SpringfieldNewsSun.com

Universities teach, right? They're educational institutions and that's their primary directive and what we expect them to do. They take kids out of high schools and teach them what they need to know to make their way and thrive in a complicated world.

"Having light, we pass it on to others," is the lofty motto of Wittenberg University here in Springfield.

But Wittenberg sees itself as more than just an educational institution, and all of us should be glad of that.

It sees itself as a citizen of this community.

This past week we saw that exemplified when the school announced establishment of a Center for Civic & Urban Engagement.

It's an engine for collaboration between the university and the community where it lives.

The goal is to do more to connect students and faculty at the university to efforts to improve life in Springfield.

The center has a community advisory board that helps it identify specific areas of focus. The four initial targets are renewing the core of the city around Buck Creek, strengthening afterschool programs for at-risk kids, helping the community identify and prepare for future job opportunities, and improving the quality of neighborhood housing.

The faculty director of the center will be Springfield Mayor Warren Copeland. By the way, he's one of the more interesting and unusual mayors I've encountered in my long career as a journalist. When he isn't politicking and helping run the city, he's a professor of religion and director of urban studies at Wittenberg.

"This is a dream come true for me," Copeland said as the center was announced last week. He's quick to credit Lin Erickson, the hyperenergetic wife of Wittenberg President Mark Erickson, for making the center happen. She's director of government, corporate and foundation relations for the university.

So exactly what will the Center for Civic & Urban Engagement do?

Copeland, who knows his stuff about the challenges that urban communities face, wants it to help the university bring more of its considerable research and other resources to bear on Springfield's problems. At the same time, it will educate students and connect them to the community outside the campus boundaries.

How can we improve academic performance in our schools and reduce juvenile delinquency, for example? The Center, with a $624,000 federal grant, will first study and determine how well various afterschool programs are meeting the needs of at-risk youth. Then it will seek to build collaboration among providers of these programs to assure more effective service to these kids.

What's good for Wittenberg will be good for Springfield, Mark Erickson said the other day. "We are inextricably tied one to another," he said.

This won't be like flipping a switch and watching the magical transformation of the city. But it is part of a process that over time can achieve important things. I've seen it happen elsewhere.

In Dayton, where I worked for many years before coming to Springfield, the University of Dayton demonstrated what a private university can accomplish in cooperation with city government and a nearby neighbor, Miami Valley Hospital.

Over a period of years, they have made impressive progress at transforming a down-at-the-heels commercial strip along Brown Street and the surrounding declining neighborhoods into a vibrant asset for Dayton. There are attractive restaurants and shops. Shabby housing has been renovated. Take a drive down Brown from the university to the hospital and you'll see what I mean.

Wittenberg always has been an asset for Springfield, just by being here as a successful institution of higher education.

But having them as a partner passionately engaged in revitalizing the core city makes them much more valuable to the community.

Steve Sidlo is the editor and publisher of the Springfield News-Sun.