CBR Graduate Fellows Practice Engaged Public Scholarship Across Five Academic Disciplines

CU Engage is pleased to announce our 2017-18 cohort of Community-Based Research (CBR) Graduate Fellows. This year's cohort spans five diverse academic disciplines including Ethnic Studies, Geography, Theatre, Mechanical Engineering and Education.

 

"We were thrilled this year to have our biggest pool of graduate student applicants, representing 10 departments across campus. The current group of Fellows proposed exciting projects that reflected long-term relationships with communities across Colorado. Their proposals articulated research projects with clear benefits to their partner organizations and with exciting implications for scholarship in their disciplines," explains CU Engage Faculty Director Ben Kirshner.

The CBR Fellows will work together as a cohort to learn methods of research that contribute to their individual doctoral research projects. Each CBR project will strive to advance CU Engage's key values of community-engaged research: equity, inclusion, public impact, democracy and the enactment of reciprocal relationships with various community partners.

Whereas emerging scholars are often forced to make a choice – to either engage in the community or do peer-reviewed research – this fellowship is designed to enable future scholars to build strong academic careers while working on public issues in partnership with community groups. "The purpose is to train a generation of scholars in the practices and principles of Community-Based Research," says Kirshner.

The 2017-18 CBR Fellows and their projects are as follows:

CBR Graduate Fellow	CBR Project	Academic Discipline
Wayne Martin Freeman	Park Jams: Community and Youth organizing in multicultural spaces	Ethnic Studies
Shae Frydenlund	Geographies of Work and Housing in Denver’s Muslim Refugee Community	Geography
Erin Kaplan	Colorado Prison Arts Collective: Theatre Workshop & Community Arts-Integration Programming	Theatre
Aaron Lamplugh	VOC Exposure Interventions in Denver Area Nail Salons	Mechanical Engineering
Brian Lightfoot	Enhancing and Evaluating the Impact of Emancipatory Curriculum and Pedagogy for the Pathways2Teaching Program in Colorado	Education