Full circle: UW–Madison alum works with grad students as local government professional

Over the past several months, Village of DeForest Community Development Director Alex Allon worked with a class of University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate students analyzing an affordable housing funding program.

They were connected through UniverCity Alliance, which pairs Wisconsin local governments with university resources. Allon said a benefit of this program is investing in the next generation of planning professionals.

"It's building the pipeline of future public service professionals," Allon said. "It's ensuring that the people who come after us or work with us in the not too distant future are adequately prepared for what's in front of them."

Allon is a strong testament to that pipeline. Six years ago, he was one of those students.

Allon completed a two-year master's degree in urban and regional planning in 2020 and studied with Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture Professor Carey McAndrews, who taught the group that worked with DeForest last semester.

It's a full-circle moment made even more complete knowing that one of Allon's graduate program projects was working with McAndrews on workforce transportation in the Village of DeForest. Though that project was not affiliated with UniverCity Alliance, his experience as a student working with communities better prepared him for his current role.

"It gave me a lot more insight into the Village of DeForest, understanding the dynamics from a community development, economic development standpoint that DeForest was experiencing," Allon said. "It gave me a window into this opportunity."

Learn by doing

When McAndrews began teaching Urban and Regional Planning: Methods of Planning Analysis, she guessed that students would bump into many relevant questions if they had to learn by doing.

"Instead of anticipating all the questions a person might have and all the things they might need to know, if you just put everybody in a challenging situation and ask them to figure it out, my expectation is that they will learn a lot of things, and they will learn a lot of things that are on point," McAndrews said.

For the fall semester's project with the Village of DeForest, the students were tasked with defining the return on investment and analyzing the demand for HomeReach DeForest - an initiative that includes two components aimed at supporting affordable housing.

HomeReach partners with developers to support the construction of affordable housing and offers direct assistance to prospective and current low-income qualified homeowners through four targeted programs:

• Aging in Place
• Emergency Health and Safety Hazard Mitigation
• Down Payment Assistance & Home Improvement
• Local Public Servant Down Payment Assistance

In addition to demand and return on investment, the students proposed indicators of success and methods to monitor them.

"This allowed students to use data information to think about demographic factors like aging or to be of working age and be an entry-level homeowner: Who are these people? What does affordability look like? How might the program benefit both DeForest and these new residents?" McAndrews said. "The students get to wrestle with these topics and apply ideas, analytical tools, and data that they may have never seen before to these complex questions."

From Allon's point of view, the students "tackled a lot." He said the students highlighted to the Village Board the administrative burden that these programs may incur on staff, and he hopes to create a strategy based on the students' reports to consider program capacity and evaluation.

Without the students' work, Allon said HomeReach would have been implemented but it "would have been like bumper cars."

"It would have been launched because we have the resources. Our board is prioritizing this," Allon said. "It's obviously a huge need in the community, but we would not have been as effective in implementing it as we will be now."

Connecting students with communities

Fostering opportunities for students to work on community-based projects that also result in a helpful deliverable for a community partner is the goal of UniverCity Alliance. For a decade, UniverCity Alliance has been making matches between Wisconsin local governments and university resources to create "win-win" opportunities for all involved.

UniverCity Alliance Managing Director Megan McBride said she is especially inspired by introducing students to careers in local governments. While in college, McBride interned for the City of Ashland, which kickstarted her career working for and supporting local governments.

"My undergraduate education was enriched by my experiences working for the local municipality as well as the ability to reflect on these real-world experiences through my academic studies," McBride said. "I hope the experiences that UniverCity Alliance provides to students through courses, internships, and independent projects will create high-impact learning experiences that are meaningful."

Working with community partners in an academic setting presents challenges and constraints informed by real-world factors. It's less predictable than textbooks and lectures and can be "chaotic," according to graduate student Danny Schapiro.

But Schapiro, who is pursuing master's degrees in urban and regional planning and in public affairs, said working in a class for a community partner kept him "accountable to producing a professional-level deliverable."

"I learned how to organize a coherent report that succinctly offers a snapshot of the village's demand for its programs, and potential returns on investment," Schapiro said. "I especially benefitted from the group aspect of the project because I did not always know what process another group was following, but I had to make our content flow smoothly regardless. Most importantly, I learned to take pride in the contributions of my peers."

-Abigail Becker