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Workshops
from Community Engaged Scholarship Forum - PROGRESS THROUGH PARTNERSHIPS: ADVANCING COMMUNITY RESILIENCE
Weaving Community to Rebuild Social Trust
Social trust starts in our neighborhoods. It is the faith that people will see each other, act with a sense of shared humanity, and do what they ought to do. This past year showed how much our trust in each other has eroded, with a bitter election, an unchecked pandemic, rising and unequal economic pain and overdue demands for racial justice. As we look to rebuild social trust so our nation can move forward, where do we start? How do we help our neighborhoods and local institutions more deeply understand one another and strengthen their connections? This workshop explored ways for weaving communities and building bridges of trust as we chart a path ahead.
Valerie Kinloch Presley Gillespie Muffy Mendoza Fred Riley PRESENTER: Fred Riley, Executive Director, Weave: The Social Fabric Project
PANELISTS: Valerie Kinloch, Renée and Richard Goldman Dean, School of Education, University of Pittsburgh; Presley Gillespie, President, Neighborhood Allies; Muffy Mendoza, Executive Director, Brown Mamas
A Collaborative Effort: The Homewood Community Development Collaborative and the Pitt CEC Mutual benefits, reciprocity, authentic relationships, impact, sustainability, anti-racist practice, asset-framed and driven, partnership, trust building and strengths-based are words that speak to Pitt’s approach to engagements through the Community Engagement Centers (CECs). The Homewood Community Development Collaborative leads efforts to enhance the quality of life. This panel discussion centered on Homewood priorities and discussed ways that Pitt engagements have aligned with Homewood’s vision for itself.
SPEAKERS: Walter Lewis, Mubarik Ismaeli, Monique McIntosh, Jerome Jackson, Reverend Ware, Jerome Gloster, Daren Ellerbee
Collaborative Partnerships in the Time of COVID: Care and Connection Partners Care and Connection Partners have come together to share best practices and resources to serve clients effectively during the COVID-19 Pandemic. This group shared strategies and lessons learned for effective community-engaged collaboration to better support clients, including group roles, cocreation of materials, communication, resource navigation, advocacy and information sharing.
SPEAKERS: Mary Ohmer, Neashia Johnson, Carol Hardeman, Tamra Burchfield, Marlene Williams, Raymond Robinson, Carrie Finklestein Digital Bridge Building to Meet Critical Community Needs Through Strategic Partnership This partnership engaged 12 seniors within the community by teaching computer skills to combat loneliness and isolation. Since the pandemic, digital literacy has become a necessity, especially for older adults. The challenge has been addressing the digital divide and engaging virtually due to limited skills or lack of access to technology.
SPEAKERS: Kirk Holbrook, Alka Singh, Justin LeWinter, Kenzie Eggert
Elevating Family and Community Voices: Highlighting Culturally Humble Approaches This workshop highlighted why and how elevating family and community voices is essential to designing and implementing effective community programs while exploring how participants can use these strategies in their own work. The workshop bright spotted strategies that work, including a video series highlighting immigrant mothers from three cultures whose stories, though unique, share a love of their home culture and a deep desire for those who are working with their children to honor that culture.
SPEAKERS: Ivonne Smith-Tapia, Colleen Young
National Perspectives on Critical and Liberatory Practices in Community Engagement
This keynote presentation featured a dialogue among national leaders in the field of critical and liberatory community engagement, whose work employs community-engaged teaching, research, and economic practices that advance social justice. Their work is described as critical and liberatory because it moves away from traditional community engagement practices toward those that are concerned with social transformation.
Michelle Fine Tania Mitchell Chris Nayve Lina Dostilio MODERATOR: Lina Dostilio, Associate Vice Chancellor, Community Engagement, University of Pittsburgh
PANELISTS: Michelle Fine, City University of New York, Public Science Project; Tania Mitchell, Associate Professor, Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development, College of Education and Human Development, University of Minnesota; Chris Nayve, Associate Vice President for Community Engagement and Anchor Initiatives, The Mulvaney Center for Community, Awareness and Social Action, University of San Diego
Funding and Publishing Engaged Scholarship This workshop—part of the University of Pittsburgh Engaged Scholarship Development Initiative—demonstrated how to build awareness of strategies to secure funding and publish work relevant to Engaged Scholarship, including how to write grants expressing community engaged scholarship principles and approaches, and how to write articles based on community engaged scholarship processes and outcomes for peer-reviewed publications.
SPEAKERS: Lina Dostilio, Lauren Collister, Tiffany Gary-Webb, Sara Goodkind, Michael Holland, John Wallace
Finding Civic Learning in the University Catalog: How Course Attributes Identify and Enhance Opportunities for Engagement The increasing number of courses with a community engagement component reflects the University of Pittsburgh’s commitment to community engagement. However, what defines a civic learning/community engagement course at Pitt? This panel session described the new course attribute on civic learning. The attribute provides an indicator for those classes in the course catalog that include either a civic learning or civic learning plus engagement. Dean Joseph McCarthy conducted a conversation with faculty and students who worked to design this attribute and shared the dimensions of civic learning and engagement that are part of the new attribute. Participants learned how students, staff and faculty can use the attribute to enhance community engagement as part of the Pitt experience.
SPEAKERS: Mark Kramer, Eric Macadangdang, Joseph McCarthy, Willa Doswell, Michael Glass Research for Equity and Power (REP): Strategies and Lessons Learned about Community-based Participatory Research (CBPR) For the past two years, Homewood Children’s Village and the University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work have worked alongside one another and with community residents to increase civic engagement around positive community change. This workshop illustrated how CBPR principles have furthered the community engaged partnership, and included challenges and lessons learned.
SPEAKERS: Mary Ohmer, Katherine Holler, Donnell Pearl, Evie Damon, Shannah Tharpe Gilliam, Khadija Bey, Zinna Scott, Tanya McClenton-Todd, Dorothea Hall
Shifting Power in Educational Research and Development A cohort of 20 educators and 20 researchers participated in the design and implementation of an innovative equityfocused research process that positions Black and Latinx educators as research leaders. CESF attendees learned about the approach to this work and progress to date through an experiential and interactive session.
SPEAKERS: Allyce Pinchback-Johnson, Medina Jackson, Meredith Bortz
Health Equity
This keynote presentation featured a dialogue between Paula Davis and Al Richmond on “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” including an overview of the rich history of CCPH as an organization founded in 1997, a focus on communitybased participatory research and actionable advice for the health professions and practitioners (lessons learned, continuity/sustainability and accountability)
This workshop aimed to: • leverage the knowledge, wisdom and experience in communities and in academic institutions to solve pressing health, social, environmental and economic challenges; • ensure that community-driven social change is central to the work of community-academic partnerships; and • build the capacity of communities and academic institutions to engage each other in partnerships that balance power, share resources and work toward systems change.
Paula Davis Al Richmond PANELISTS: Paula K. Davis, Associate Vice Chancellor for Health Sciences Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; Al Richmond, Executive Director, Community-Campus Partnerships for Health (CCPH)
HealthyCHILD HealthyCHILD is a partnership among the University of Pittsburgh and multiple community early childhood programs that aims to help teachers develop skills to address child behaviors in the classroom that often result from trauma, mental health challenges, and racial discrimination. HealthyCHILD partnerships exude trust, reciprocity and mutual benefit because we share common goals including, supporting the mental health and well-being of teachers, children and families, and attacking the schoolto-prison pipeline where it starts.
SPEAKERS: Tracy Larson, Carole Barone-Martin, Debbie Gallagher, Chris Rodgick, Sally Rushford, Rachel LePage Pittsburgh Quality of Life (P-QOL) Survey Working Group Undergraduate and graduate students, University researchers and community partners are working to develop a 2021 QOL survey, building from previous QOL surveys. The panel reflected on the scientific and community engagement process for survey development.
SPEAKERS: David Maynard, Ashley Khor, Brett Say, Hannah Hardy, Sabina Deitrick
Interprofessional Diabetes Education—Wellness Pavilion at the Homewood Community Engagement Center Faculty and students from the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences and School of Pharmacy discussed the development of an interprofessional diabetes education service at the Homewood CEC. This program is designed to offer a personalized approach to self-management while supporting student engagement in service-learning.
SPEAKERS: Caroline Passerrello, Catherine Rebitch, Victoria Hornyak, Channing Moreland, Bonnie Virag
Criminal Justice Reform Ecosystems
Where true justice is realized, both safety and opportunity are defined and created by communities themselves, becoming free of the heavy weight of the criminal legal system.
The CJRI mission is to amplify and promote policies and practices to transform the justice ecosystem and reduce mass incarceration and its harms to individuals and society. We do this at local and national levels through convening stakeholders and supporting collaborations, strengthening leadership, promoting use of data, increasing public awareness and changing the narrative around justice in the United States.
This session highlighted the national perspectives on transformational opportunities for the justice continuum and shined a spotlight on programmatic and policy-shifting work advanced through local partnerships that the University of Pittsburgh has cultivated across faculty, students, elected officials and system leadership.
Mark A. Nordenberg Shalini Puri Doug Wood PRESENTER: Doug Wood, Director, Aspen Institute Criminal Justice Reform Initiative PANELISTS: Mark A. Nordenberg, Chair, University of Pittsburgh Institute of Politics, Shalini Puri, Cofounder, Pitt Prison Education Project
CONNECTing Research to Action: Bringing Pre-arrest Diversion to Allegheny County Pitt’s CONNECT and the ACHD partnered in 2019 for a threeyear-long exploratory to pilot process to bring jurisdictional equity to our county through pre-arrest diversion. This workshop shared the cross-department work of Pitt’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, School of Public Health and many other partners in justice reform.
SPEAKERS: Kelley Kelley, Kaleigh Dryden, JoEllen Marsh
Data for Racial Justice
This workshop introduced the new Law, Criminal Justice, and Society (LCJS) major and reviewed the developing partnership between LCJS students/instructors and the Abolitionist Law Center’s Allegheny County Court Watch program. The presentation included findings on race, policing and money bail from summer and fall 2020 reports.
SPEAKERS: Wesley Hiers, Autumn Redcross From Grief to Action The Center for Analytical Approaches to Social Innovation (CAASI) is actively building tools to elevate racial equity and support the effort to fight the systematic racism that has been laid bare by the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and countless more before them.
SPEAKERS: Sera Linardi, Claire Guth