Civic and Community Engagement at Fisher

Strong local and regional economies are built on a foundation of strong communities. The quality of life that local communities offer, the quality of local schools and other community institutions, and the local structure of opportunity all profoundly affect a region’s ability to attract, develop, and retain highly skilled workers, and attract investment. Communities with deep reserves of “social capital” are also far more resilient, and better equipped to respond effectively to the forces of economic change, than those where communal bonds have eroded.

Since its founding, St. John Fisher University has been committed to serving and strengthening Rochester-area communities. Below we describe some of the multiple ways in which Fisher manifests its commitment to the communities it serves.

In this section:

• Student Engagement in Community Service
• Strengthening Community Institutions and Organizations
• Developing the Region's Education and Health Care Professionals

Student Engagement in Community Service

Rochester-area communities and their residents benefit from Fisher students’ participation in various forms of community service, including volunteer work, “community-engaged learning,” and other community-based activities.

Volunteer Work

During the 2022-23 academic year, 2,654 Fisher students spent a combined total of 446,238 hours working as volunteers in a wide range of community service programs in the Rochester area. Fisher’s Institute for Civic and Community Engagement is the main hub for First-Generation and Service Scholars' involvement in community engagement activities. Many Fisher students work on a regular basis with one of the more than 30 non-profit organizations and schools in the Rochester area with which the Institute has ongoing partnerships. Examples include:

• Action for a Better Community, a nonprofit focused on providing opportunities for low-income individuals and families to become self-sufficient
• Autism Up
• Cameron Community Ministries, an urban community center offering youth programs
• Education Success Foundation
• Episcopal SeniorLife Communities
• InterVol, a nonprofit organization that provides unused medical supplies and equipment to underserved communities
• Jewish Family Services of Rochester
• JustCause, a volunteer legal assistance program
• Refugees Helping Refugees
• Several K-12 schools in the Rochester area

Fisher’s Institute for Civic and Community Engagement also manages two scholarship programs that include a significant community service component:

• Through its Service Scholars Program, each year Fisher selects 24 high school seniors who have already done outstanding community service work through their school, their church, or a local community organization. Those selected receive scholarships equal to half the cost of tuition and room and board fees for four years. Service Scholars are expected to perform a set amount of community engagement, as well as complete the two-course learning community and participate in other workshops and seminars on civic and community engagement. During the 2022-23 academic year, 90 Service Scholars performed 7,774 hours of community engagement.
• The First-Generation Scholars Program requires its participants to complete at least 30 hours of community service work each semester, with a particular focus on tutoring, mentoring, and other youth services. During the 2022-23 academic year, 92 First Generation Scholars performed 3,943 hours of volunteer work.

Fisher students also serve the Rochester community through a variety of special events and other programs. For example:

• All Wegmans School of Pharmacy students – including both campus and online pathway students – are required to complete service hours each academic year.  A portion of these hours are completed during the School of Pharmacy’s Annual Service Day, during which students, faculty, and staff join with local non-profit organizations to provide a variety of community service activities. During the 2022-23 academic year, 231 pharmacy students performed 3,522 hours of volunteer work – including 1,870 hours of volunteer work at Rochester-based volunteer sites.
• Fisher’s Office of Campus Ministry offers community service opportunities to Fisher students. During the 2022-23 academic year, 500 students participated in a total of 35 Campus Ministry Service Projects. 

Community service at Fisher is not limited to students. During the 2022-23 academic year, 285 Fisher faculty and staff performed approximately 24,000 hours of volunteer work. Adding this to the student volunteer work cited above, the “Fisher family” performed a total of 470,238 hours of volunteer work in the Rochester area during the 2022-23 academic year.

Community-Engaged Learning

Fisher students also engage with Rochester-area communities through community-engaged learning – courses that combine classroom learning with hands-on experience working with community partners. During the 2022-23 academic year, 982 Fisher students participated in 56 courses with a community-engaged learning component. For example:

• As part of the School of Business’s course on Promotion Management, students developed full promotional plans for nonprofits and small businesses in the Rochester area, including HUB 585, Nativity Prep Academy, and R-Community Bikes.
• Students in the School of Arts and Science’s Analytical Chemistry Lab conducted soil analysis for the presence of lead for Lock 66 Monroe Ave. Neighborhood and Wide Water Garden.
• In partnership with Starbridge, students in the School of Education’s course on Management in Inclusive, Collaborative Classroom Communities researched and presented on parent-identified life skills and growth opportunities for children with exceptional needs.
• As part of the Spanish for Business II course, Fisher students provided instruction on financial literacy and entrepreneurship to Spanish-speaking 3rd and 4th grade students enrolled at RCSD #35.

Courses with a community-based learning component are offered across all academic disciplines at Fisher. Through community-engaged learning, Fisher students have the opportunity to gain academic, professional, and personal skills, while helping to address real community needs.

Global Service

Fisher’s commitment to community is not limited to the Rochester area. Several programs offer Fisher students the opportunity to engage with communities across the globe.

• Through the Wegmans School of Pharmacy’s domestic and international medical service trips, Fisher pharmacy students and faculty have the opportunity to work on health care teams at local health clinics in underserved communities. Medical service trips are offered throughout the academic year, as well as during the summer. Since the program was started in 2006, Fisher students have participated in service trips and clinical rotations in El Salvador, Honduras, India, Mexico, Kenya, and Tanzania, among others as well as service trips to the Blackfeet Indiana Reservation in northern Montana and South Dakota.
• Fisher nursing students also have the opportunity to provide medical care to communities abroad through the Wegmans School of Nursing’s global clinical experiences. Recent trips have included Spain, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Peru, El Salvador, and Ireland.

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Strengthening Community Institutions and Organizations

According to Independent Sector, the average value of an hour of volunteer work in New York was $35.71 in 2022. Therefore, Fisher's total of 470,238 hours of student, faculty, and staff volunteer time in 2022 was worth nearly $16.8 million.

Local institutions and organizations – schools, churches, civic groups, health and social service agencies, and others – play a central role in meeting community needs and addressing common problems; and on a deeper level, they provide the reserves of “social capital” that help hold communities together.

Through its Center for Nonprofit Leadership, founded in 2006, St. John Fisher University provides programs and services aimed at strengthening non-profit institutions and organizations, with a particular emphasis on management and board leadership in small- to medium-sized organizations. The Center’s programs include:

• A five-course, non-credit certificate in non-profit management, covering topics such as budgeting, financial management, human resources, and resource development. During the 2022-23 academic year, 35 unique individuals representing 27 organizations registered for a Nonprofit Management Certificate Program course.
• Workshops and seminars aimed at helping board chairs and other board members understand their roles and responsibilities, and how they can improve their overall performance in areas such as governance, financial oversight, fundraising, and inclusiveness. During the 2022-23 academic year, 82 unique individuals representing 49 organizations registered for the Nonprofit Leadership Workshops.

Family-controlled businesses are a critical source of economic vitality in Rochester, in the region and beyond. Fisher serves as a resource for these businesses through the School of Business’ Family Business Program. Launched in 2018, Fisher’s Family Business Program offers a variety of workshops, conferences, webinars, peer groups, and other events on topics such as transition planning, family risk analysis, family governance, and more. The Program also offers the Next Generation Leadership Institute, a ten-month program designed to prepare individuals to take on senior leadership roles in their family business. The program, which results in a Fisher Executive Education Certificate, focuses on a variety of topics including financial and strategy basics, legal responsibilities, family dynamics, business governance, and responsible stewardship principles.

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Developing the Region’s Education and Health Care Professionals

Through its Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. School of Education, Wegmans School of Nursing, and Wegmans School of Pharmacy, Fisher helps meet the region’s (and the state’s) continuing need for highly skilled, well-prepared education and health care professionals. During the fall of 2022, a total of 1,800 undergraduate and graduate students were enrolled in these schools, of whom 1,656 (92.0 percent of the three schools’ total enrollment) were residents of New York, including 680 (37.8 percent of the three schools’ total enrollment) residents of Monroe County and 211 (11.7 percent) residents of elsewhere in the Rochester area.

Upon graduation, many of these students stay in the Rochester area and elsewhere in New York working in education and health care fields – as nurses, counselors, pharmacists, teachers, and other education professionals.

Figure 11: A pie chart of total enrollment in Fisher’s School of Education, Wegmans School of Nursing and Wegmans School of Pharmacy, by school, fall 2022

Along with its alumni, Fisher contributes to the region’s education and health care workforce through the work done by education, nursing, mental health counseling, and pharmacy students in the course of their training – through student teaching, nursing students’ clinical rotations, counseling internships, pharmacy experience, and more. For example:

• Through clinical preceptorships and internships, Fisher nursing students work under the guidance of nurse practitioners to provide primary and acute care at various health care systems, community-based agencies, and private practices in the Rochester area and elsewhere in western/central New York. 
• All Fisher undergraduate and graduate students pursuing initial certification as a teacher are required to complete 150 hours of field experience and 14 weeks of student teaching. These experiences are completed in a variety of diverse settings, including the 10 Rochester area-schools with which Fisher had a Professional Development School (PDS) partnership with during the 2022-23 academic year.

The hours of practical experience required for Fisher students earning degrees in these fields are shown below in Table 10.

Table 10: Hours of practical experience required

Hours required for selected Fisher degree programs.

During the 2022-23 academic year (as Table 11 shows), undergraduate and graduate education, nursing, mental health counseling, and pharmacy students at Fisher worked a combined total of 573,060 hours – in schools, hospitals, physician’s offices, community health and mental health programs, pharmacies, and in other settings. While some of this work was done elsewhere in New York, in other states, or in other countries, approximately 92 percent of the total hours reported (about 527,140 hours) represents work done in the Rochester area.

Table 11: Total Hours of Practical Experience Performed

Hours performed by Fisher education, nursing, counseling, and pharmacy students, 2022-23 academic year

If we apply Independent Sector’s estimate of the value of volunteer time to the hours worked by these students, their services to the community can be valued at nearly $20.5 million.

Fisher also contributes to the ongoing development of the region’s education and health care professionals through a variety of programs and partnerships. For example:

• Through the post-graduate pharmacy residency and fellowship programs at Fisher, graduates have the opportunity to gain advanced clinical training at community partners in the region. These 12-24 month residencies and fellowships take place at several locations throughout the Rochester area – including the Rochester Regional Health System, Jordan Health, and the Monroe County Health Department – as well as at Upstate Medical University and St. Joseph’s Hospital in Syracuse, New York.
• In 2016, the Wegmans School of Nursing formalized an academic practice partnership with Rochester Regional Health (RRH) that provides a tuition discount for RRH employees enrolled in nursing programs at Fisher.
• The Wegmans School of Pharmacy’s Continuing Professional Education (CPE) programs provide educational and professional development opportunities for pharmacists and pharmacy technicians. As one of only a few providers of pharmacy continuing education in the region, these CPE activities provide essential knowledge, skills, and certifications to practicing pharmacists and technicians across the region. During the 2022-23 academic year, the Wegmans School of Pharmacy offered a total of 42 CPE programs and events, with enrollment totaling 315.
• The School of Education’s AP Summer Institute offers training in AP courses and teaching strategies for both new and experienced high school teachers. During the summer of 2023, 58 Rochester-area K-12 teachers participated in the professional development program.

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