellow Cayden Edwards has always been passionate about social justice and working with underserved populations, especially the LGBTQ+ community.

A second-year MSW student in the School of Social Work, Edwards worked with the Mrs. Frances Nash's Garden Basket Farmer's Market in the Michigan Street African American Heritage Corridor.

His team worked hands-on for the market, setting up space, communicating with vendors and speaking with those attending to understand how the market can address the neighborhood's food insecurity.

"I think the Social Impact Fellows program is an incredible opportunity for a few reasons," said Edwards, who grew up in a small town near Syracuse. "It allows students to do important and paid work in their field of study over the summer.

"Second, this program allows students to get to know the community better. It allowed me to work closely with an underserved population on the East Side of Buffalo, which I previously knew very little about, and in the process taught me a great deal about Buffalo's history and why this area is still underserved today."

The program culminated July 31 with a showcase, where fellows presented their accomplishments and recommendations, and highlighted the impact of their work.

Students representing the Michigan Street African American Heritage Corridor were recognized for making an immediate impact, while students working with the Collaborative Center for Social Innovation were cited for developing the plan with the most long-term potential. Buffalo Center for Arts and Technology was honored as the host organization of the year.

The program, Murdock says, offers students “an opportunity to learn from the people around you and make a meaningful, lasting and positive difference in our community.”

“Our focus is not on ideas,” he adds, “but sustaining solutions into the future.”