| At the heart of Knoxville, Tennessee, lies its Empowerment Zone (EZ)--a 16-square mile area housing approximately one-third of the city's population and encompassing more than one-fifth of its land mass. The revitalization of the EZ is seen as crucial to the recreation of a vibrant and livable Knoxville, the historic, geographic, and economic heart of Southern Appalachia.
The boundaries of the Knoxville EZ were drawn to delineate an area with both an intense need for comprehensive change and a significant potential for achieving it. While the area has high levels of poverty and unemployment--as well as generally negative indicators for educational attainment, housing quality and ownership, family structure, crime, quality of life, and opportunities for economic growth--it is also an area full of promise. The EZ is strengthened by an ethnically diverse population (36 percent of its residents are African-American, 62 percent white) and a strong religious base (60 churches are cornerstones for neighborhood continuity). In addition, neighborhood organizations are flourishing, due in large part to the efforts of the Center for Neighborhood Development, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to support the self-determination of Knoxville's neighborhoods and to build the capacity of community-based organizations to improve those neighborhoods.
Under its New Directions COPC grant, the University of Tennessee-Knoxville (UTK) Community Partnership Center (CPC) is bringing the expertise of the faculty and students of the State's premiere institution of higher education into partnership with the broad range of stakeholders in Knoxville's EZ. It is doing this by integrating its research and teaching missions into broad participatory programs aimed at improving opportunities for real citizen empowerment in the governance and planning of Knoxville's EZ.
UTK CPC's strategy is to work across disciplines; across colleges (law, arts, and sciences); and across institutions (for example, with Knoxville College, an historic black college located in the EZ). It is also committed to fully integrating service learning, applied research, and technical assistance; and expanding institutional support from state and other non-federal sources.
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