Bob Parker is Executive Director of the University of Oregon’s Community Service Center (CSC) and Program Director of the Community Planning Workshop.  Over the last 25 years, Parker has managed more than 400 policy and planning analysis projects with communities and state officials throughout Oregon.  Community Planning Workshop is known widely throughout Oregon as one of the state’s critical policy analysis resources, connecting expertise of University faculty and students with communities and agencies.  These relationships, as well as the vast policy analysis experience, help CPW provide service to communities and organizations throughout Oregon.

Parker is also a principal of the University of Oregon’s Economic Development Center—a partnership with the US Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration which provides technical assistance and capacity building related to economic and business development to economically distressed Oregon communities. The Center focuses on sustainable economic development in the areas of food and agriculture systems, renewable energy, and green infrastructure. The Center won a national award in 2010 for its market analysis of local food systems in Lane County Oregon and in 2014 for its inventory and assessment of historic theaters in Oregon.

Titus Tomlinson is Program Coordinator for the Resource Assistance for Rural Environments (RARE) AmeriCorps Program.  The RARE AmeriCorps Program strives to increase the capacity of rural communities to improve their economic, social, and environmental conditions, through the assistance of trained graduate-level participants who live and work in communities for 11 month terms of service.  Tomlinson takes a lead role with the recruitment, placement, training and management for all RARE AmeriCorps members.  Over the last 6 years, Titus has gotten to work with well over 100 members and an array of rural Oregon communities.  He gained experience in service learning and community development arenas via his time in the University of Oregon’s Community and Regional Planning Graduate Program and the two years he spent as a RARE AmeriCorps member.