 |
 |
|
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
President Skorton has declared the 2005-2006 academic year the "Year of Public Engagement." Throughout the year, we will spotlight individuals and groups within the University community who embody the spirit of public engagement at the local, state, national, and/or international levels.
Jerry Anthony
Jerry Anthony, an assistant professor in the graduate program in urban and regional planning, has been actively involved in housing and community development issues in Iowa City and Johnson County since 2001. He currently chairs Iowa City’s Housing and Community Development Commission, an entity that advises the city council on the annual disbursement of $1-2 million of federal funds for local area development projects.
In 2003, Professor Anthony collaborated with one of his graduate students and community volunteers to set up the Housing Trust Fund of Johnson County (HTFJC), a non-profit agency that works to provide new, lower cost and flexible funds for building affordable housing. Thus far it has raised over $400,000. In October, a Somalian refugee family moved into the first single family home built with HTFJC’s support. Jerry serves on the Board of Directors of the Trust.
As faculty advisor for the UI chapter of Habitat for Humanity, Jerry organized a group of UI faculty and students from the urban and regional planning program to help build a Habitat home in Iowa City.
Professor Anthony has incorporated service learning into two of his graduate courses—Growth Management and Housing Policy. In both of these courses, students work on projects that provide opportunities for applying knowledge acquired in the classroom to real-life situations in Iowa City and surrounding communities. In his Spring 2003 Growth Management course, a three-member student team prepared “Urban Design Guidelines for Hiawatha” to improve the quality of the built form in that city. In the Spring 2001 Housing Policy course, students prepared a “Housing Strategy for Muscatine”; in the 2005 version of this course students helped build Habitat homes in Iowa City and Lone Tree.
