RPI Arch Fall 2021 Intern (civic engagement)

InsightFormation, Inc. is a consulting and technology company based in the Minneapolis area that helps communities address complex social, economic and health issues that are too big to be addressed by individual organizations, programs or even sectors.

A key program involves helping communities minimize and address Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and increase the adoption of Trauma-Informed Practices.  InsightFormation is currently working with 11 communities in the U.S. and Canada to implement cutting-edge, multi-faceted strategy to address many parts of this crisis—ranging from reducing domestic violence to improving early childhood development to expanding opportunities for positive youth recreation.  Two of these clients, working on transforming the family justice system (especially as it relates to divorce) were featured in a recent peer-reviewed article in the Journal of Change Management on “Leading Social Transformations: Creating Public Value and Advancing the Common Good” which is co-authored by InsightFormation’s president, Bill Barberg. Students would be working closely with Bill Barberg on this project which would, ideally, including 2 months in the Minneapolis area.

The vision for working with RPI students is to have a “stream of teams” working with the ARRCC Action Network.  Students would work on different aspects of this effort over multiple years as we collectively build out a rich set of freely shared resources that are organized to support strategy implementation at the state or local level.  This platform is based on the same platform as Wikipedia® and is organized on a comprehensive strategy map template. 

This would be an unpaid Independent Learning Experience. We are working to find a safe, vetted home-stay options that would be either free or relatively low cost (perhaps $400/month for 2 months), but we can't guarantee that. If the housing issue becomes a barrier, the entire program can be done remotely.

Much of the first month would involve intensive learning via several E-Learning Courses that would enable the students to spend most of the next two months using many skills and tools to help communities refine and implement strategies that are working on. Part of the final month would focus on “passing the baton” to a new RPI team that would start the next semester.