About Us
About Us
The Community Change Collaborative (CCC) is an interdisciplinary graduate student group hosted and overseen by the VT Institute for Policy and Governance (VT-IPG). We explore the forces shaping community change, approaches to community engagement and how to build sustainable, cross-sectoral partnerships. Our research interests range from the local to the international scale and we apply a variety of analytical lenses to connect theory and practice for the benefit of our community partners, practitioners and scholars interested in community change.
Our programs include a Speaker series and Faculty Forums, film screenings, the graduate- student-run Community Change Journal and community-based research projects. You can learn more about CCC programs here.
Graduate student members meet weekly on the Virginia Tech-Blacksburg campus during the academic year. You can learn more about becoming involved here.
History
The Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance (VT-IPG) initiated the Community Change Collaborative (CCC) around 2008 as Community Voices (CV), a program connecting graduate students’ research interests in community change at multiple scales with the work of academics, practitioners, authors and thought leaders studying and working in communities. Community Voices members coordinated a speaker and professionally-recorded radio and, later, podcast series, inviting guests from around the world to provide students, faculty and the public exposure to their ideas and experiences. Institute leaders saw the series as permitting its guests an opportunity to share their experiences and lessons learned while also strengthening ties with other organizational actors, scholars and graduate students interested in community change.
CV generated more than 30 high-quality and thought-provoking recorded discussions and presentations and made those recordings available to the public without cost. Moreover, many of those radio broadcasts and podcasts have recently been transcribed and are being compiled into an edited book for publication (in 2020) for increased accessibility for online review. When complete, the print archive of CV (and CCC) programs will also become available to scholars through VT Libraries’ membership in the Syracuse University Qualitative Data Repository (QDR).
By 2018, Community Voices had taken on additional projects, events and activities related to community change, leading then graduate student members and their faculty advisor, Dr. Max Stephenson, Director of the Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance and Professor of Public and International Affairs, to rename their effort the Community Change Collaborative (CCC). CCC’s current programming includes its signature podcast/speaker series, as well as a Virginia Tech faculty and student Forum, a film series, special campus events such as panels and symposia, community-based research projects and field tours, and affiliation with the graduate student refereed online journal, Community Change (also overseen by VT-IPG).