A new partnership between Drake University and a local nonprofit working to rebuild a Des Moines neighborhood began where many great ideas begin: over a cup of coffee. 

“[Dr. Shepard, Dr. Muselman and I] really just sat down for coffee to get to know one another, and we just started talking about the things that they were doing with their program and things that I’m trying to do, and the opportunity just naturally and authentically came to the surface,” said Jasmine Brooks. 

Brooks is the executive director of 6th Avenue Corridor, a nonprofit dedicated to revitalizing the Sixth Avenue region in Des Moines through development, local businesses and housing and commercial opportunities. The organization is a member of the Main Street America Network. 

Since taking the reins of 6th Avenue Corridor in 2024, Brooks has been working on leading the organization’s strategic planning and strengthening its board of directors. She connected with Claire Muselman and Molly Shepard, co-directors of the Master of Science in leadership program at Drake, to establish a capstone project, where students in their program apply their learnings to support the nonprofit.

The three women came together in a spirit of giving. Brooks said it became a symbiotic relationship that serves both organizations. 

“When I started at 6th Avenue Corridor, I was like, ‘OK, where do we start with rebuilding the board? Where do we start with identifying some of the pain points? How do we really strengthen the organization?’” Brooks said. “We have taken a great deal of the recommendations from the capstone project and began to implement them. It’s not work that is theoretical or stays on a document. It’s work that is living and breathing in the community every day.” 

Value-driven leadership 

Muselman and Shepard, who both hold doctorate degrees, had a vision of creating a value-driven leadership program when they took over Drake’s Master of Science in leadership program in 2023. 

They created a cohort model that led students through a development of their philosophies on leadership, first individually, then working on team and organizational values, and finishing with communal values and creating change. They wanted a capstone project within the community to tie the lessons together. 

“We wanted to give them an opportunity to take all the tools that we had built throughout the course and apply it to an experiential learning experience,” Shepard said. “What a better way to do that than to engage with the community in a joint project where we can help the community while also giving these students the opportunity to show their innovation, creativity and leadership.” 

Before their redesigning of the program, Shepard said the program was very human resource focused. They wanted to broaden the appeal to attract leaders who wanted to address more types of issues within the community. 

“It’s not just people working downtown and in the insurance or banking industry. They’re coming from nonprofits and education,” Shepard said. “I think that’s what’s really neat about our program, is that we have so many different perspectives in the classroom that heighten the innovation and creativity.” 

The first cohort launched at the beginning of the 2024-25 school year. In addition to coming from diverse professional backgrounds, the cohort comprises a diversity of social backgrounds, too. 

“We have a few students who are taking these classes while they’re finishing up their undergrad,” Shepard said. “We have students who just finished their undergrad and are coming straight into their master’s. We have some students that are just starting out in their career and others that have been working for a while. We have some international students, too.” 

Community values

The area served by 6th Avenue Corridor is one of the most diverse in Central Iowa. Brooks said the diversity of perspectives and experiences among the Drake students provided helpful insight into the community they were serving. 

“At the elementary school, Moulton Elementary, there are over 30 languages that are spoken in student homes,” she said. “To have teams with leaders who are from different backgrounds and who speak different languages. One of the projects that we needed to do was to create some of our surveys in as many languages as possible. That really contributed to helping community members who maybe don’t speak English really connect with the projects.” 

The 6th Avenue Corridor is a 1.2-mile district that spans from Interstate 235 to the Des Moines River bridge, running through the River Bend and Cheatom Park neighborhoods. Brooks said the organization’s role is to bring back businesses and strengthen the community feel and values. 

“It’s not a very expansive district, but it’s a district that has a lot of historical value. It’s also experienced a lot of disinvestment in the last few decades,” she said. 

The organization needed a starting point for its strategic planning to establish the direction it wanted to go. Brooks is the nonprofit’s only paid employee, so working with the Drake students gave her more people with whom to share ideas while she engaged her board. 

The cohort was divided into two groups. The first group began its work with 6th Avenue Corridor similarly to how the students began their coursework: finding out the organization’s values and how to apply those to its leadership within the community. 

“They came to one of our board meetings and ran the exact exercise, but thinking from a community perspective,” Brooks said. “What are our organizational values? How are we serving the community? What’s most important?” 

The second group then took those values and began to build out practices, policies and procedures for the organization. 

“The two groups didn’t know at the time, but the work they were doing was going hand in hand [with] how we would move about the organization,” Brooks said. 

Shepard, Muselman and Brooks are in the process of planning out the goals for the second cohort to complete in the spring semester of 2026. Brooks hopes to challenge the students to improve how 6th Avenue Corridor includes community members in its work.

“When there is a strong effect of poverty in an area, there are strong effects of really just living in survival mode,” Brooks said. “It’s very hard to ask them to take time from an hourly wage job or minimum wage job to volunteer their time. We’re trying to think forward with ideas of how we can meet people where they are, so that we still have authentic community engagement.” 

The benefits of experiential learning 

Brooks earned her masters of communication from Drake University, where she got to see the impact of the school’s emphasis on experiential learning. 

“Experiential learning takes it a step further, and that’s something that sets Drake apart,” she said. “It takes it a level above and it also makes it fun. It’s much more fun to be integrated into the community and the project rather than writing a paper that lives and dies at the end of the semester.”

Shepard and Muselman hoped from the beginning to create an experience for students that would last long past graduation. The cohorts held a dissemination night where they were able to share their accomplishments with the wider community. 

“I feel like you do a project, and then 10 years later, you’re like, ‘What was the impact of that research project I did?’” Shepard said. “We wanted to do some type of engagement and we wanted it to be more meaningful. We wanted it to be something that they were invested in.” 

Shepard said the capstone project allows the students to take the theoretical concepts from their early courses and apply it in real life. 

“You can see the outcomes,” Shepard said. “You can see the change.” 

Because many of the students are working adults, the effects of the program bleed out into the community, as well. 

“We’ll do a lot in class, they’ll learn concepts and then they can go back to work on Monday and put that application into place,” Shepard said. “You learn by doing in a lot of cases. I think that is really what I want students to take away with this. Theory is great, but practicing it is really what makes a difference.”