Since its founding 20 years ago, the Bonner Center for Civic Engagement has encouraged students to understand what it means to be a member of the community where they reside. Whether students sign up for a one-semester community-based learning course or commit to four years of ongoing engagement with a local organization, they learn what it takes to be an active participant in civic life, and the value of forging deep and lasting relationships with their fellow citizens.

Many carry this perspective with them far beyond graduation. Here, three alumni—including a recent graduate and one who helped shape the center’s earliest vision — share how their student experience influences their careers and community involvement.

Joyce Bennett, Class of 2007

Bennett was part of the first class of Civic Fellows, a CCE program that launched in 2005 to provide funding for unpaid, academically grounded summer internships in the nonprofit or government sectors. She worked with the city’s Office of Multicultural Affairs where she supported migrants in the area — an experience that laid the groundwork for her research on undocumented migration and Indigenous social movements. Bennett is currently an associate professor of anthropology at Bates College.

When I saw the Civic Fellowship, it articulated and made a path for the very thing I wanted for my life — to use higher education to create a better society for everyone.

I remember so many of the people I met that summer. They let me see some of the complexities of our very broken migration system. When I started hearing derogatory talk about immigrants, I couldn't reconcile it with my experiences. I sought out more information, trying to understand why people were fleeing to the U.S. That put me on a path to graduate school, and it turned out anthropologists had the information I wanted about what living conditions are like in Mexico and the Northern Triangle of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.

In the courses I teach, I always come back to what life looks like for real people and how that connects to the policies and structures at play. Even more importantly, I ask my students to think about how we can create better policies and structures given the lived realities of people in today's world. 

The CCE provided spaces for me to think about and reflect on my own positionality in ways that have become the bedrock of the work I do today. I know I'm one piece of a much bigger puzzle.

Jonathan Zur, Class of 2003

Zur worked with the North Richmond YMCA where he focused on youth development programming as a Bonner Scholar before it found a home in the newly created CCE. He also served with the Virginia office of the National Conference for Community and Justice. While Zur graduated a year before the CCE was established, he participated in conversations that envisioned what the center could be. He is now the executive director of Virginia Center for Inclusive Communities (VCIC), a long-time community partner of the CCE.

At 19 years old, I didn’t have a vision of what I wanted to be doing 20 years later. But the Bonner Scholars program helped me clarify my values and think about my commitments to community, whether that was through professional work or board service or volunteerism.

The CCE has since taken that work to the next level. It’s nice to have a window into that through VCIC. A few years ago, we worked with Karen Kochel in the psychology department — a classmate of mine from UR. She was teaching a CCE-supported class and wanted to think about how to support local educators in fostering a sense of belonging. VCIC helped convene a few focus groups that her students facilitated. Then we worked with the students on a back-to-school belonging guide with dozens of evidence-based practices that we shared with thousands of educators. It’s been so successful at the K-12 level that we’re looking at creating an equivalent for Virginia colleges and universities.

Noah Clarke, Class of 2018

As a Bonner Scholar, Clarke volunteered and taught summer school with the Youth Life Foundation, an after-school program that serves under-resourced areas of Richmond. Clarke has since earned a master’s degree in conflict resolution with a concentration in refugees and humanitarian emergencies from Georgetown University. He works for the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction and is involved with several nonprofits in the D.C. area.

I wanted to be a Bonner Scholar because community service was something I was passionate about growing up.

Being involved with the CCE made me want to engage with my community post-graduation, without a doubt. Since moving to D.C., I’ve volunteered with the Capital Area Food Bank for five years and at a homeless shelter for almost two years. I also had a second job working with middle and high school students in the Anacostia neighborhood at a program called Horton’s Kids. It was a challenge, but it was infinitely rewarding to make those connections and, most importantly, see the students get internships, improve their grades, and shape their lives into what they wanted them to be.

The CCE taught me how to lend that helping hand to our neighbors, and that’s something that will stick with me as I continue to move on and grow in life.