The Office of the Executive Dean is pleased to announce the winners of the 2012 NSPE Civic Engagement Grant Fund Awards. These awards are generously funded by NSPE Board of Governors member Judith Zarin. A panel chaired by Associate Dean Joseph Heathcott and Prof. Michele Kahane, and consisting of former award winners, made an extensive and careful review of each application; the awards committee noted the high quality and compelling nature of all the proposals, making it difficult to select among such well-conceived and exciting projects. Ultimately, seven finalists were selected, for a total of $54,000 in grants.
The purpose of the NSPE Civic Engagement Grant Fund is not only to support valuable community partnerships and public projects, but also to build a community of practice around civic engagement in the division. In our view, this involves faculty, staff, and students in long-term commitments to public scholarship and creative work, where community partners are co-learners and co-educators in the process of building knowledge. It also involves the infusion of new pathways of learning that weave civic engagement into curriculum.
In order to deepen the community of practice, grant winners will enter into an ongoing dialogue with faculty, staff, and students in the division through organized events, reportage, and analysis. These activities provide an opportunity for the division to evaluate practices and to learn from the successes and challenges the awardees will encounter in the implementation of their projects.
Awarded projects include:
The Millennium Film Workshop: Reviving a Long-Time Partnership
Melissa Friedling
School of Media Studies, The New School for Public Engagement
This is a proposal to revive an historic partnership between The Millennium Film Workshop and The New School that began in 1965-66 as part of the federal government’s anti-poverty “street school” program. In its 45-year history, Millennium Film Workshop has persisted as a community-based media arts center, providing open and affordable access to skills, equipment, and appreciation of the moving image. The grant supports a public program series presented at The New School, and the development of curriculum related to the programs and to the history of Millennium and other community-based arts and media programs.
Shared Words, Shared Worlds: English as a Second Language Classes in NYC Restaurants
Lesley Painter-Farrell
School of Languages, The New School for Public Engagement
Many immigrants working in the food industry in New York City work such long hours that they do not often have the time to access English language classes. However, the acquisition of basic English skills is essential not only to the improvement of employment opportunities, but to broader participation in democratic institutions and civic life. Students in the Masters in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (MATESOL) program will teach English to small groups of restaurant employees “on site” in their workplaces. This will be done in partnership with restaurant owners and restaurant management companies who understand the needs of their workers. MATESOL students will practice, improve and hone their classroom craft while restaurant employees will practice, improve and hone their English language skills.
Democratizing the Archive: Building Networked Finding Aids with Community Partners
Claire Potter, Julia Foulkes, Shannon Mattern, Laura Aurricchio, Ricardo Montez
School of Undergraduate Studies and School of Media Studies, The New School for Public Engagement
How do we harness the power of the archive for democratically engaged purposes? This project launches a partnership between the New School for Public Engagement, the New York Public Library, and selected nonprofit websites in search of imaginative, accessible content. Students in NSPE humanities and media courses will research, write, produce and publish projects based on primary documents, democratizing access to these sources by “mapping” paths through and across collections. These networked paths, which we call “living finding aids,” will demonstrate to a broader public the nature and promise of each collection, and how archive-based research is accomplished. The project includes a colloquium with faculty, archivists, and web partners.
Cancer Treatment Refusal in Medically Underserved Communities
Lisa Rubin
School of Undergraduate Studies, The New School for Public Engagement
Why do some people in low-income communities refuse treatment for cancer? This project tackles the question in partnership with the Ralph Lauren Center for Cancer Care and Prevention (RLCCCP), a community-based organization in Harlem addressing the needs of medically underserved communities. The primary aim is to investigate treatment refusal using qualitative and participatory research methods, with the long-term goal of improving care. The project also establishes a partnership that provides training opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students interested in public health and health care disparities. Faculty participants will develop a curriculum pathway in community psychology, and a set of practices around participatory action research around social justice in health care.
Real World Politics: Learning Campaign Management On the Job
Jeff Smith
Milano School of International Affairs, Management, and Urban Policy, The New School for Public Engagement
Students in Prof. Smith’s Campaign Management course receive a healthy dose of academic theory and advice from political practitioners and assigned readings. But one cannot understand how electoral campaigns are run from a book. So, as a means of both increasing civic engagement and helping students understand how campaigns work from the inside, Prof. Smith will place students as paid interns for the summer on various campaigns in the NYC metro area. Through careful evaluation and outcomes assessment of student experiences in the project, Prof. Smith will create a set of training modules and activities around campaign skills that will inform the broader development of a curriculum pathway in Leadership and Advocacy at NSPE.
The Co-Existence Initiative
Warren Spielberg
School of Undergraduate Studies, The New School for Public Engagement
To enhance the New School as a space where theory meets practice, this interdisciplinary project will build a curriculum in “co-existence studies” in partnership with Al-Quds University in Jerusalem Beit Hanina, Palestine and with NYC-based organizations working to advance co-existence. The emerging field of co-existence goes beyond traditional conflict resolution or management to prepare students to understand and work in the areas of peacemaking and reconciliation, both locally and globally, specifically regarding the management of ethnic and racial conflict. The proposal has three simultaneous and complimentary components: curriculum and course development, public programming and civic engagement.
Teaching the World about Learned Women: The Project Continua Pedagogical Initiative
Gina Walker
School of Undergraduate Studies, The New School for Public Engagement
Throughout history learned women have contributed to the collective body of human knowledge, but their contributions remain largely unknown and neglected in the classroom. The Project Continua Pedagogical Initiative will build a multimedia online resource designed to support the incorporation of a wide diversity of learned women into K-12 and community education. Drawing on the work of an established network of collaborating scholars, the Project Continua site will evolve as an on-line community-based learning program where users can collaborate and contribute to pedagogical research and development, and provide a vital resource for educators eager to incorporate learned women into their lessons.
New School NSPE Public Events
