Our Story

Purpose and Mission

Purpose
HECUA exists to enrich the liberal arts education mission of each of its member institutions with experiential, cross-disciplinary learning programs and other related activates best achieved through inter-institutional cooperation.

HECUA is an independent, non-profit organization founded and governed by member institutions of higher education.

Mission
HECUA activates the civic mission of higher education through urban learning programs and related activities that connect students, faculty and practitioners to address the most pressing issues of our time. HECUA is a leading organization that fosters intentional learning and collaborative action that equips students to become effective citizens and agents of change.

Our History

The roots of the Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs trace back to the 1968 riots and fires in north Minneapolis following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. The urgency and turbulence of the situation prompted Ewald (Joe) Bash, National Youth Director of the American Lutheran Church, to seek out an Augsburg College Sociology professor named Joel Torstenson to form a unique program for college students called Crisis Colony. Bash and Torstenson had both been active in developing new ways to understand the nature of the urban crisis.

Bash was familiar with the struggles of the North side community through his work as an active member of Prince of Glory church there. Torstenson had recently completed a sabbatical, which allowed him time to investigate how urban campuses across the country were responding to urban crises. He found Augsburg administrators receptive to a new approach in the emerging field of urban studies.

The Crisis Colony presented an audacious challenge to the intuitions of higher education at the time: Take students out of the classroom and into the streets where their learning could be tested in the incendiary fires of the times. While such “experiential learning” programs were then almost non-existent, Augsburg Professor Torstenson was a forward- thinking academic, studying how American colleges were responding to the urgent challenges of: contemporary civil rights struggles, anti-war protests and urban decay.

“HECUA is open-minded, welcoming and challenges the ‘self’ in society.” - Student Reflection

With Augsburg’s approval the Crisis Colony opened its doors in June 1968. Eighteen students from several area colleges lived together for eight weeks in a Catholic parish house in a predominantly black North Minneapolis neighborhood on Plymouth Avenue. Students were encouraged to become closely involved in community activities, ranging from forming a neighborhood newspaper to participating in neighborhood churches to working in public housing. Students had seminars on urban issues taught by local community leaders and by Professor Torstenson. There were no exams, and the only written requirement was a daily journal of observations, feelings and impressions to help make sense of conflicted perspectives.

With the support of the office of the president at Augsburg, a second Crisis Colony was planned and launched in 1969. Dean Bailey, recognized that the costly program needed more support to continue operation, so he recruited faculty from other colleges to develop a new cooperative urban studies center. This council formed the predecessor of HECUA, which was formally incorporated in 1971.

Today

For over 30 years we have grown to be a consortium of 17 liberal arts colleges, universities and associations dedicated to education for social justice. Together we shape academically rigorous, off-campus study programs that address the most pressing issues in our neighborhoods, nations and world. This unique educational collaboration engages students, faculty and practitioners in learning that generates knowledge and tools for social transformation and community building.

At HECUA we still learn by doing, reflecting and acting with others. HECUA specializes in integrating theory and practice, bringing together key disciplines that equip students to be active citizens and leaders – locally and globally.

HECUA gives students the chance to bridge their academic learning with direct experience. It leads students deep into urban communities to test academic theories in the real world. Students develop critical analysis and hands-on skills for creating social change. Programs require all students to actively participate in their own learning and contribute to the learning of the whole group. Students meet frequently for group seminars and discussions and also complete an independent or group study project.

Issues of social justice can be discussed in a classroom. The lessons are more powerful, however, when they are put into practice. HECUA learning is transformational. Our teaching philosophy takes students and faculty into the community to learn from practitioners of social change. The result is informed and engaged student citizens.

“Life is more about doing than reading. It is good to get the background info but then you need to jump in and get your feet wet.” - Student Reflection

Our methods include seminars, field research and opportunities for substantive internships and fellowships. Instructors are teams of local teachers including Ph.D. faculty members. These teaching teams serve as mentors, advisors, co-learners and connections to the community. Academic seminars are integrated with internships or field studies in programs that allow students to put classroom theories into practice. Equally important, students critically challenge classroom theories based on their community experience.

Teaching-Learning Approach

HECUA programs combine a unique approach to classroom-based work with an experiential, reflective, and critical look at the important social issues of our program sites. Our classrooms combine discussion, readings, and reflection with on-going field experience through internships, field-work, and research projects. Because social problems and social change are complex issues, our approach to understanding them draws on multiple academic disciplines, the integration of theoretical material with experiential learning, and ongoing holistic reflection.

HECUA programs employ a philosophy of education that speaks to values of equality and justice in our classrooms and communities. We believe:

• that everyone is a teacher and a learner and that knowledge valuable to social change comes from many places, including the community and the academy;
• that how we act in the world and how we understand our actions and outcomes are intricately linked in the process of social change. Thus, we must continually act, reflect, and make meaning of our learning experiences in the classroom and in the community;
  that all knowledge of social reality has historical, political, and economic contexts. Our role as teachers and learners is to explore the perspectives that arrive from these diverse contexts;
• that our role as educators is to assist learners in developing and articulating a sense of values and ethics in relation to world and to facilitate the development of skills to act with passion and purpose in their communities;
• that at the heart of our engagement with the world is a consistent and critical mode of thinking that asks difficult questions concerning power ,perspective, access, and interests.