Community Listening That Changes Lives: Wake Forest and Authoring Action Build Better Partnerships

Wake Forest faculty and ACE Fellows alums Dr. Keri Epps (Writing) and Dr. Rowie Kirby-Straker (Communication) partnered with Authoring Action (A2), a Winston-Salem arts nonprofit, to reframe student community engagement through daunting community listening—a practice rooted in vulnerability and centering community voices.

Many students approached service with good intentions but a “fix-it” mindset, eager to solve problems without understanding what partners needed. They thought they were listening—but really, they were waiting to respond.

Epps and Kirby-Straker collaborated with A2 co-founders Nathan Ross Freeman and Lynn Rhoades to create the Community Listening Accountability Group (CLAG). The program trains students to examine their biases, bring their whole selves to conversations, and embrace discomfort when assumptions are challenged.

Through reflection without grade pressure, students practiced slowing down. One admitted, “I realized that despite the many hours I spent completing service projects and working with community partners, I could not think of a single time where I slowed down enough to ask, ‘what do you need from me?'”

That question changed everything. When students finally asked A2, the answer wasn’t more tutoring—it was grant writing, marketing, and curriculum expansion help. Listening, not assuming, built a stronger partnership.

CLAG demonstrates how preparing students to listen before acting creates authentic, reciprocal, sustainable community engagement.