TAP Logo - Website HeaderTAP Logo - Website HeaderTAP Logo - Website HeaderTAP Logo - Website Header
  • About
    • About + History
    • Staff + Board
    • Reports
    • Contact Us
  • News + Events
    • Blog
    • Event Calendar
    • Newsletter
    • TAPpy Hour
  • Impact
    • Advocacy
    • Economic Impact
    • Support Local Art Campaign
    • State of the Arts
  • Programs + Services
    • Partners
      • Become a Partner
      • Nonprofit Organizations
      • Individual Artists
      • Businesses
      • Universities & Schools
    • Calls for Artists
    • Job Openings
    • Aptitude
    • ArtWORKS
    • Community Supported Art
    • ChalkFest
    • Metro Arts Pass
    • Advertise with us
  • Grants
    • Grants Overview
    • Individual Arts Partnership Grants
    • City Arts Partnership Grants
    • Recipients
    • Other Support
  • Supporters
    • Business Supporters
    • Individual Supporters
0

The Arts Partnership leads the way for Campus FM

Published by Dayna Del Val at January 30, 2020
Categories
  • Advocacy
Tags
  • Campus FM
  • Campus Philly
  • College Students
  • gate city bank
  • Workforce Issues

Gate City Bank's Karin Rudd, Campus Philly's Deborah Diamond, GCB's Kim Meyer and TAP's Dayna Del Val in January of this year.

The Start of Campus FM

In October 2017, CEO Dayna Del Val first heard Deborah Diamond from Campus Philly speak at the CEOs for Cities conference in Phoenix, AZ. The mission of Campus Philly is to “fuel” economic growth by encouraging college students to study, explore, live and work in the Greater Philadelphia tri-state region.” After listening to the incredible success this organization has had in keeping students in their region after graduation, Dayna knew this was something we needed to explore for our Metro as well.

TAP staff began to research and have conversations with Campus Philly. We called an initial informational meeting with university and college leadership as well as arts, business and government leaders. Then we began planning how to bring Deborah to the Metro. When Gate City Bank’s Steve Swiontek heard about this plan, he offered to fund bringing her to town in October!

We had a fabulous two-and-a-half days with Deborah and engaged a broad spectrum of the community’s leaders from across the business, economic, higher education, government and arts sectors as well as a number of college-aged students.

The funding from Fueling Our Future will cover a broad spectrum of activities and goals, including finding out what recent graduates need to be successful in a community, how to help them see the community as a viable place to settle, how to use the arts to engage them during and after college and more. More to follow. Thanks to Patrick Springer of The Forum for this write up. Thanks, also, to Gate City Bank and Steve Swiontek, Campus Philly and Deborah Diamond and the board of Fueling Our Future for seeing the tremendous potential of this program in the Metro.

Business leaders eye Fargo-Moorhead’s 30,000 college students to help solve workforce challenges

By Patrick Springer, Forum writer

FARGO — The Fargo-Moorhead metro area is a temporary home for 30,000 college students, most of whom head elsewhere to pursue careers after graduating.

Business leaders, struggling with chronic workforce challenges, want to change that.

The Fueling Our Future workforce initiative is backing a new effort called Campus FM with support of up to $250,000.

The aim of Campus FM is to identify what college students need and to remove hurdles in order to capture more graduates for the workforce, said Joe Raso, president of the Greater Fargo Moorhead Economic Development Corp.

The program is modeled after Philadelphia’s Campus Philly, which has been operating for 20 years and increased retention of college students, with arts as the primary means of strengthening students’ ties to that city.

Dayna Del Val, president and CEO of The Arts Partnership, learned about the Philadelphia program in 2017. With assistance from Gate City Bank, she brought the head of Campus Philly to Fargo-Moorhead to meet with local business and higher education leaders.

Although Philadelphia is a much larger city, Del Val was struck by the similarities, including a similar proportion of students living in the two metro areas.

Back in 1999, Philadelphia was retaining about 25% of its college graduates — a situation similar to Fargo-Moorhead today — but kept 57% of its campus graduates in 2018, Del Val said.

Campus Philly made extensive use of arts programming and venues to engage its student population more in the community. For example, it hosted a large career fair in an art museum, she said.

“It’s really this idea of having college students think about where they go to school as a community they’re part of,” Del Val said.

Fargo-Moorhead actually has extensive arts and cultural programs and amenities, she said, but students aren’t always aware of those opportunities and are drawn by the allure of larger cities, to the detriment of employers.

“All the pieces are in place here,” but the community needs to do a better job getting the message out, she said. Two of the three local museums, for instance, have free admission. “But if the students don’t know that, they’re not going to take advantage of that.”

This article originally appeared in The Forum on January 26, 2020

Photo credit: Gate City Bank’s Karin Rudd, Campus Philly’s Deborah Diamond, Gate City Bank’s Kim Meyer and TAP’s Dayna Del Val 2019.

Share

Related posts

January 7, 2021

From the Forum: The art of sharing positivity through a pandemic


Read more
December 17, 2020

TAP’s Top 10: Arts programming made possible by ten-plus business supporters


Read more
November 19, 2020

When giving pays dividends beyond expectations, announcing additional support for local artists


Read more

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Posts

  • 2020 leaves artists with a lot to say in North Dakota Human Rights Arts Festival January 14, 2021
  • Once upon a time an artist was inspired by a fairytale January 14, 2021
  • Submit short story, essay or poem to Fargo Library for ‘Northern Narratives’ writing project January 14, 2021

Categories

  • Advocacy
  • ArtWORKS
  • Blog
  • Calls for Artists
  • Downtown
  • Grantees
  • Job Openings
  • TAPpy Hour

Archives

The Arts Partnership Location

 1104 2nd Ave. S, Suite 315
Fargo, ND 58103

 701.237.6133

Aptitude Artist Studios

 3902 13th Ave S
Fargo, ND 58103

 701.237.6133

Recent Posts

  • 0
    2020 leaves artists with a lot to say in North Dakota Human Rights Arts Festival
    January 14, 2021
  • 0
    Once upon a time an artist was inspired by a fairytale
    January 14, 2021
  • 0
    Fargo Film Festival to kick off virtual fest this spring
    January 8, 2021
© The Arts Partnership. All Rights Reserved. | Website built by: BNG Design
0