UNP Beginnings

Ask nearly anyone in Utah what was happening in Salt Lake the winter of 2002, and they’ll describe the excitement of the Winter Olympics. I certainly have those same memories. I also remember the simultaneous early steps toward the creation of University Neighborhood Partners. For me, that was even more exciting than the Olympics.

It all began in 2001, after several conversations with then U of U President Bernie Machen. I started work with a very general charge to create a partnership between the University and west Salt Lake City neighborhoods. We envisioned a future in which more and more west side youth would pursue higher education. We envisioned U of U participants – faculty, staff, students – working with west Salt Lake – schools, non-profits, community councils, residents – to address social issues that impacted these neighborhoods. We envisioned U of U and neighborhood partnerships that would help everyone involved reach their goals. My immediate task was to begin to plan a way these visions could become a reality.

Prior to the 2002 Olympics, I set out to talk to as many University and west side people as possible. I wanted to find out if people in Glendale, Poplar Grove, and other west side neighborhoods wanted the U to be involved with them. I also wanted to know what west siders saw as important issues for us to address together. So I set out to interview people in schools, community centers, nonprofits, barbershops, restaurants and on campus. In the neighborhoods I posed this question: “The president of the University thinks it would be a good idea for the U to work more closely with west siders. What do you think about that idea?” The most common answer: “Well, it’s about time! ” Then I asked what people saw as issues we should address together. After about 150 interviews, I began to see themes that would define UNP work for the coming years. Residents said they didn’t want the U to provide leadership in west side neighborhoods, but they wanted help learning more themselves about how to lead. Residents said we needed to work with youth, because “we’re failing our children.” And residents wanted us to be involved with employment, education, housing, and the environment.

The first months after the Olympics are just a swirl of memories:

Looking for a location in west Salt Lake; getting an offer from Salt Lake City government to let us lease the old caretakers house in Jordan Park, if we could pay to fix it up, and then getting another offer from Intermountain Health Care and Salt Lake County government to pay for the remodel costs; watching a crew of university and neighborhood volunteers demolish the inside of the house to prepare for the remodel; fretting as every step of the remodel took longer than anticipated.

Feeling the panic when our formal opening was threatened because the required (and needed) ramp into the office was incomplete on the day before the event; admiring the Salt Lake City Director of Administrative Services as he calmly directed his workers to bring a portable ramp left over from the Olympics to our rescue; relishing the 300-person crowd that enjoyed each other at the successful opening event.

Gaining the agreement of Maria Garciaz, director of NeighborWorks and west Salt Lake resident, and Scott Matheson, Dean of the U of U Law School to co-chair the newly forming UNP Board of Advisors; securing excited agreement from others to serve on that Board; and then bringing all those leaders together to clarify our mission and vision and select a name – University Neighborhood Partners (UNP).

• Selecting a group of 12 west Salt Lake residents who agreed to serve as “Community Ambassadors” for their neighborhoods for a year. These 12 people, ranging in age from 19 to 75, played a key role in helping their University partners learn more about the neighborhoods through group and individual presentations on campus and in the new UNP house.
• Stretching our staff capacity to envision, write, and receive a major grant from HUD’s Office of University-Community Partnerships. Those early funds, paid out over a three year period, spurred new ideas and new energy among the U and community partners.
• Working through a year-long decisionmaking process with a U and neighborhood board convened to help UNP identify the actions they should take to improve educational outcomes for westside youth. The 25-member group, called YES (Youth Education and Success) created a three year plan for UNP’s educational goals and “hung in there” through lots of early morning meetings.

At the formal opening of University Neighborhood Partners, I remember President Machen making the statement that “these neighborhoods represent the future of Salt Lake City.” As a participant in the birth of the friendships, the partnerships, the programs facilitated through UNP, I have come to see the strength and the accuracy of President Machen’s words. Together, people who have spent their entire lives in west Salt Lake and others who have come from across the globe, are building a shared future that focuses on the best for their children and in the process, they are a living example of “a community coming together.”

Over the past 10 years, University Neighborhood Partners (UNP) has developed into a model for how a campus-community partnership should work. Bringing together the rich and varied cultural communities of Salt Lake City’s west side with the resources of the University of Utah has created important pathways to higher education.

A. Scott Anderson

President and Chief Executive Officer, Zions Bank