15 Years of Impact

We at UNP are excited — very excited! Our 15-year anniversary gives us the opportunity to share our impact and to understand more clearly how our work is helpful to our shared communities. We recognize that the findings don’t belong to us alone; rather that they are yours, they are ours, they are all of ours. We are strengthened by this and believe collective success reveals shared ownership of the work and is a significant sign of a healthy endeavor and process.

Over the years UNP has grappled with authentic and effective ways to capture and share our impact. We are a unique entity at the University and across institutions of higher education nationally, and we have emerged as a young pioneer in a developing field, which means we have had little blue print to follow. We are excited to report that since 2016 we have made great strides in capturing our work through close collaboration with Dr. Kara Byrne from the Social Research Institute at the College of Social Work. She led UNP through a process of rethinking how we measure success, and to the creation of UNP’s Theory of Change and 6 Areas of Impact. Our hope is that this serves as a useful model for other universities engaged in this work.

What follows is a description of these foundational impact pieces as well as a snapshot of our outcomes and lessons learned over the last fifteen years. The information is meant to enhance the stories within this publication, bring cohesion to our learning and illuminate the magnitude to which success and growth is occurring. The information was gathered in much the same way that UNP started: by building relationships, by asking questions and by listening. The findings are significant…revealing personal, professional, familial and systemic shifts, as well as the beginning of generational impact within families and across university departments as early-involved faculty pass the torch to new faculty. Further, UNP appears a healthy organization that is dynamic, deeply committed to issues of equity, constantly evolving, ok with taking risks, and continually engaged in understanding itself and its work. Charlottee Fife-Jepperson speaks to this on page 3 when she deftly compares UNP and its’ growth to a garden; an unruly garden that is built on the strengths of the community and is evolving organically. She then goes on to envision the future, hoping that this way of working continues to run through UNP’s veins.

As we move with her into planning for the future, we share this sentiment. We hope to honor what she and others have told us and what we have learned together. We strive to glean new ideas from our success, learn from our mistakes, and be thoughtful about the future. And, then, we must remember that we are only 15 years old! We are young in the timeframes of institutional change and efforts toward economic, cultural and educational equity. We have a lot to learn and we must keep asking questions; new kinds of questions that we create together.

Happy birthday to our unruly garden!