Heading Home Hennepin and Hennepin University Partnership

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Heading Home Hennepin and Hennepin University
Partnership

• Lisa Thornquist, HSHPD
• Matthew Ayres, RPD

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Heading Home Hennepin

• Collaboration of 150 agencies
• Grew out of the 2006 Plan to End Homelessness in
  Hennepin County and Minneapolis
• Coordinated by the Office to End Homelessness.

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Hennepin University Partnership

• A collaboration between Hennepin County and the U
  of M to connect where mutual benefit can be
  found.
• It works to develop knowledge, share expertise
  and best practices and provide student field
  experiences.

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Why Connect HHH to HUP?

• One of the pieces of the plan is to evaluate the
  plan and report annually.
• The plan has dozens of initiatives, each designed
  to either prevent, intervene, or better
  coordinate programs.
• Too much for a small office to do. We needed help.

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What HHH and HUP had to offer each other

• Hennepin County is data rich (and we had no
  money).
• U of M is student/faculty rich.
• Hennepin offers the U opportunities for students
  to get hands on experience with administrative
  data, difficult analysis questions and real world
  issues.

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How we got connected

• Matthew knew people.
• Lisa knew people.
• Kathie Doty knew people
• We made a lot of cold calls.
• We followed up on names.

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How the University works

• Faculty are available for research can be paid
  or unpaid usually paid
• Graduate students are always looking for research
  opportunities can be paid or unpaid usually
  paid
• Groups like the Center for Urban and Regional
  Affairs can offer funding to help

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Since we have no money

• We focused on connecting with course curriculum
  rather than individual faculty or students to do
  research for us.
• Several types of classes worked well.

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Undergraduate Service Learning classes

• Some classes require students to volunteer for an
  organization 30 hours in the semester and write
  a paper about their experience.
• We used this opportunity to get students to do
  literature searches and interviews.

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Graduate Level Capstone Classes

• Some programs require a team of students to do
  high level research
• We can give them a complicated analysis and data
  and they can conduct the study over a 3-4 month
  time frame.

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Graduate Level Program Evaluation classes

• Some graduate programs require students to work
  with agencies to develop program evaluations.
• The student doesnt usually conduct the
  evaluation, but they identify the outcomes to be
  measured, design the data collection tool,
  identify appropriate research methods, and
  suggest ways to disseminate the results.

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What has worked the best for us?

• We needed to be clear about what we wanted done
  what is the research question?
• We had to have a project that fit the curriculum
  needs of the class.
• We had to be willing to put extra time in to work
  directly with students. It had to be a good
  learning experience for them.

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Some logistics

• There is an existing HUP contract in place that
  allows us to share data.
• Each project where data are shared or we are
  paying the U needs to have a work order
  processed.
• This takes awhileA few weeks? A couple months?

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Some more logistics

• The U is on a semester system. Faculty are
  planning RIGHT NOW for spring semester.
• If you pitch your idea to a class, they might
  take the project on. They might not.

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How to get connected to the HUP

• Kathie Doty Hennepin University Partnership,
  kdoty_at_umn.edu,
• 612-625-4383
• Monica Siems Career/Community Learning Center,
  siems005_at_umn.edu,
• 612-624-6574