Started in 1999 and based on requests from students and support from faculty, Michigan Community Scholars Program (MCSP) was established by then LSA Interim Dean Patricia Gurin and Schoem, then assistant vice president for academic and student affairs. Since then, the program has moved from Mary Markley Hall to Couzens Hall to West Quad to East Quad and finally back to West Quad, where it lives now. But while the space may have changed, the program’s diverse community has remained true to its core mission.
The 2020 version of the program combines a focus on deep and engaged learning with a vibrant and diverse community as well as service learning and intercultural communication and dialogue. Students enjoy shared and intentional coursework with their fellow MCSPers and robust academic support from program staff and faculty. The community service component has in the past connected students to community gardens in Detroit’s Brightmoor neighborhood and today continues to work with survivors of persecution who are seeking asylum through Freedom House Detroit, naturalists and park preservation work in Ann Arbor, and K-12 students throughout Southeast Michigan through a range of in-school programs.
Students also have multiple opportunities for leadership, including on the program’s Intergroup Relations Council (IRC), a group that challenges students to speak and work across difference and to embrace dialogue as a force for change. For second-year student Latifa Cheaito, the IRC gave her an opportunity to host a dialogue with other students about mental health, an issue that’s important to her personally and professionally.
Cheaito is interested in continuing her education after graduation by going to medical school for psychiatry, partly so she can work to destigmatize mental health issues. She credits MCSP with enlarging her perspective around identity and culture in ways that made her see herself and her future professional work more clearly.
“MCSP is diverse in so many ways,” Cheaito says. “It changes up the conversation to live with totally different people who are studying totally different things. I feel like I’ve learned so much more about myself through learning about others.”
