Community Partner Resources

The Office of Metropolitan Impact (OMI) is your connection to innovative engagement for the University and our surrounding community.  Through strategic community partnering, research opportunities, programming opportunities, paid and unpaid internships and work-study opportunities, university faculty and students are helping to co-create tomorrow’s greater Detroit – today.  OMI is here to help community partners identify UM-Dearborn campus resources that best address their needs.  

Engaged faculty member, Dr. DeLean Tolbert Smith, is holding weekly "Inventing History" classes at the Henry Ford Museum for 6th graders and their parents! This offering is made possible through collaboration between DAPCEP, the Henry Ford Museum, and University of Michigan-Dearborn.

Participants will celebrate Black inventors, learn about the design process, and use STEM skills to create an invention!

Use the QR code or click this link to register by February 1st, 2023!

(above: Dr. Tolbert-Smith presenting to a 6th grade science class at University Prep Academy Middle School)

(right: a flyer for "Inventing History")

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) let you visualize, question, analyze, interpret, and understand data to reveal spatial relationships, patterns, and trends, which in turn help to inform organizational policy and decision making. GIS technology is also particularly informative for asset mapping, needs assessments, and visualizing equity issues.

One of the many ways that the Office of Metropolitan Impact supports community partners is by connecting them to GIS technology.  The office works to increase GIS Academic Service Learning courses, support GIS student group projects, and place student GIS internships within community organizations.