Safe Place: Somali Bantu, Persecuted in East African Nation, Find Refuge at Trinity

The House of Peace, one of four theme houses at Trinity, was a beehive of academic activity throughout the fall semester thanks to the efforts of Ali Abidi '12 and a dozen schoolmates who devoted several hours a week to helping Somali children succeed at school.

The youths, ages 4 through 18, are Somali Bantus, a Muslim group that has gained refugee status in the United States because they are persecuted in their homeland for their religious beliefs.

Although the tutoring got under way at Trinity in 2009, the program picked up steam in the fall 2010 semester, led by Abidi, president of the House of Peace and of Project Nur. The tutoring program is a joint effort, combining the resources of both groups.

The program is conducted under the watchful eyes of Abidi and Ibrahim Abdulle, president of the Somali Bantu Community Development Center of Connecticut, Inc. (SBCDC). The center's purpose is to support Bantu cultural programs and to aid the Bantu community in Greater Hartford.

Abidi sees the tutoring program as a way of building bridges between Trinity and a segment of Hartford's growing immigrant population. "We're not only reaching out to the local community, but we're providing a free service and space to a group that's very much in need of something like this," he said. "We're helping them overcome cultural and language barriers."

Job Satisfaction
Harvard Survey: Trinity Among Top Institutions in Tenure-Track Faculty Job Satisfaction

The results of a comprehensive three-year survey conducted by the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE) at the Harvard Graduate School of Education show Trinity College as one of 10 bachelor's degree-granting institutions with "exemplary" tenure-track faculty job satisfaction. The research confirms Trinity's commitment to attracting and retaining junior faculty as part of its overall focus on
maintaining and building the academic profile of the College.

Of the 38 baccalaureate institutions whose faculty participated in the survey, Trinity was one of 10 that achieved "exemplar" status.

Trinity finished in the top pairing in two categories: climate, culture and collegiality, and global satisfaction. The former category includes such items as mentoring, peer review of teaching and/or research, fairness of supervisor's evaluations, opportunities to collaborate with tenured faculty, professional and personal interaction with tenured colleagues, intellectual vitality of colleagues, and participation in the governance of an institution. Global satisfaction referred to the department and institution as a place to work, and the overall rating of an institution.

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