Mike Bishop

Mike Bishop

picture of Mike Bishop
House Fellow
Director, Strategic Partnership and Co-curricular Learning
David M. Einhorn Center for Community Engagement
bishop@cornell.edu

During his twenty in higher education, Mike has honed his commitment to strengthening democracy by providing emerging leaders with the tools to build healthy communities.

Prior to his current role, Mike served as director for student leadership within the Office of Engagement Initiatives, a predecessor of the Einhorn Center, where he developed and coordinated the certificates in community-engaged leadership and vibrant leadership and mentoring networks. He is pursuing a PhD in development sociology with a focus on power, race and social movements and institutions in rural US.

After receiving his BA in Sociology from Georgetown University, Mike volunteered in Nicaragua, where he grappled with what it meant to be useful to community-driven development. Before working in higher education, Mike served for five years with the Missouri Division of Youth Services as a youth counselor, youth group leader and trainer. After completing a career-transition M.Ed. in 2003 at Harvard Graduate School of Education, Mike served as the assistant director for the Harvard Public Service Network and Center for Public Interest Careers, partnering with Harvard College alumni to offer summer and post-graduate internships and mentoring opportunities to students. For ten years with University of California Berkeley’s Public Service Center, he oversaw all co-curricular student leadership and service programs, the Center’s local poverty initiative, new alumni development and student learning assessment. He developed and spearheaded Magnolia Project, the Center’s ten-year commitment to post-Katrina New Orleans, in the process deepening his understanding of race and class privilege.

Today Mike remains active in his communities in rural Tompkins County around these same issues. Mike is a native of Mt. Morris, New York, where his Italian-American family has lived for many generations. His high school years at McQuaid Jesuit High School in nearby Rochester exposed him to top-tier teachers who challenged his sense of personal commitment to the public good, as well as his sense of community formed from his small-town upbringing.