In the 1940s and ’50s, after decades as a white neighborhood, English Avenue had transitioned to a mostly black population. It was home to a growing black middle class, a proud place where families prospered and kids left home for college. English Avenue raised stars like Gladys Knight and budding business leaders like onetime presidential hopeful Herman Cain. Martin Luther King Jr. raised his family nearby. But in 2010, when Royster returned to Atlanta as dean of Tech’s Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, she went on a tour of English Avenue and saw a very different place.
Click on Read MoreBy the time Royster made her return, the challenges facing the once-quiet Westside were legion: crack cocaine, heroin; HIV and AIDS; struggling schools; flooding from Proctor Creek, lead-contaminated soil. Residents jobless, homeless, dropped-out or drifting after release from jail. It was a swirling nexus of poverty and crime.The intervening years had not been kind to the Westside. In the 1970s, English Avenue’s population began to decline as some families left for Atlanta’s growing suburbs. Bars and dance clubs opened along the neighborhood’s south side. English Avenue’s pool halls and restaurants began to sell liquor. And as the neighborhood became known as an entertainment hotspot, more and more families moved out, returning only for church on Sundays. Residents interviewed for a 2008 Georgia Tech architecture lab project said the change was solidified by the mid-1980s when drugs arrived and crime exploded.
Those who remain in the neighborhood fear that the city will demolish the whole place, or that housing prices will force them out.
Mere blocks away from one of the most prestigious schools in the country, home to world-changing technological advancements, how had English Avenue faltered? Royster knew of Georgia Tech’s contributions around the globe, but she wondered what the Institute was doing for its own community.
She began to dig, and her questions turned up a number of research, teaching and volunteer programs that tie Georgia Tech to Atlanta’s Westside. Tech faculty pushed for new ways to use technology to help residents. Students in an honors course designed projects to address neighborhood challenges. Student service groups went into the neighborhood every week to mentor children.
Some projects were little more than ideas; some had been going on for years. But organizers were rarely in touch with each other or even aware of each other’s efforts.
“We have a habit of being very innovative and entrepreneurial—you see something, you go do it,” Royster said of Georgia Tech. “You don’t necessarily take the time to build community around it.”
But now that’s all changing. Tech leaders, faculty and students are partnering with the residents of the Home Park, Vine City, Centennial Park and English Avenue neighborhoods on two partnerships.
Royster and Alan Balfour, dean of the College of Architecture, united Tech’s leaders, faculty and students with interest in the Westside communities to form the Georgia Tech Westside Task Force. Its goal is to connect efforts acrossTech, so that by partnering and sharing resources, the groups can accomplish more.
The second effort is the Westside Communities Alliance, which seeks to build or strengthen partnerships with external organizations such as businesses, nonprofits, neighborhood associations, public schools, police and fire departments, other universities and residents. Their mission is to share Tech’s expertise and culture of service with its neighbors.
“We can pick up as much trash, do community cleanups, have job fairs … you know, change can happen from within,” said Demarcus Peters, director of the English Avenue Neighborhood Association, who works with the alliance. “But when the community is that far gone, there needs to be some structural support. … What Georgia Tech has let me know [is] there are people thinking the same way I’m thinking, that something should be done.”
Already, alliance partners have organized financial literacy workshops for Westside residents and pushed Tech’s participation in community festivals and clean-ups. There is still much to do, including a strategic assessment of the alliance’s projects and its successes, Royster said. But Tech is committed to coordinating these Westside efforts into a coherent approach that will exemplify the university’s motto of “Progress and Service.”
“Our students are learning, but they are giving their time and energy. Our faculty is researching, but it is also working with communities,” Royster said.
Still she knows it will take more than websites and workshops to make progress.
Continue reading this article which appears in the November 2012 issue of theGeorgia Tech Alumni Magazine.
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