Guilford College and Every Campus a Refuge...A Case Study

The Association of American Colleges & Universities featured Guilford College in North Carolina in the group's December News, "Every Campus a Refuge: Guilford College's Powerful Effort to Help Refugees Resettle." The case study provides background information on the college and community Every Campus a Refuge (ECAR) initiative has hosted forty-two people from a variety of countries.

Diya Abdo, associate professor of English at Guilford served as a catalyst for the effort. She worked with campus administrators and Guilford's Center for Principled Problem Solving (CPPS) to both meet needs of refugees and develop links to Guilford's curriculum that include a cohort-based Principled Problem Solving Experience (PPSE) Minor.

Over 150 students, faculty, staff, and community members have participated in providing "...refugees with an on-campus faculty house, furniture from the college’s warehouse, and utilities including water, electricity, and internet. They also give families food from the campus’s farm on weekly basis, and in some cases they provided a semester of cafeteria meals. ECAR organizes donation drives for other items like clothes, food, and toys, and refugees can use bikes that had been abandoned or confiscated on campus."

You can visit the Guilford website for more information on Every Campus a Refugee or the Center for Principled Problem Solving (CPPS) that supports initiatives designed to solve real-world problems by applying the knowledge and skills gained through hands-on education and innovative research.