Lasting Impact
Community Fellows Program Contributes to Regional Vitality
When the City of Allentown was awarded an historic $20 million federal grant in August 2024 – the largest competitive non-infrastructure grant in the city’s history – community collaboration was key. The city became one of only six in the United States to receive funding for its Recompete Plan, a place-based investment program aimed at relieving economic challenges. Senior City Planner Trevor Tormann ’23G, who led the work on the proposal, was applying the skills he honed as part of Lehigh’s Community Fellows Program.
“We had about 40 local and regional not-for-profit partners who are involved in creation of this plan… And it was great to see it all come together,” Tormann says. “It's an affirmation of the work that a lot of people in the city of Allentown and around us are already doing.”
Community-focused work has been at the center of the Community Fellows Program in the more than two decades since its founding in 2001. The program, which pairs graduate students with public and nonprofit organizations, is designed to build partnerships with an emphasis on community and economic development. It supports one of the key initiatives in Lehigh’s strategic plan by fostering connections among Lehigh, the City of Bethlehem and the Lehigh Valley. The program has had a lasting impact on the region, as Fellows often remain after graduation working and making contributions in community organizations.
Tormann gained skills in city planning and fostering engagement as a Community Fellow in the City of Bethlehem’s Office of Community and Economic Development. As a Fellow, he completed work related to Bethlehem’s housing needs assessment strategic plan. “I had been plugged into the community engagement component of that project by helping the office get out the surveys, log data, and then provide some reports to the more senior-level staff,” Tormann says.
While taking the graduate course “Mapping Data for Public Policy,” Tormann completed a class assignment that was tied to his work as a Fellow. By examining the city’s zoning code and pairing it with his mapping work, he was able to conclude that by making certain changes to zoning ordinances, Bethlehem could create more housing opportunities. When the city published its strategic plan for increasing affordable housing, “Opening Doors: Strategies to Build Housing Stability in Bethlehem,” some of Tormann’s recommendations were included.
The experience he gained in Bethlehem prepared him for the job he now holds in Allentown.
“I think having the technical background and the technical training from Lehigh and the professional experience from my fellowship in Bethlehem, allowed my transition into Allentown to be that much quicker,” says Tormann, who majored in political science at Loyola University Maryland before earning a master’s degree in public policy at Lehigh.
In Allentown’s Recompete Project, Tormann will be part of a team partnering with community organizations to support neighborhoods, facilitate local employment, expand access to childcare, invest in transportation options, and build connections to high opportunity industries.
Current Community Fellow Huda Hagos ’24 will be working with Tormann on the Allentown initiative. “It’s a great office to just get to learn from everybody. Everyone has different backgrounds, and Trevor also was in the program right before me too – so that’s a really great person to be working under,” says Hagos, who earned her bachelor’s degree in environmental studies with a minor in political science. She is studying for a master’s degree in public policy.
A Win-Win
Community Fellowships are awarded to students enrolled in Lehigh’s one-year master’s degree programs in political science, public policy or environmental policy. To be considered, applicants submit letters of interest that outline their goals. Those who are chosen are paired with community partners in government, health care and the nonprofit sector. They work 15 to 20 hours a week – approximately 700 hours total – from September through August of the following year. Fellows pay for 9 graduate credits, while the remaining 21 credits are funded by Lehigh and partner agencies.
Although the financial support received is valuable, the opportunity for meaningful work experience is a primary motivator for applicants.
“The opportunity to be in the Fellows Program and do something tangible in the community is definitely a draw,” says Christian Martinez ’23G, who was hired by the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission after being a Fellow there.
The number of community partners and the areas of focus vary from year to year.
The process of choosing Community Fellows centers on matching applicant interests with available partners, explains program director Karen Beck Pooley, professor of practice in political science.
“Students who are applying to the Community Fellowship will write in their (application) essay what their dream fellowship is….,” Pooley says. “At the same time, we’re also hearing from community partners who are interested in hosting someone and we’re trying to figure out how those two might line up.” She also assesses whether applicants are self-directed. “The fellows are functionally a part-time staff person,” Pooley says, adding that they are given a high degree of autonomy.
Pooley explains that the Fellows take two classes that support their fieldwork. That support may include providing students with the fundamentals of grant writing or familiarizing them with a computer program that they have been asked to use on the job. “We can have a session designed to catch them up or provide a little ‘how-to’ about the things they're expected to do at their placement,” she says. In other graduate classes, students often use real-world issues from their work as Fellows in completing class assignments.
The program benefits both the partner organizations and the Fellow. Sara Satullo, deputy director of community development for the City of Bethlehem’s Department of Community and Economic Development, says, “Having a Fellow allows us to add capacity at a low cost. Our department does so many different things that we can base (the fellowship) on the student’s experience and interests and pair them up with the right person and team on a project they’d like to work on.”
Krista Brown-Ly, interim executive director of Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center, says the center welcomes the opportunity to augment the center’s staff while prioritizing a Fellow’s personal goals. “Where we really like to start is more about them. What are their interests? What would they like to get out of the experience?” says Brown-Ly, adding that the center has maintained relationships with former Fellows who remain connected as employees, volunteers, or donors.
Political Science graduate student Maya Brooks, who began her fellowship with Bradbury-Sullivan in fall 2024, says of her placement, “I'm really passionate about social justice issues, and so I wanted to be able to create that intersection for myself.” For an event at the center, she is designing an activity for young children to educate them about bias. It dovetails with a paper she is writing in one of her classes which examines the importance of early education to combat racism and other biases.
Adapting fellowship work to match personal interests was the key for Lorena Bravo ’21G. Bravo came to Lehigh after being a small business owner. When pandemic constraints made it difficult to complete face-to-face projects for the City of Allentown Planning and Zoning Office, she pivoted. Bravo, who now is a bilingual business consultant for the Kutztown University Small Business Development Center, wrote two guides as part of her Fellowship. One explained zoning laws and the second offered guidance for opening a service business in the city.
An Emphasis on Community
Community Fellow is an apt title for program participants. Community connection is integral to the field work they do at their respective agencies and is emphasized in the classes they take in their graduate program. Academic course content often includes case studies or work on community projects.
Martinez saw an intersection between his work as a Fellow and his Lehigh classes. “I had so many classes where our main project was engaging with something that was happening in the community,” says Martinez. For example, some students worked on the Alley House Project, a collaboration between the university and the City of Bethlehem to promote more affordable housing.
Lauren Fosbenner ’18 ’19G says she has found a community-centered approach is integral to her work as a project specialist at the Nurture Nature Center in Easton. The center emphasizes science-based education, art, and community dialogue. It was founded as a flood resource and education center after the Delaware River flooded Easton in the early 2000s. Its work has evolved to include resiliency and natural hazard education and programming funded by several federal grants, including a NOAA Environmental Literacy Grant.
Fosbenner earned a bachelor’s degree in Lehigh’s Integrated Degree in Engineering, Arts and Sciences (IDEAS) with concentrations in environmental engineering and psychology before earning a master’s degree in environmental policy. She first worked at the Nurture Nature Center as an intern and then as a Community Fellow in 2018-19 before becoming a member of its permanent staff.
As a Fellow, Fosbenner’s work focused on educating the public about the Lehigh Valley Hazard Mitigation Plan – a project that expanded in subsequent years with additional grant funding. Her work included meetings with elected officials and emergency managers and a community engagement component. For the latter, Fosbenner helped to write a series of hazard education cards that were distributed with emergency preparedness kits.
Fosbenner says her biggest takeaway from the Community Fellows Program is the importance of community networks and connection to achieve goals and advance projects.
“Connecting with all these organizations through my work has become core to how I'm always going to live my life and also to my work,” Fosbenner says.
Finding Career Paths
For some participants, the program introduces career options or clarifies goals. By the time Mitchell Hendricks ’23G earned his bachelor’s degree in political science and music from Monmouth University, he had rejected the idea of becoming a lawyer or working in politics. He just knew he wanted a job where he could make a difference, which led to being a Community Fellow in the Bethlehem Area School District’s Office of Student Services while studying for his master’s degree in public policy. He never thought of working in a city school district – let alone the district that he had attended.
Now he has a full-time job in the school district as supervisor of child accounting and as McKinney-Vento Homeless Liaison. He tracks the district’s 13,000 students – a critical factor in ensuring funding. It includes tracking district residents who attend private or charter schools.
“I try to make sure that we have the most up-to-date data and information on them, because that allows us to accurately report them to the state to get the best funding possible, which allows us to put more money into programs,” Hendricks says. “Depending on the student, that amounts to between $15,000 and $30,000 a year per student, and that money goes a long way in setting up our students to be successful.”
As homeless liaison, he works with hospitals, shelters and community agencies, such as St. Luke’s University Hospital, Lehigh Valley Health Network, Third Street Alliance, and Victory House, to ensure that students have services that they need.
He explains that his work is especially important in a district that has a diverse socioeconomic profile ranging from high- to low-income areas. “All of our schools have some level of transiency because of the whole housing crisis, but we also have schools that have very low levels of transiency and being able to consistently support all of those schools in an equitable way across the board is a task,” he notes.
Hendricks has been able to leverage skills gained in his graduate classes on the job. For example, he’s been able to draw on what he learned in “Mapping Data for Policy Making” as he maps school attendance areas using GIS software. Other graduates cite Pooley’s “Residential Segregation” class for offering valuable insights into factors that cause socio-economic groups to be housed in certain areas of a city.
Hendricks’ current job responsibilities are quite different than those he handled as a Fellow. Then he was charged with helping revamp district policies, such as those governing student cell phone use, and worked with the school district’s Social Emotional Learning Initiatives. Tracey Hirner, director of student services, who supervised him as a Fellow, says the knowledge he gained working in her office informs what he does in his current role.
“He has such a holistic understanding of the district. He has been in and out of all 22 of our buildings. So as a supervisor of child accounting, he's got perspective. He's dealing with the transiency of students from a child accounting perspective, but he also understands all the supports and what those students need,” Hirner says. “And he also knows how to manage his own staff effectively with compassion and grace. And I think, had he not been a Fellow, he would not be the same caliber of supervisor.”
A Talent Pipeline for the Region
Tracy Oscavich ’10G, director of administration for the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission, says it’s no coincidence that several of their employees first joined the organization as Community Fellows. “We recognize the value of the program,” she states. “It's something we talk about and budget for annually, because it is something that we know is a talent pipeline for us.”
For the last decade, the commission, which provides a comprehensive plan ensuring the health, safety and welfare of residents of Lehigh and Northampton counties, has hosted one or more Fellows annually. Many of them have been hired permanently. Occasionally Fellows are chosen with an eye on anticipated staff openings. Oscavich explains that finding opportunities where a Fellow’s interest matches organizational needs also is a primary consideration.
“We tend to see what their passions are, and then talk to them about how the work that we're doing and their passion can advance our work,” Oscavich says.
Such was the case with Martinez, who now works as an environmental planner for the commission. After earning his bachelor’s degree from Iowa State University with a double major in environmental science and political science, he was seeking experience that would leverage his interest in environmental and climate concerns. He found it in his work as a Fellow while earning his environmental policy master’s degree. Martinez says it was a revelation learning he could do environmental work that wasn’t the field or lab work he experienced in undergraduate science classes.
His first responsibility as a Fellow at the commission was coordinating a community walk audit program with the United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley and AARP. Martinez identified potentially hazardous or high-demand locations for pedestrians and volunteer teams “audited” these locations and collected data. Describing it as “a kind of citizen science project,” Martinez says, “We went out and walked around and surveyed, to see the conditions of sidewalks, whether they just ended randomly, or whether they were in poor condition.” He notes that the project ties into environmental concerns because promoting pedestrian safety can encourage more people to walk and bike instead of drive, leading to fewer vehicle emissions.
Later in his fellowship year, Martinez transitioned to working on a Climate Action Plan, funded by a Climate Pollution Reduction Grant the commission received from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). He conducted a greenhouse gas inventory, assessing emissions in the Lehigh Valley. The project has continued since he was hired permanently. He wasn’t the only Fellow hired that year: Martinez’s classmate Joey Dotta ’23G joined the commission as a regional planner. Dotta now works with current Community Fellow Mary Grace Collins.
Full Circle Experience
Former Fellows often become a resource for new Fellows. At the City of Allentown Department of Community and Economic Development, Tormann is passing along lessons learned to new Fellow Huda Hagos. In addition to mentoring Hagos to learn more about planning and zoning, Tormann wants to encourage her to leverage her experience as a Fellow to enter the workforce with more confidence. He says the year of work experience taught him how to navigate the workplace, combatting what he calls “young imposter syndrome.”
“The fellowship is huge for building your own confidence and for building familiarity with a professional environment,” he says."
"Past and current Fellows continue to work together and forge connections, creating fulfilling careers and making a lasting impact in the community.