Community Resident in Action

In the fall of 2009, the Community Resident in Action Award (CRIA) was created to recognize and celebrate the knowledge and expertise that residents bring to the campus-community partnership. The goals of this year-long award are to support community leaders in formal partnership roles both on and off campus and to center the voice of the community in partnership work. Campus-community partnership work is based on the premise that multiple kinds of knowledge and life experiences are centered to address social, community, and educational issues. Ruby Chacon’s lifelong involvement as a mother, wife, community-based artist, and ‘activist’ gives her expertise that is immensely valuable to campus-community partnership work and earn her this award. Below Ruby shares her reflections on her year-long position as the CRIA and her partnership work with the Mestizo Art and Activism (MAA) collective.

I have always valued and admired the work that the youth researchers have been doing at Mestizo and other spaces since they began meeting. When I was invited to participate, I was deeply honored and very excited. I couldn’t wait to share my own passion for art and creativity and also learn about the research. I still feel humbled by the amount of work and dedication that everyone puts into impacting and changing their communities.

This past year, I participated in learning about the various ways to do research. While I felt somewhat intimidated, I witnessed the youth and their confidence as they participated. I wondered where these fears in me came from. The young people were driven by their passion and love for their families. What I realized is no one has ever asked them their opinions or how they felt in the classroom. Through the space and format guided by the mentors of MAA, their education became relevant. I saw young people come just because it felt right and good. In that same way, I felt myself young again, and healing those fears rooted deeply within me alongside them. I became inspired by the power the youth have, by the power we all have as a group making change for our communities.

I am grateful for this opportunity to learn and give back some of what I know. The mural speaks for itself. It is the product of the research about pollution put into a visual format. It is the combination of the facts about pollution and the intuitive process of voicing awareness inspired by the data. This experience is the fusion of the formal training with the informal. Although I have not yet conquered entirely my fears of formal education, I know that there is a balance and place for all ways of knowing, learning, and teaching. Being a part of MAA has enriched and nurtured my feelings of the formal. I know the majority of these young people will remember what they experienced. They are in charge of their education at this point in time, and no one can take that away.

Community Engaged Faculty Fellowship 2009 - 2010

University Neighborhood Partners is committed to supporting faculty who are engaged in community-based scholarship in their research, activism, and teaching. In 2009, UNP led the effort to create a cohort of Community Engaged Faculty Fellows within the University of Utah where they can come together to learn from each other’s teaching and research; to continually re-center the assets and concerns of the community; and to create opportunities to discuss new and emerging methodological and epistemological frameworks for conducting and engaging in research for social justice. The Community Engaged Faculty Fellows was awarded to seven University faculty members seeking to improve access to higher education, to diversify educational institutions, and the transformation of communities.

Below is a brief description of the faculty fellows and their partnership work

Dolores Delgado Bernal, Education Culture & Society, and Enrique Aleman, Education, Leadership & Policy

Adelante Partnership

A university-school-community partnership that seeks to raise awareness of higher education opportunities and to increase the expectation of university attendance and success among students, families, and teachers at Jackson Elementary School.

Leticia Alvarez, Education, Culture & Society

Family-School Partnerships

Focuses on increasing educational equity and higher educational opportunities for underrepresented secondary students by increasing parent involvement in schools and establishing a supporting and inviting culture within each school (Northwest Middle, East High and West High).

Matt Bradley, Honors College, Caitlin Cahill, City and Metropolitan Planning; and David Quijada, Education, Culture & Society

Mestizo Arts & Activism

After-school program in which young people are positioned as community researchers that frame and investigate critical issues directly affecting their own community. They document and analyze conditions in their local areas, identify priority issues affecting young people, and develop and implement action plans to affect change in their community.

Mary Burbank, Urban Institute for Teacher Education

Teacher Recruitment Scholarship and Partnership Program

A collaborative effort in which student participants complete the first two years of a teacher licensure program at Salt Lake Community College and then transfer to the University of Utah for their final two years.