Jennifer Connolly, Department of Political Science
As an Engaged Faculty Fellow, Jennifer has included a significant civic engagement component in her Municipal Modernization (MuniMod) course. This course encourages collaborative approaches to identify significant local government challenges and to develop “big ideas” that improve local governance and citizens’ quality of life. Throughout the semester, students work together (in teams of 3-4 people) to identify a community need, research the nature of the community need in collaboration with local government practitioners, and develop an innovative solution. At the end of the semester, each team presents their idea to a panel of local government officials, and the winning team goes on to represent the University of Miami in the statewide “Shark Tank” style competition sponsored by the Florida League of Cities.
Justin Ritzinger, Department of Religious Studies
As an Engaged Faculty Fellow, Justin Ritzinger will revise his course Activist bodhisattvas: Buddhist Ethics and Social Engagement. The course examines foundational buddhist ideas and values embodied in the bodhisattva path, the path to Buddhahood, and brings them into dialogue with contemporary examples of Buddhist social activism in Asia and America. With the help of the fellows program, Ritzinger plans to develop an experiential component to the course that will engage students with hands on work in the community to explore what the concepts and cases studied in the classroom can offer to pressing social problems.
Ashley Falcon, School of Nursing and Health Studies
With the support of the Office of Civic and Community Engagement, Ashley Falcon plans to provide meaningful, real-world learning opportunities for her students by incorporating civic engagement and service learning opportunities into all of her undergraduate public health courses. Her efforts will begin with BPH465, “Public Health Statistics and Data Management,” which is scheduled for Fall 2018. Students in this service-learning course will develop their statistical analysis skills using data from the University of Miami’s sexual violence campus climate survey. Using their analyses, students will work with community partners to formulate public health recommendations to prevent and address sexual violence on campus.
Shouraseni Sen Roy, Department of Geography and Regional Studies
As an Engaged Faculty Fellow, Shouraseni Sen Roy will revise her course Crime Mapping and Analysis. The course provides a basic understanding of the spatial analysis of issues related to criminal justice and crime mapping using ArcGIS, Risk Terrain Mapping, and CrimeStat. With help of the fellows program, Roy plans to further develop an ongoing research collaboration with the City of Coral Gables and offer opportunities for her students to use classroom knowledge to help in better crime management.
Imelda Moise, Department of Geography and Regional Studies
Imelda K. Moise applied to be an Engaged Faculty Fellow to build and foster connection between students in the Geography capstone course and UM sustainability issues. In this course, the civic engagement component consists of service learning experiences for the students where they will have the opportunity to work with various UM departments such as Parking & Transportation and Office of Sustainability. Students will develop statements of work or SOW focused on gathering data from food distributors via phone interviews in which metrics such as third party certifications, local sourcing, and local production will be used to determine a sustainability ranking for each particular food. In addition, students will use geospatial techniques to identify alternative transportation methods for commuter UM students and will design and implement a mobility survey for UM commuter students working at least 20 hours a week with UM client departments. The deliverables will be data to develop an overall sustainability ranking for the sub category that contributes to UM’s AASHE STARS total score; data and maps that will inform the Department of Parking & Transportation to provide alternative transportation methods for UM commuter students.
Calla Hummel, Department of Political Science
Calla Hummel applied to the Engaged Fellows program to develop a course on activism for undergraduates. The course explores research on what makes activism effective and provides students with hands-on opportunities to get engaged with their communities and representatives. Calla's interest in activism comes from years of working as a queer activist and from her research with street vendor unions in La Paz, Bolivia and São Paulo, Brazil. As an academic, Calla uses statistical, ethnographic, survey, computational, and formal methods to study when and why informal workers organize to lobby the state. More generally, she investigates the conditions under which marginalized people form politically powerful interest groups.
