Susie Porter is a professor in History and Gender Studies at the U. She got involved with UNP when it was first forming. She helped develop the first Spanish language version of the Westside Leadership Institute course through UNP and Neighborworks, and taught the class for almost 15 years. She has served as co-chair of the UNP Advisory Board and supported UNP’s growth over the years.

As Chair of Gender Studies, Susie worked to  create systems to better support community-engaged scholarship. For example, she helped launch the gender Justice Scholars engagement program, bring on two new engaged scholars, and built out a tenure-track position focused on engagement. In 2021 she received the Presidential Societal Impact Scholar Award. 

UNP supports community-engaged scholarship (CES) addressing topics across our partnership areas. The goal of CES is to simultaneously advance knowledge and address social issues through equitable, mutually-beneficial partnerships between scholars and communities. CES blurs the lines between research, teaching, and community engagement. It is rooted in a respect for locally-grounded knowledge and a commitment to scholarship serving the public good.

CES is an umbrella term for a diverse range of research and teaching methodologies. In the realm of research, CES includes approaches like action research, community-based participatory research, design research, and youth participatory action research. In the realm of teaching, CES can manifest as community-engaged learning, service learning, activist pedagogy, and critical pedagogy, among other approaches.

Check out our publications page for reports on the practice of CES, and a bibliography of scholarship that has emerged from UNP-supported partnerships.