Using the power of sport, Husky Sport will collaborate with community and campus partners to support youth and college student development through shared teaching, learning, and practice committed to equity. Husky Sport will work to facilitate positive, sustained, and reciprocal relationships, between members of the Hartford’s North End and University of Connecticut communities (Campus-Community Partnership).

Campus

Through collaborations with students, volunteers, alumni, staff, faculty, and campus programs, Husky Sport will work to enhance both systemic and individual development at the University of Connecticut.

Husky Sport will work to develop supportive spaces to facilitate enhancement of knowledge and practice in the fields of sport-based youth development, teaching and learning around diversity, social justice and equity. Participant development will be supported through rigorous experiential learning (Service Learning), on-going professional development (Community of Practice), and additional organizational initiatives aligned with missions of the Sport Management Program, the Department of Educational Leadership, the Neag School of Education, and the University of Connecticut (Scholarship). 

Outcomes

Husky Sport’s campus engagement should reveal progress toward the following objectives, with particular focus on college student development outcomes:

• Value stakeholder voices in co-constructing identified needs/desires within partnerships
• Develop reciprocal relationships, while actively dismantling savior-mentality and approach
• Enhance beliefs, knowledge, attitudes, and social competency among diverse participants
• Increase knowledge and application as teachers, learners, and practitioners of SBYD
• Increase student attitudes, behaviors, and intended behaviors associated with social justice
• Build diverse networks for exchange of social capital

Find at University of Connecticut Academic Vision and Neag School of Education and additional citations: (Bruening, Fuller, & Percy, 2015; Dewey, 1916; Kolb and Fry, 1975; Kolb; 1984; Bringle & Hatcher, 1996; Bringle & Hatcher, 2002; Bruening, et al., 2010; Conway, Amel, & Gerwien, 2009; Peters, 2011; Enfield & Collins, 2008; Bruening, et al., 2014; Fuller, et al., 2015)

CONTACT:

Justin Evanovich, Ph.D. Sport Management

justin.evanovich@uconn.edu

Community

Building upon the power of sport as a common denominator in relationship building and tool for supporting youth development, Husky Sport will engage in shared program planning, delivery, and evaluation that encompasses a larger number of youth participants, along a greater age continuum (K–12), and in more aspects of a child’s growth process within Hartford’s North End communities. As part of school time and out of school time support towards youth development, program pillars will include teaching, learning, and application of physical activity, healthy nutrition, transferable life skills, and academic enrichment (Sport-Based Youth Development). 

Outcomes

Husky Sport’s community engagement should reveal progress toward the following objectives, with particular focus on youth development outcomes:

• Increased self esteem/self worth as participants gain interest, knowledge and improve their physical abilities
• Increased accountability/responsibility for self as part of a small program with considerable individual attention
• Increased connections to community/sense of belonging through working closely with mentors, mentees, and peers
• Increased knowledge/acquisition of nutrition/physical activity/life skills/academic skills from the curriculum
• Application of those skills both within program, school, home, and community activities
• Active participation/recognizing one’s own influence on self/others through power-sharing

Additional citations: Bruening, Dover & Clark, 2009; Perkins & Noam, 2007; Pittman, et al., 2002; National Institute on Out-of-School Time at Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, Harvard Family Research Project After School Program Quality Assessment Categories of Standards, DC Standards for Out-of-School Time, The Community Network for Youth Development’s Youth Development Framework for Practice, Team Up For Youth’s Building Blocks for Quality Youth Sports.

Husky Nutrition educates Connecticut residents who are in greatest need about nutrition, physical activities, and lifestyle choices that promote greater health. Working with UConn students, we facilitate Community Engagement Programs (Service Learning) that decrease disparities in food and nutrition-related conditions and diseases, food security, and food access. We do this by:

• Promoting positive behavior change in the food-related and physical activities of adults, families and children; and/or
• Impacting systems-level changes to improve access to healthy food and encourage opportunities to be physically active.

Students from many academic disciplines gain knowledge and experience to improve their skills. Utilizing strong community partnerships, students participate in programs that serve underserved, limited resource children, families and adults throughout Connecticut.

Overview

The Husky Nutrition (NUSC 3171) course emphasizes community service, with learning laboratory and site lesson plan development all focused on enhancing the applied, community experience. UConn students enrolled in this course increase their understanding of nutrition and health in underserved Connecticut communities, gain skills in conveying healthy nutrition messages to families, and solidify their cultural competence. At the community site, students interact with parents or caregivers and their children, engaging them and delivering brief, healthy nutrition messages when the parents and caregivers come to pick up their children.

Course Goals

1. To understand the principles of healthy nutrition messaging and be able to convey these principles in the community;
2. To positively impact community health and well-being by providing nutrition education to parents and caregivers of preschool children that results in reducing children’s consumption of sweetened beverages; and
3. To listen to and learn from parents, caregivers, and children about their communities in order to understand what works to improve good nutrition and what challenges they face.

Contact

Heli Roy, Ph.D., RD
heroy@uchc.edu

Husky Nutrition Summer Scholars

Every summer, Husky Nutrition offers a paid internship for undergraduate and graduate level students studying at UConn. Husky Scholars (interns) act as role models and mentors by developing lessons and sharing healthy eating and physical activity messages to participants in under served areas throughout Connecticut.

Husky Scholars participate in active community engagement by:

• Delivering and creating nutrition education lessons to participants across the lifespan through Husky Reads, the On-the-Go Healthy Beverage Series, and the Husky Smart Shopping programs.
• Assisting with research projects and with media projects associated with the SNAP4CT Online Nutrition Education platform.

Contact

Susan Furbish, RDN
furbish@uchc.edu

Resources

Nondiscrimination Statement

Contact

Susan Coleman
sucoleman@uchc.edu