By John Marx

I watched the Community Forum and subsequent press conference on the Aggie Square Community Benefits Partnership Agreement hoping that my faculty and staff colleagues were as excited about this announcement as I am. Then I went on a hike with one of those colleagues and we talked about why this might not have gotten the attention I’d hoped for. 

There is, admittedly, a lot going on. We’re still in the pandemic, everyone is exhausted, and the new quarter is starting. As a result, this is not the best moment to ask faculty and staff to step out of their daily lives and contemplate the broader mission of our public research university.

But if they could do that, if my colleagues could step out of their lives for a moment, I hope they could see in the benefits agreement a truly significant act. A “major milestone,” our Chancellor, Provost, and CEO for UC Davis Health called it — not only for the Aggie Square project but also for UC Davis as a whole.

After three years of community engagement, this agreement responds to what the residents of Sacramento told us they want: affordable housing near the Aggie Square development, jobs and job training, and transportation improvements. 

To point out the obvious, universities don’t always consider themselves responsible for helping generate affordable housing and good jobs for their neighbors. There’s a reason town often resents (when not actively loathing) gown. Big projects on university campuses don’t always mean good things for the people living near them. 

Aggie Square is certainly a big project. We are doing nothing short of inventing the research campus of the future. What the Community Benefits Partnership Agreement, or CBPA, demonstrates is that the campus of the future requires a new kind of relationship between the university and the neighborhoods that surround it, as well as the perhaps more expected state-of-the-art research facilities and a teaching center focused on experiential learning. 

The agreement reflects the profound questions we are asking in planning this campus about what a public university can and should do in its region. Questions like: What impact can our university have on the society we serve? How can we make that impact a priority, maybe even the priority, for our university going forward? 

What’s at stake for us as faculty and staff is … just about everything, including how we feel about our employer and how we identify with its mission. Regardless of whether Aggie Square is ever going to be where a given staff member goes to work or where a faculty member engages in research, teaching, and service, I hope that it matters to my colleagues that their university is invested in affordable housing, good jobs, and safe streets for the people who live near it. 

Beyond the tumult of our present moment, another thing that may keep faculty and staff from noticing what a big deal the CBPA is a sort of Aggie Square planning fatigue. This has been a long planning process — talk to anyone who has been around the Sacramento campus for the past decade and they can tell you how long exactly new research facilities have been in the works. 

If you have any lingering questions about whether Aggie Square is real, I hope this agreement convinces you that it is definitely happening. The agreement is the University of California and the city of Sacramento pushing all of their chips into the middle of the table. You could hear that resolve in the statements at the community forum and the press conference. 

“With Aggie Square, we’re going to propel economic development and build more resilient communities,” Chancellor May said. “This is our chance to attract new start-ups and industries to the region like never before. It’s a space for new technologies and innovations to be developed, from finding cures to diseases to finding more sustainable ways to feed a growing planet.”

“This is what inclusive economic development really means,” Mayor Steinberg said. “Aggie Square is the single biggest high-wage jobs and housing opportunity we have had in this city in decades.” And then there’s his refrain, which he’s repeated throughout the planning process:  “Why can’t we have it all?” Aggie Square means both cutting edge research and community benefit.

If we do it right, Aggie Square will make Sacramento a hub of innovation tied to our university. And that will make our university a force for improving the health and well-being of people who live in the densest population center in our part of Northern California. 

In a recent Chronicle of Higher Education column entitled “It’s Time to Rethink Higher Education,” former Macalester College president Brian Rosenberg posed this question: “What if our goal was creating social impact, not preserving the status quo?” 

Rosenberg  goes on to offer a working definition of “impact”: “Higher education should in its ideal form lead to more economic security for more people, a more equitable and innovative society, and a well-functioning democracy. Add whatever goals you would like, but these seem like a reasonable starting point and, given the present state of the country, more than a little aspirational.” 

Aggie Square goes a long way to answering the question of how our university can increase and focus its social impact. In a nutshell, that is why I hoped that my faculty and staff colleagues were moved by the prospect of the CBPA. 

Aggie Square equally represents an aspirational vision for our university. Maybe it goes without saying, but if our university can’t be aspirational, given the present state of the country, then it’s hard to know what it’s good for. There truly is a lot going on this spring, but this is an important moment to notice that UC Davis is a university that aspires to do better, not only for itself but for everyone around it. That’s the aspiration captured in the Community Benefits Partnership Agreement.