When the Philadelphia Journalism Collaborative (PJC) joined the Center for Community-Engaged Media this summer, I knew it would bring opportunities to work with students and faculty. I didn’t realize how many there would be.

In the fall semester, a half dozen PJC newsrooms worked with students in Andrea Wenzel’s Journalism Concepts class. They surveyed Philadelphians to hear what they would want to watch on a new show, they tabled at community events, analyzed and offered plans to grow newsrooms’ social media reach, and more. The students and the newsrooms both learned a lot and have ideas for how to make it work better in the next round this semester with Tara Pixley.

Shortly after I arrived at Temple, Kymberlee Norsworthy approached me and asked if her public relations students could take on PJC as a “client” for their capstone class project last semester. The five-student team read existing market research and got 133 people to take a survey about their news habits and areas of interest. By the end of the semester, the students wrote a 27-page report outlining a strategy for both getting more people to see our work and how we can engage better to report answers to the questions Philadelphians are asking. The plan was clear, ambitious and had built-in ways to evaluate if it was working.

But joining Temple is bigger than just the faculty and students we work with. The CLA Translation Institute has supported our work with interpretation so we can communicate well with people uncomfortable working in English. Our facilities team quickly finds us space on campus when we want to put an event on without a lot of lead time. And Amanda Stankiewicz, Klein College’s Director of Marketing and Communications, designed and built our refreshed PJC website and branding extremely quickly.

So, while I may be the only person focusing on PJC full-time, in our new home, we have many others who are excited to work together.