-- DRAFT -RIGHT MESSAGE, RIGHT MESSENGERS: THE CURRENCY OF COMPASSION
EX[L] Center White Paper Proposal
Dr. Rebecca J. Erickson and Dr. Matthew T. Lee
Project Description
The “Right Message, Right Messengers” (RM2) initiative includes three projects that use unique combinations of studentfaculty resources to identify, develop, and replicate best practices for significantly improving the compassion capability of
NE Ohio communities and organizations – that is, the routine practice of noticing, feeling, and effectively responding to
others’ suffering. The RM2 projects address this overarching goal by solving problems initially identified by community
members. As the initiative develops, faculty and students will have the opportunity to be involved in a tiered experiential
learning process – one that begins by helping students to practice and master their disciplinary skills in the service of
solving a specific “real world” problem under the direction of a faculty advisor. Then they are mentored so that they
become change leaders empowered to create and sustain messages and interactions that improve their personal lives and
their communities.
Project 1: Extending the Compassion Capability Project – Serving Those Who Serve Others. This project extends on
two fronts the current work we (Erickson and Lee) are completing with two Akron-area behavioral health organizations
that is funded by the Margaret Clark Morgan Foundation (MCMF) and which uses evidence-based methods to identify
and enhance compassion capability. Our first extension will be in collaboration with Dr. Robert Schwartz (School of
Counseling, College of Health Professions) and will apply what we have learned about measuring and enhancing
organizational compassion capability to other behavioral health organizations within NE Ohio. We will be seeking further
funding from local organizations. Members of a current cohort of graduate students from the School of Counseling will
become integral members of our team as they serve as participant observers within their own internship organizations.
Through the use of a pre-test/post-test design we will seek to better understand the internship experience through the use
of written questionnaires and the longitudinal use of audio diaries documenting the students’ internship-related
experiences. As such, this project has the potential to yield in-depth understanding of the best practices underlying
compassion capability in human service organizations as well as creating an experiential learning and research
opportunity for this cohort of counseling students. We plan to extend our research team to include undergraduate students
in conjunction with related social scientific methods courses and/or the courses connected to the new Certificate in
Conflict Transformation & Social Entrepreneurship (under the leadership of Dr. Bill Lyons). The results of this project
will be “fed back” into the UA educational system to serve as the basis for teaching/learning recommendations that could
be implemented across the counseling curriculum and in direct response to the “real world” needs of future UA students
and the organizations that hire them. Our second extension involves a collaboration with a local non-profit to expand its
programming to develop compassionate leaders in the Akron area. This non-profit will seek funding from a Foundation to
expand a leadership and values program it has operated for a decade at a local high school. This will involve young
leaders (ages 18-24) in the program, which will also include students in Dr. Lee’s classes. The program connects
compassion with both entrepreneurship and civic engagement by having students and young leaders participate in
community organizations that have used an entrepreneurial model to compassionately address local social issues. It seeks
to increase the compassion capability in the local community while also addressing a key question facing Akron and the
surrounding region: “How do you attract and retain local leaders?” (http://wksu.org/post/study-reveals-struggles-andhope-akron#stream/0).
Project 2: The Frontline Model – From Documenting in Cleveland to Replication in Akron. Since 2008, Frontline
Service (a Cleveland-based behavioral health organization) and the Cleveland Division of Police have worked closely
with one another to respond to the needs of children and adults who have witnessed or experienced a homicide. Although
this complex relationship has been deemed successful by both organizations and community members, no one has yet
documented the steps through which these two organizations and their members worked together to develop their
collaborative approach and to keep it functioning effectively and efficiently over a number of years. The purpose of this
project is to use social scientific methods to document the creation of this inter-organizational collaboration, and the
compassionate organizational practices that enable its continued success, with the goal of replicating it within other Ohio
communities such as Akron. Initial funding for this project has been requested from a Foundation while further funding
will be sought from other sources. Although Dr. Erickson’s receipt of a professional development leave will enable her to
initially lead the data collection effort, its success relies on a range of interdisciplinary collaborations from across the
university and NE Ohio community. Drs. Lee, Lyons and Behrman are key for understanding how the knowledge and
skills mastered by students in the classes associated with the Certificate in Conflict Transformation & Social
Entrepreneurship might be applied within the context of a research team involved in different phases of data collection,
analysis, and dissemination of project results. The expertise of Dr. Markus Vogl, his graphic design students, and
potentially others from UA’s School of Art, will be integral from the start as part of the initial funding supports a design
challenge among students for the development of better promotional, presentation, and outcome materials for “The
Frontline Model.” The possibilities (and pitfalls) associated with replicating The Frontline Model in Akron requires the
development of further collaborations across campus and within the larger community as well as opportunities to create
unique, tiered learning experiences for students within, for example, the proposed interdisciplinary Criminology and
Criminal Justice program, Law, Counseling, Art, Business, English, Sociology, Psychology, and Anthropology (among
others).
As the preceding statements suggest, this project is being designed to not only be used as a basis for developing a
replicable “best practices” model in regard to mental health and policing but also to construct a teaching/learning model
for fostering public-private partnerships between local area organizations and the human resources located within The
University of Akron. We are hopeful that the initial launch of this project will take place in close conjunction with the
official opening of the EX[L] Center.
Project 3: Why Is Cleveland Different?: Right Message, Right Messengers.
“This issue is bigger than me, it’s about everyone.” LeBron James responding to the Tamir Rice grand jury outcome
“But why has Cleveland avoided the fury of Ferguson and Baltimore? Why, with each new police encounter, did the
accelerant that was ready to ignite the keg not get spilled?
Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association President Steve Loomis says that media call him from all over the world,
asking, "What's in the water in Cleveland? Why is Cleveland different?” Frost-Brooks, Richards and Sondhe (June
2015; http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/06/cleveland_has_just_seen_values.html)
The final project is one that is larger in scope, shorter on details, and full of possibility. As the preceding quotes show,
constructing a NE Ohio community where the currency of compassion moves freely among all community members and
is part of everyone’s lived experience has been tested. The opinion piece by Frost-Brooks et al. suggests that in the face of
stringent tests (e.g., the deaths of Timothy Russell, Malissa Williams, Tamir Rice, Tanisha Anderson) the right message
was spread by a number of superb messengers….and Cleveland did not burn. While there have been a few news stories
noting this fact, not many details are known about exactly how the message was spread so effectively and who were the
most central partners. We believe that with the support of the EXL Center and the effective harnessing of student and
faculty resources at UA, the RM2 initiative could work toward the documentation of “what happened” along with a
specification of best practices that could become the basis for promoting more peaceful responses within other
communities across the globe. What specific practices for noticing, feeling, and effectively responding to the suffering of
the community were, and continue to be, demonstrated in Cleveland – among politicians, clergy, police, business leaders,
community leaders, and members of nonprofits? Dr. Lee’s expertise related to both criminology and compassion place
him in a unique position to shepherd this project into existence. As with the other projects, however, this would require a
broad basis of collaboration with those in the criminal justice program, the school of law, political science, and elsewhere.
The underlying connections between this project and the other two would further enable us to create tiered experiential
learning opportunities from the moment a student arrives on campus. We re-envision the “freshman read” at UA to
become the “freshman experience” as students are led by more experienced undergraduate peers, graduate students, and
faculty through the different methods of obtaining and applying knowledge about such phenomena as “police-community
relations.” This could then be built upon through a series of team-based learning opportunities that would enable the
practice of disciplinary skills focused on real world issues and designed to lead to the graduation of UA students who are
not merely leaders in their fields but linchpins in the creation of communities that, in the words of Frost-Brooks et al.,
model kindness, caring, respect, and enable success.
In sum, we believe there is an opportunity to build a new set of collaborative partnerships between the EX[L] Center and
the region’s human service organizations and surrounding communities.
- UA’s EXL Center would provide key human resources for helping area organizations identify and address their
needs and problems.
- EXL Center Fellows (and their students) would work with organizational members to develop site-specific
knowledge about what is most needed for success within different occupational sectors and communities.
- Teaching/Learning modules related to organizational/professional needs would be developed and implemented across
the curriculum at UA (and in direct response to “real life” lessons learned addressing organizationally-identified
problems.
- Lessons learned will come to modify organizational/community cultures throughout the region and inform UA’s future
curricular content. Increasing numbers of NE Ohio community members, led by UA graduates, would understand the
various “currencies of compassion” and how to nurture their own and others capacity for compassion.