Community Partnerships

Campus-community partnerships have emerged over the past two decades as a powerful tool for revitalizing communities and meeting persistent community needs. Universities are often the most talented and committed institutions left in our core cities or in declining rural areas. Increasingly, communities are turning to these powerhouses of human talent and ingenuity to forge collaborative efforts to achieve results what neither the university nor the community by itself could achieve. Thus, the mission of many universities, including Mercer University, has expanded beyond the traditional goals of academic learning and scholarship. Part of this public mission has become civic transformation through community partnerships.

In 1996, Macon Mayor Jim Marshall, and Mercer President R. Kirby Godsey agreed that Mercer would join forces with the city to reverse the decline of the historic Beall's Hill neighborhood adjacent to Mercer’s main campus in Macon. The results have been substantial, as more and more community partners join the effort and more and more faculty and students discover how they can be part of this transformation.

This initial partnership has since expanded to partnerships to address the health needs of low-income, uninsured residents of Bibb County, the educational needs of Title I, inner-city school children, and the economic need to attract more college-educated young professionals to the Central Georgia area in order to remain competitive in the emerging global marketplace.