Westside Community Partnerships

UTSA’s Westside Community Partnerships initiative is a coalition of internal and external stakeholders engaged in a hyperlocal placed-based community development strategy that aims to build sustainable, reciprocal partnerships. The initiative focuses on enhancing networks and helping the community respond to its most tenacious challenges by building community and academic capacity for engaged research.

The Westside Community Partnerships Advisory Council is comprised of six key Westside leaders with areas of expertise spanning education, business, arts & culture, and the nonprofit sector.

The Westside Community Partnerships initiative is a key initiative in reaching UTSA's bold destination as an Exemplar for Strategic Growth and Innovative Excellence. Internally, the initiative is organized around four taskforces engaging nearly 40 UTSA faculty and staff.

• Creating Pathways to Educational Excellence Task Force
  A focus on student access and success; expanding access to higher education within the community; and providing support programs that maximize student success.
  
  
• Community-Based Research, Sustainable Partnerships & Advocacy Task Force
  A concentration on use-inspired research; Scholarship that is guided by the potential use of its results, and strives to respond to problems or needs of the community.
  
  
• Fostering Community-Campus Engagement Task Force
  An emphasis on creating and nurturing reciprocal community partnerships; connecting community organizations and businesses to the wealth of the university’s human, intellectual, technological and economic resources.
  
  
• Creating Pathways to Economic Prosperity Task Force
  Economic development: Leveraging the university’s assets as a catalyst for growth in the community.