About HECUA

Our Story

Purpose, Mission, Vision

Purpose

HECUA is an independent, non-profit organization founded and governed by member institutions of higher education. HECUA exists to enrich the liberal arts education mission of each of its member institutions with experiential, cross-disciplinary learning programs and other related activities best achieved through inter-institutional cooperation.

Mission

HECUA builds academic-community partnerships for social change. HECUA uses community-based learning methods to explore the dynamic relationships between theory and practice and to equip students with skills and knowledge for building just communities and societies.

Vision

HECUA will be a source of inspiration for students, faculty, member institutions, and the communities where our programs take place.  It will:

• provide a model for the integration of domestic and international student learning;
• foster democratic movement-building with local and international partner organizations;
• sustain lasting relationships with faculty and staff at member schools that allow the consortium to be continually renewed and reinvigorated;
• communicate about the multiple impacts of HECUA programs in visible and compelling ways;
• seek to dismantle the barriers that prevent students from participating in HECUA programs for all students who desire the opportunity to participate; and
• practice the kind of equity, justice and inclusiveness that we teach and learn about with our students and communities.

Education for Equality and Justice

Values

HECUA programs employ a philosophy of education that values equality and justice in our classrooms and communities. We believe:

• that everyone is a teacher and a learner and that knowledge valuable to social change comes from many places, including the community and the academy;
• that how we act in the world and how we understand our actions and outcomes are intricately linked in the process of social change. Thus, we must continually act, reflect, and make meaning of our learning experiences in the classroom and in the community;
• that all knowledge of social reality has historical, political, and economic contexts. Our role as teachers and learners is to explore the perspectives that arise from these diverse contexts;
• that our role as educators is to assist learners in developing and articulating a sense of values and ethics in relation to the world and to facilitate the development of skills to act with passion and purpose in their communities;
• that at the heart of our engagement with the world is a consistent and critical mode of thinking that asks difficult questions concerning power, perspective, access, and interests.

Methods

Issues of social justice can be discussed in a classroom. The lessons learned are more powerful, however, when they are put into practice. HECUA gives students the chance to bridge their academic learning with direct experience. It leads students deep into communities to apply academic theories in the real world. Students develop critical analyses and hands-on skills for creating social change.

HECUA offers students dynamic learning environments. Methods include seminars, field research, independent and group study projects, and substantive internships. Instructors are teams of local teachers including Ph.D. faculty members. Teaching teams serve as mentors, advisors, co-learners and connections to the community. Academic seminars are integrated with internships and/or field studies to allow students to put classroom theories into practice. Equally important, students challenge classroom theories based on their community experience. Programs require all students to actively participate in their own learning and contribute to the learning of the whole group.

HECUA learning is transformational. Our teaching philosophy takes students and faculty into the community to learn from practitioners of social change. The result is informed and engaged student citizens.

Our History

The roots of the Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs trace back to the 1968 riots and fires in North Minneapolis following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The urgency and turbulence of the situation prompted Ewald (Joe) Bash, National Youth Director of the American Lutheran Church, to seek out an Augsburg College sociology professor named Joel Torstenson to form a unique program for college students called the Crisis Colony. Bash and Torstenson had both been active in developing new ways to understand the nature of the urban crisis.

Bash was familiar with the struggles of the North Side community through his work as an active member of Prince of Glory Church there. Torstenson had recently completed a sabbatical, which allowed him time to investigate how urban campuses across the country were responding to urban crises. He found Augsburg administrators receptive to a new approach in the emerging field of urban studies.

The Crisis Colony presented an audacious challenge to the institutions of higher education at the time: Take students out of the classroom and into the streets, where their learning could be tested by the strife and struggle of the times. While such “experiential learning” programs were then almost nonexistent, Torstenson was a forward-thinking academic, studying how American colleges were responding to the urgent challenges of contemporary civil rights struggles, anti-war protests, and urban decay.

With Augsburg’s approval the Crisis Colony opened its doors in June 1968. Eighteen students from several area colleges lived together for eight weeks in a Catholic parish house in a predominantly black North Minneapolis neighborhood on Plymouth Avenue. Students were encouraged to become closely involved in community activities, ranging from forming a neighborhood newspaper to participating in neighborhood churches to working in public housing. Students had seminars on urban issues taught by local community leaders and by Professor Torstenson. There were no exams, and the only written requirement was a daily journal of observations, feelings, and impressions to help make sense of conflicting perspectives.

With the support of the office of the president at Augsburg, a second Crisis Colony was planned and launched in 1969. However, Augsburg dean Ken Bailey recognized that the costly program needed more support to continue operation, so he recruited faculty from other colleges to develop a new cooperative urban studies center. This council formed the predecessor of HECUA, which was formally incorporated in 1971.

Today

After 40 years we have grown to be a consortium of 16 liberal arts colleges, universities and associations dedicated to education for social justice. Together we shape academically rigorous, off-campus study programs that address the most pressing issues in our neighborhoods, nations and world. Our unique educational collaboration engages students, faculty and practitioners in learning that generates knowledge and tools for social transformation and community building.

At HECUA we still learn by doing, reflecting and acting with others. HECUA specializes in integrating theory and practice, bringing together key disciplines that equip students to be active citizens and leaders – locally and globally.