Swarthmore College is launching a series of educational initiatives to help revitalize the nearby city of Chester, Pa. Among them: job training and life-skills programs; support services for seniors; child care and health education; civic engagement and community planning programs; and public safety and community wellness programs.
Swarthmore's involvement in the development of an educational resource center on a two-acre site in Chester - through its Center for Social Policy Studies (CSPS) - is spearheaded by Keith Reeves, associate professor of political science and public policy and a Chester native who graduated from Swarthmore in 1988. (See below for more information.) Three years ago, Reeves left the faculty of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government to return to the College to teach and pursue community development in his hometown.
"I have been blessed to have the educational opportunities I've had," says Reeves, whose research focuses on the intersection of race, politics, and public policy. "It has always been my vision to ensure that students who come after me are afforded the same education I had."
Although similar in scale to other college-community partnerships, this project differs in one key way: while carrying out the project, Swarthmore's CSPS will closely study its effectiveness in order to develop a national model for community revitalization. "The idea is to study what works and what doesn't in order to replicate the process in other urban communities around the country," Reeves says. "We've already been approached by three or four communities on the East Coast who want this kind of project in their area."
The project also grows out of a long history of outreach by the College to respond to the problems of Chester, located just three miles south of Swarthmore's campus. With the evaluative and research support provided by CSPS, the project reinforces Swarthmore's longstanding commitment to tie academic learning to "real world" problem solving.
For more information, please contact Keith Reeves at (610) 328-8088 or kreeves1@swarthmore.edu.
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Keith Reeves
Keith W. Reeves attended public school in Chester until age 16, then attended private school with the help of A Better Chance, a program for minority students, and Swarthmore College's Upward Bound program. After graduating from Swarthmore in 1988, he earned a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1994 and joined the faculty of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. In 1999, he returned to Swarthmore as associate professor of political science and public policy and as director of the College's Center for Social and Policy Studies. Reeves is the author of Voting Hopes or Fears?: White Voters, Black Candidates & Racial Politics in America (Oxford University Press, 1997). His family still lives in Chester.
Swarthmore College Center for Social and Policy Studies (CSPS)
Originally a data lab that conducted statistical consulting for Swarthmore College faculty and students, CSPS has been reconfigured under Reeves to focus on a long-term, systemic community development effort in Chester. Its four main components are:
The keystone of these efforts is the planned educational resource center. CSPS will be the research home for the center and will provide evaluation and research support for the programs housed there. 
