Ginsberg Center E-Newsletter

October 2009

New Partnerships Coordinator Joins Ginsberg Center

By Caroline Massad

Rollin Johnson.
—Photo by Salam Rida.

Rollin Johnson is a matchmaker.

As the Ginsberg Center's Community Partnerships Coordinator, Johnson helps connect University students and faculty with community organizations.

"I try to make useful links for partners," Johnson said. "I ask how volunteers can help them meet their strategic priorities. And if I hear we have a student group who wants to do something, I find out what they want to do and how much time they can commit, and start scouting for opportunities."

Johnson comes to Ginsberg after completing his MBA at Saginaw Valley State University. He previously headed a nascent community outreach office at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and served in the Peace Corps in Nepal and Burkina Faso.

His experience has shown him ways to maximize the value of student volunteers' contributions to community organizations. For example, he says, an overstretched organization can use students to complete a project that will be useful in the future, but that staff lack time for because it falls outside the organization's primary day-to-day objectives.

Johnson fulfilled a similar role at Coe College. As an AmeriCorps member there from 2006 to 2007, started an office to expand service learning and coordinate community engagement.

"Rollin essentially started our full-fledged service-learning program alone. To this day, the connections he made at Coe and in the community have stood and we use them weekly to help our students become more involved off campus," Coe College Assistant Dean of Campus Life Tom Hicks said. "His understanding of people and different cultures allowed him to connect with others on a very personal level."

As an undergraduate student at Colorado Christian University, Johnson had not expected to work in academia, let alone in service learning. He majored in business, and though he participated in various community service projects, he planned to return home to Saginaw after graduating and work in manufacturing management like other members of his family.

His plans changed after he developed a friendship with a human rights lawyer who visited the college in his senior year, and who encouraged him to apply to the Peace Corps. The following year, Johnson found himself in Nepal, working with a microfinance organization that provided small loans and other services, such as literacy and numeracy training, to poor rural women.

He still remembers watching a woman cry as she wrote her name for the first time on bank documentation to open a savings account for her family.

When Peace Corps members were evacuated from Nepal during a civil conflict in 2003, Johnson transferred to Burkina Faso. There, he continued to use his business background, working with the Mennonite Central Committee, the community development organization that runs the Ten Thousand Villages chain of stores, and helping to set up a local microfinance bank.

"A lot of my work has been with organizations focused on helping people help themselves, or gain access to the resources they need to build their capacity," Johnson said.

At Ginsberg, Johnson hopes to find new opportunities for U-M faculty and students to partner with organizations in Southeast Michigan. He hopes his work will provide learning opportunities for students, help partner organizations build their capacity, and strengthen the Ginsberg Center's capacity to facilitate service learning across campus.

Ginsberg Center Faculty Director Margaret Dewar said Johnson is a welcome addition to the staff.

"We are very happy to have Rollin on board. His background makes him well-suited to understanding the needs of students, programs and community partners, and his friendly and collaborative way of approaching people makes him an ideal face for the Ginsberg Center," she said.

Ginsberg Center E-Newsletter

New Partnerships Coordinator Joins Ginsberg Center

October 2009 Table of Contents