New Teacher Leadership Academy Launched for Alabama; Pilot Programs Begins with Tuscaloosa County Schools

• October 13th, 2013
• in Uncategorized

By Kirsten J. Barnes
CCBP Graduate Assistant

October 9, 2013

TUSCALOOSA — Having launched the award-winning Parent Leadership Academy (PLA) in 2007, The University of Alabama Division of Community Affairs has decided to build upon that success by creating a new program similar in nature but which incorporates another component of the school community – teachers.

Dr. Joyce Stallworth, associate provost and professor of education at UA, said the new Teacher Leadership Academy (TLA), offspring of the Parent Leadership Academy, came about after conversations with local principals and teachers, past PLA participants, Vice President for Community Affairs Dr. Samory Pruitt, and Center for Community-Based Partnership Community Education Director Dr. Heather Pleasants.

The new organization held its first meeting Friday, October 8, at the Bryant Conference Center. Eight area elementary schools were represented. Pruitt called the meeting “a great start. I could not have been more pleased. The teachers in attendance showed how very appreciative they were of how professionally everything was done.”

One of the speakers was Dr. Gay Barnes of Madison, Alabama, the state’s 2012 teacher of the year and one of four finalists for the national teacher of the year. Dr. Polly Moore, retired assistant superintendent for Tuscaloosa County Schools and facilitator of the program, presented an overview, summarizing the program’s purpose in these words: “Parents need the teachers and the teachers need the parents.”

The program’s origin, Stallworth said, came when “we asked ourselves what we could do to help parents become more engaged,” adding that becoming involved is not the responsibility of parents only; schools also must create opportunities for involvement.

Searching for existing parent-school partnership strategies, the group concluded that the most effective model is the National Network of Partnership Schools (NNPS), founded at Johns Hopkins University in 1996.

As a member of the network, the TLA will use the NNPS framework, a research-based approach for organizing and sustaining excellent programs of family and community involvement with the goal of increasing student success. NNPS has accumulated three decades of research on parental engagement, family engagement and community partnerships, and that will be the model the TLA will follow, Stallworth said.

Implementation of the program locally will mean more teachers joining more parents to be trained to be school leaders and equipped with the skills necessary to improve public education.
Although UA’s program will not provide college credit, the 27 teachers involved will improve skills to increase parent and family involvement; improve communication between teachers and parents; increase support for schools through community networks, partnerships, and grants; and ultimately increase opportunities for students to succeed.

Moore, the program facilitator, has previously worked with the PLA and brings more than 30 years of experience as a teacher and educational leader to her new role.

“I’m excited to be able to come back as a retired educator to get this off the ground,” Moore said. “The parents are such a valuable resource, and we need teachers to know how to involve those parents. This is just a natural follow to the PLA to get teachers and parents talking to improve the students’ overall success. Teachers who really know how to get parents involved are much more successful.”

Now in its sixth year, the PLA began with the Tuscaloosa city and county school systems. In the PLA, parents attend class to gain knowledge about how to become involved in their schools. Parent leaders then recruit other parents who want to learn more, along the way learning that their increased knowledge about their schools can be critical to school success by creating strong parent teams within schools. PLA is now expanding to other school districts. UA faculty and administrators are working with new partners, including Bessemer City Schools and Lamar County Schools.

The next steps for TLA are for Stallworth, Moore and Pleasants to attend the NNPS Leadership Development Conferences for Improving Programs of School, Family, and Community Partnerships, October 24–25, 2013, in Baltimore, and in December, NNPS will conduct a teacher leadership workshop in Tuscaloosa.

“This year is a pilot,” said Stallworth, explaining that the program will start with nine schools. “We will collect data as we go along.”

Stallworth, who has an outreach charge as associate provost, said she would like to see the program expand into Shelby, Hale and Greene counties, but wants make sure the pilot schools are successful before adding new areas. “We are looking at expanding, but we want to go very carefully and understand our capacity,” she said.

The initial 27 teachers will come from the following Tuscaloosa-area elementary schools: Skyland, Englewood, Matthews, Myrtlewood, Tuscaloosa Magnet, Holt, Flatwoods, Southview and Martin Luther King elementary schools.

In addition to working on creating school-based leaders, the TLA will work to provide support for the already required school-improvement plans by assisting teachers and parents with school-wide projects and programs they can initiate.

“I always told my teachers when I was a principal that parents send us the very best that they have and they want the very best for that child. Some of them just know how to go about it a little better than others,” Moore said, adding that these programs help to educate all teachers and parents on the best way to get the best results for their students.

The teachers will meet four times a year, with the first meeting on October 10, 2013.

“We don’t want this to be a burden to the teachers. We want this to be a safe space for teachers to come and talk about these issues,” Stallworth said. “Therefore, October seemed the perfect time to have the first meeting.”

Both Stallworth and Moore said their hope is that the teachers will leave with information they can immediately use to improve parent/school partnerships.

Hispanic Heritage Calendar

• September 22nd, 2013
• in Uncategorized

Planners Release Key Dates for 14th Annual Engagement Scholarship Consortium Conference (ESC) at Texas Tech University

• August 19th, 2013
• in News

Faculty, student and community scholars whose proposals have been accepted for presentation at ESC 2013 will be notified regarding their time, place and category of presentation on July 15. Those presenters will then have a deadline of July 30 to register for the conference, which is scheduled for October 8-9.

The last day to qualify for early registration rates for all attendees is August 22. Early rates are $395 for faculty and staff at ESC member institutions and $495 for non-members; $150 for community partners; and $75 for students.

After August 22, rates will be $450 for ESC members and $550 for nonmembers. Rates for community partners and students remain the same until the last day to register, September 30,

This year’s topic is Boundary Spanning: Engaged Scholarship Across Disciplines, Communities and Geography. Presentation tracks are Community Development and Regional Prosperity; Pre-K to 20 Education; Human Well-Being and Health; Sustainable Environments and Natural Resources; Global Engagement.

This is the first year in which the conference is being hosted by one of ESC’s four regions, the West Region. Members of this region are — in addition to conference site Texas Tech — Colorado State, Montana State, Oklahoma State, Oregon State, University of Alberta and University of Idaho.

Preconference workshops and events are scheduled for October 6 and 7. They are Race, Ethnicity, and Community Engagement Symposium; Emerging Engagement Scholars Workshop; Outreach and Engagement Staff Workshop (for more information see http://engagementscholarship.org/conference/esc-2013-meeting/preconference-sessions)

The Engagement Scholarship Consortium, formerly the National Outreach Scholarship Conference, is an organization of 25 U.S. and 2 foreign member institutions dedicated to the highest quality of community engagement scholarship, to building evidence-based university-community partnerships across all disciplines, and to demonstrating through actions the value of higher education to re-invent society in the 21st century. ESC headquarters are at Michigan State University.

Member institutions are the American University of Nigeria. Auburn University, California State University–San Marcos, Colorado State University, East Carolina University, James Madison University, Kansas State University, Michigan State University, Montana State University, North Carolina State University, Ohio State University, Oklahoma State University, Oregon State University, Pennsylvania State University, Purdue University, Texas Tech University, University of Alabama, University of Alberta, University of Georgia, University of Idaho, University of Michigan–Flint, University of Minnesota, University of Missouri, University of North Florida, University of Tennessee–Knoxville, University of Texas–San Antonio, University of Wisconsin–Extension.

Looking Back and to the Future of the Parent Leadership Academy in West Alabama

• August 16th, 2013
• in Uncategorized

By Dr. Heather Pleasants
Director, CCBP Office of Community Education

(The following profile looks at the Parent Leadership Academy (PLA), one of this campus’ leading engaged scholarship projects.)

It has been my privilege to direct the PLA almost since its founding in 2007, but I will be the first to say that the program’s continual success would not have been possible without the teamwork developed through a strong partnership between the parents, Tuscaloosa City and County public schools, and the University.

Here are just a few of the reactions to the program by parents and educators:

“PLA went way beyond what I was expecting. I learned so much from other parents, and from the speakers.”

“The PLA story is one of empowerment and engagement … (where) parents develop the knowledge necessary to make them effective partners in the work of our schools.”

“I have observed parents blossom as a result of their participation in the Parent Leadership Academy.”

The purpose of PLA is simple to state but complex in its execution: Its purpose is to prepare parent leaders in areas of knowledge relevant to their children’s education so that they can actively share that knowledge with other parents to create strong parent communities within their schools. PLA participation builds parental involvement and academic success within individual schools and ultimately within the district as a whole.

For several years before the PLA began, local school officials, teachers and community-involved UA faculty and administrators engaged in ongoing dialog about critical needs of public schools. The community was challenged to create and implement a strategy to educate and support parent leaders who would “grow their own” engaged parent communities. Local schools partnered with UA faculty, staff and students to develop the PLA as a yearlong leadership program for parents nominated by area principals.

PLA parents participate in the academy to gain knowledge about how to help other parents be positively involved in their schools with the goal of supporting students’ academic achievement. As indicated through surveys and other research, PLA parents recognize that gaining increased knowledge about their schools and sharing that information with other parents can be critical to school success. Through parent leadership projects and parent action teams, these motivated, well-informed parents are truly making a difference in the lives of the students in our community.

Now entering its seventh year, the PLA has worked with more than 200 parents who, in turn, have involved hundreds of other parents in becoming parent leaders. Students from throughout the two city and county school districts now have the support of parents, educators and the community working together to provide the foundation for improved academic and social success.

Recently, this success received national recognition, when Tuscaloosa’s school boards and PLA leaders accepted a Magna Award, one of only 15 nationally to receive the award in 2013. This award, based on best practices in local school districts, is sponsored by the National School Boards Association’s American School Board Journal. Though both city and county school boards were acknowledged in the application, the award was made to the Tuscaloosa City Board of Education.

From its inception until its present form, the PLA has exemplified an integrated partnership within every aspect of the model. Key community and university partners include city and county superintendents, district staff charged with promoting parental involvement and academic achievement, principals from all city and county elementary schools, guidance counselors and other school staff, community organizations that serve children and families, the West Alabama Chamber of Commerce, and faculty, staff and students from UA’s College of Education, College of Human Environmental Sciences, and Division of Community Affairs.

The development of the PLA has been guided by an emphasis on valuing all partners and the work they do through the PLA.

Through the PLA, parents are asked to initiate proactive conversations with principals, to attend and speak at school board meetings, and to talk with others in the PLA and in their schools about issues relevant to their school communities. Feedback from parents is gathered during and after each session, and PLA graduates have been special speakers at graduation ceremonies over the past three years of the PLA. Principals are also empowered through the PLA process, through engaged conversations about the process and outcomes of the PLA, through active involvement in sessions, and through work with their school’s PLA participants.

Sustaining Funds and Building Hours of Service

The success of PLA over the past six years has come from an investment of over 7,000 accumulated hours of work by parents, teachers and students. Launched with a $10,000 seed fund donation from UA, the city and county school districts have received outside funding and also contributed from their operating funds $38,400 annually to sustain and grow the program.

Additional grant applications have been submitted to expand the program. One PLA participant recently received a competitive UA seed grant to support her parent project to improve science and math education at Faucett Vestavia Elementary School. Another PLA project involved the formation of a grant-seeking subcommittee of the PTA that remains very active and is supported by PLA graduates and involved parents at the school.

Impacts are measured by parent activities and involvement in schools. One PLA graduate was invited to serve on the Superintendent’s Advisory Committee, gaining a critical seat at the table, as well as further opportunity to put her PLA-inspired leadership skills to work. During 2011–2012, Southview Elementary implemented a program facilitated and organized by parents and teachers to provide small group workshops for parents regarding curriculum.

Additional graduates have served in a leadership capacity for local educational initiatives such as the Westside Scholars Academy, which is an “academically challenging enrichment program” designed to support students’ “intellectual and social capacities … while contributing to the assets of the West Side community of Tuscaloosa,” according to the organization’s website, www.wsscholarsacademy.org).

We have been invited to talk about the PLA at the Alabama PTA Convention, the conference of Doing What Matters for Tuscaloosa’s Children Conference, the Optimist Club, Tuscaloosa Rotary, and District IV Federal Program Officers’ meetings. We are now expanding to other school districts. UA faculty and administrators are working with new partners, including Bessemer City Schools, and Lamar County Schools.

Research-Based Model

From the outset, the PLA model has been “research-based” in terms of its practices and strategies, with an emphasis on “context-based teaching and learning experiences.” In formulating the PLA model, we have identified successful, research-informed parent involvement programs that could serve as an initial framework. The emphasis on research is carried out in each PLA session. For example, each presenter/workshop facilitator is evaluated by parents to gain information about the effectiveness of the presentation and the utility of the information discussed.

Additionally, parents complete pre and post surveys that measure levels and changes in leadership self-efficacy, levels of communication with principals and other parents, perceptions of knowledge, and perceived current and future levels of engagement. Also, direct assessments of parents’ knowledge growth are collected at various points in the PLA year. Preliminary analysis of this data shows dramatic increases in parents’ knowledge about key issues, for example Alabama College- and Career-Readiness Standards (CCRS) and school finance.

In working with parents within and across each session, emphasis is placed on providing experiences that are interactive, involve active dialogue, and give specific attention to assisting parents with strategies for sharing information with other parents.

Through the PLA, faculty and graduate students in the College of Education and the College of Human Environmental Sciences have had direct experience in teaching, research and outreach in the area of parent involvement. UA faculty and graduate students have regularly made presentations to PLA participants, as have staff from both school districts. Graduate students have also made presentations about the PLA to a variety of audiences, and have participated in the creation of peer-reviewed research presentations.

Through the development of the PLA, The University of Alabama has deepened and strengthened its relationships with both school districts. These collaborative relationships have led to additional partnerships and engaged scholarship opportunities, through work with principals and with PLA graduates. Overwhelmingly, PLA graduates find sessions informative, helpful and renewing in their ability to positively impact their school communities.

Application Stressed

Prior to each session, we meet with every presenter/facilitator to ensure that how to apply the information, not just its presentation, is a central component. There was also interest in implementation of knowledge acquired. Parents were required to create a project at their schools that would significantly impact parental involvement and academic achievement. Interview data suggest that many of the projects designed continue to be implemented within schools.

Among the best practices sustained through six years of PLA are the following: full utilization of the knowledge possessed by individuals from the community and university as a support for parents’ learning; regular communication (including social media) with all stakeholders to build and sustain parent involvement over time; and active application of knowledge gained through the PLA through Parent Leadership Projects (with an emphasis on sustaining projects over time and inserting engaged scholarship principles within the projects themselves).

Summary and Future

The PLA has increased parent participation in the schools that are part of the network. We are continuously exploring ways to expand our network of schools and parents because the PLA is a working model for building leadership capacity among parents. To that end, the University has initiated plans to develop the Parent and Teacher Leadership Institute (PTLI) to focus specifically on developing leadership capacity among parents and teachers to increase the collaboration between school and home. Teachers and parents are crucial to overall student achievement. Therefore, the primary tenets of the PTLI will be professional development of teachers and parents to increase their leadership capacity, with the overall purpose of supporting students and increasing their academic achievement. The purpose will be to expand PLA, create a Teacher Leadership Academy (TLA), and develop a research and and effective practice clearinghouse.

The expanded PLA will reach more elementary parents in the West Alabama area, and add pre-K parents to the program. The TLA, set to begin as a pilot in fall 2013, will mirror the PLA and will include a network of elementary teacher leaders dedicated to expanding schools’ capacities for engaging parents and families. The research and effective practice clearinghouse will be a web-based collection of digital resources available to anyone interested in our research-based materials for parent and teacher leadership and engagement. For example, our curricular materials, videos of parent projects, and advocacy strategies would be readily available.

Dr. Samory T. Pruitt, vice president for Community Affairs, has great confidence in the ability of PLA to improve education throughout Alabama. “The research clearly shows that if you support parents, then our homes, schools and communities will benefit in ways that will transform education in our state. The partnerships we have created are bringing about positive changes, and we look forward to another good year in 2014.”

McLelland: New Job Is Real-World Test of Her Preparation

• July 17th, 2013
• in News

By Kirsten J. Barnes
CCBP Graduate Assistant

Looking back after six months in her new job as director of Crossroads Community Center, Lane Busby McLelland, the former assistant director of New College, is excited by her new responsibilities, which she sees as an opportunity to apply all her academic and life experiences to the challenges facing higher ed today .

McLelland holds a master of arts in ethics, a master of divinity and an interdisciplinary bachelor’s in international studies and conflict management. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Social and Cultural Studies Program in the College of Education.

“I loved what I did in New College, but coming to Crossroads gives me the opportunity to develop my fundamental areas of interest even more,” she said.

Crossroads Community Center provides leadership at UA in cultural programming and intercultural education by developing and hosting a variety of cultural events and dialogue programs that build community among the diverse groups on campus. It pursues its mission by engaging the energies of faculty, staff and students in the creation, implementation and evaluation of intercultural experiences.

McLelland sees her new job from several points of view. “I love working with people of different perspectives and backgrounds and seeing them work together,” she said. “Whether I am introducing domestic students to international students or convening stakeholders on campus for dialogue about controversial issues, I love seeing people build relationships across the differences they previously believed divided them. Because I’m coming from a program (New College) that values interdisciplinary work, I believe in bringing multiple perspectives to solving problems in society. My life has been interdisciplinary.”

Before beginning a teaching career at Shelton State Community College in 1999 and taking a position teaching full-time at UA in 2008, McLelland worked in various roles in the fields of religion and ethics. During the mid-1990s she worked in Atlanta for the Health Care Ethics Consortium of Georgia at the Emory Center for Ethics and served as a chaplain in the Olympic Village during the 1996 Summer Olympics.

All of these jobs, she believes, prepared her for her new job. “My work in New College always emphasized placing students in embedded community-based learning opportunities,” McLelland said. She said she looks for projects to get students and community members talking and working side-by-side. “I’ve done a great deal of work in the last two years to get students living and working in the community to help community partners solve problems together.”

In addition to her academic and service credentials, McLelland served as a United Methodist minister at Chinese Community United Methodist Church in Oakland, Calif., and Trinity United Methodist Church in Tuscaloosa. Also, she taught at Tunghai University in Taiwan and later worked with China-related organizations in Washington, D.C. As she implements custom-designed cultural programming for maximum effectiveness for the University, McLelland draws on her life experiences of living in working in cultures dramatically different from her own life growing up in Alabama.

McLelland said she missed teaching during her first semester at Crossroads, but is developing a new course that will also advance the mission of Crossroads. “I hope to offer some special courses that meet the goals of the academic departments and the goals of Crossroads: critical thinking and deliberative-dialogue,” McLelland said. This fall she is teaching Through the Open Doors: Sustained Dialogue for Courage, Change, and Progress.

Fifty years ago dramatic confrontations called for extraordinary courage for change and progress to occur at the University of Alabama. In 2013, the challenges are somewhat different, but the skillful dialogue for changing social norms resistant to progress continues to demand courage from student leaders, according to McLelland. “Today, deep courage is needed to talk honestly with each other and listen respectfully to those with whom we profoundly disagree. The next fifty years will call for students who can lead their peers in meaningful exchanges for positive action together.”

Her new course will examine the theoretical foundations of the student body politic as it has developed over the last half century. Comparing these to emerging theories for a 21st century Politics of Relationship and using the Sustained Dialogue Model for engaging opposing viewpoints, students will then explore the potential of this five-stage dialogue-to-action process to build on-going working relationships across historical divisions on campus.

In appointing McLelland, Dr. Samory T. Pruitt, vice president for Community Affairs, said, “Crossroads Community Center provides important intercultural leadership and dialogue programs for the campus and communities both near and far. We are most fortunate to have someone of Ms. McLelland’s background, credentials and motivation in this position.”

McLelland succeeds Dr. Beverly Hawk, who has joined the Center for Community-Based Partnerships as director of program services. McLelland received her bachelor’s degree from UA and both graduate degrees from the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California.

For more information on Crossroads, call McLelland at 205-348-6930 or email her at lane.mclelland@ua.edu.

Miller: Just Getting the Degree Is Not Enough

• July 17th, 2013
• in News

By Kirsten J. Barnes
CCBP Graduate Assistant

In about a year from now, Dr. Melanie Miller will have worked for The University of Alabama for 20 years, but she still maintains a youthful outlook about her work, possibly because so much of that time has been spent working with young people both inside and outside of class. Although she has held several positions — director of the Women’s Resource Center, associate director of the Russell Student Health Center, executive director of Crimson Care, and most recently associate dean of students — they all have one thing in common: helping students make the most of their UA experience.

“I always tell students that there is a difference in getting a degree and getting an education,” said Miller, who earned three degrees from UA — bachelor of science in social work, master of arts in community counseling, and doctorate in higher education administration. “If students only leave here with a degree, we have failed them.”

So it’s no surprise that Miller and her position as director of Student and Community Engagement in the Center for Community-Based Partnerships within the Division of Community Affairs are a good fit.

In the new position, Miller works to involve undergraduate and graduate students in community activities and volunteer experiences that will complement their classroom studies and strengthen their knowledge of and experience in research. She believes helping students get involved in the community gives them a better understanding of how their education is directly linked to solving problems within the community.

“I want to help students grow and develop during their time here. The whole campus should be a learning environment for students,” said Miller, the mother of two college students. “Education should be about transforming the total student. They need to be able to make meaning of how they can apply whatever information or skills they are getting in the classroom to their daily lives.”

The engagement activities Miller facilitates, however, are more than social development. Under Miller students will also learn how to do research that fosters intellectual growth and helps undergraduate and graduate students alike get additional research and analytical skills.

“I think it’s important to get students to understand that they can be involved in activities outside of the classroom, especially research,” Miller said. “Many are already involved in service-learning activities.”

One of Miller’s primary responsibilities will be overseeing SCOPE, Scholars for Community, Outreach, Partnership and Engagement, a program begun in 2009. One of her objectives is to increase the number of student members and get more undergraduate students involved.

“There are certainly ways to plug more undergraduate students into projects as research assistants, even if they are not initiating research projects independently,” Miller said. “I look forward to collecting more information by collaborating with different departments on campus and finding a way to connect more students to existing research initiatives.”

Although she has worked at UA since 1995, she has also served as a field placement supervisor and has taught such courses as Cooperation and Conflict; Leadership Through Social Justice Activism; and Leadership Through Volunteerism. All of these courses had a service-learning component.

This background, along with her work on social justice issues and her many years of experience working in community non-profits, will clearly benefit Miller in her new role.

“One of our goals at CCBP is to collect information on community needs,” Miller said. By systematically collecting information and developing sources regarding community needs CCBP and the campus will be able to match up community needs and faculty and student resources to prioritize the areas of greatest need, she says.

The Tuscaloosa native believes her new role allows her to use her expertise to put students on the frontlines of improving the quality of life for citizens living in Tuscaloosa and the surrounding communities, connecting them in ways that will transform their own lives.

Miller said, “It helps students develop skill sets while exposing them to different settings. It helps them become better citizens when they graduate, enhancing their sense of giving back to the community.”

About Miller’s appointment, Dr. Samory T. Pruitt said, “The addition of Dr. Miller comes at just the right time as more and more students seek to enrich their lives and improve the quality and value of their coursework by becoming engaged with the larger community. We are very fortunate to have a person with her training and interests for this important work.”

For more information on SCOPE or any of the other engagement projects Miller is involved in, call her at 205-348-6929 or email her at mmiller@ua.edu.

Dr. Beverly Hawk Joins Center for Community-Based Partnerships, Continues Her Commitment to Fulbright Scholar Program

• July 17th, 2013
• in News

By Kirsten J. Barnes
CCBP Graduate Assistant

Dr. Beverly G. Hawk is not new to The University of Alabama or the Division of Community Affairs. In fact, she retired in 2013 after six years as director of UA’s Crossroads Community Center, but she could not let her time at UA end there. So, when the opportunity arose this year to continue working with Community Affairs in the Center for Community-Based Partnerships (CCBP), she did not hesitate to accept the director of the Office of Program Services position.

Her multitude of duties now include coordinating CCBP’s Language Learning Lab and overseeing the campus Fulbright Scholar Program application process. But one of her main duties, says colleague Dr. Edward Mullins, is as the division’s “ace proofreader and copy editor for the scores of brochures, publications, programs, grant applications, websites, grant applications and other print, web and video materials we produce.” Mullins is director of the Office of Research and Communications at CCBP.

“I’ve worked in media at all levels and all forms and I’ve never seen a better, more constructive copy editor/proofreader,” Mullins said, “She catches the usual things, like mistakes in spelling and grammar, but she is also alert to matters of tone, common sense and history, which makes her very valuable indeed to our extensive publishing, video and web operation here at the center.”

Her new position allows her to expand the boundaries of her cultural community to include areas outside of the University and the nation through work with engagement scholarship. “Community engagement as practiced at the University has gone international,” Hawk said, “and Community Affairs understands that and the University sees that. Part of my position is to help faculty and students get U.S. Department of State grants to go overseas and engage communities around the world.”

“CCBP is a perfect fit for Hawk’s talents and energy,” says Dr. Samory T. Pruitt, vice president of Community Affairs. “She brings together senior leadership, student energy, community wisdom and scholarly expertise, which makes for an especially creative collaboration.”

Hawk enjoys international and multicultural work and says the Fulbright Scholar Program allows her to encourage UA students to take part in a program that helped shape her own career as an African Studies scholar. Hawk serves as the campus’ adviser and coordinator for the Fulbright Scholar Program.

Hawk has been deeply involved in the Fulbright Program throughout her career, serving on the social science faculties of the University of Nairobi in 1994 and the University of Malawi in 2001. As part of her Fulbright service, she taught grant proposal writing at universities in Morocco, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Kenya and Malawi.

“The more you travel and the more cultures you encounter the more humble you have to be because you realize how big the world is and how little you know,” said Hawk, who has visited more than a dozen countries. “You have to be comfortable making mistakes and apologizing for those mistakes and being willing to listen and learn.”

As the former director of Crossroads, Hawk has interacted with students from all over the world. “Crossroads is a place for people to come together and bring the positive fruits of their cultures and share them to embrace practical tasks,” said Hawk, who came to UA from Miles College in Birmingham, where she taught international studies, research methods, public administration and government. “If you are a positive person, then you’ll want to be associated with a place that brings positive people together. As director of Crossroads, it was my honor to coordinate so many great leaders on campus.”

Collaboration is really what engagement scholarship is all about, she said. “When we bring people together from different walks of life to weave something positive out of their collaboration, we get a beautiful result,” she said.

Hawk’s book, Africa’s Media Image, published by Praeger, received a Sigma Delta Chi Award in 1992. It analyzes how the American press portrays Africa and was published in the year that the United States military went into Somalia to halt atrocities and address illness and starvation of the nation’s citizens at the hands of its own military forces. “Because of this timing, the book still sells,” Hawk said.

Hawk also served as editor for six years of African Issues, a journal of the African Studies Association and was elected to the association’s International Board.

The social scientist-turned-author learned to write out of necessity. “I had something I needed to say to people that I had never met and would never meet. That’s how I became a writer.”

In 2000, Hawk received the Millennium International Volunteer Award, an award given by the State Department for initiatives in pursuit of international understanding. In 2004, she received the John Carroll University Alumni Medal in recognition of her work with AIDS orphans, and in 2005 she received a Fulbright Senior Specialist Award to continue her consultations with universities overseas.

Hawk received her bachelor’s degree in political science from John Carroll University in her native Ohio, master’s in African studies from Howard University, and master’s and Ph.D. in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

In announcing her new appointment, Dr. Samory T. Pruitt, vice president for Community Affairs, said, “Our division and the hundreds of students we work with every semester are extremely fortunate to have a person on our staff with the encompassing humanitarian spirit and wealth of knowledge of Dr. Beverly Hawk.”

7th Annual Awards Program Concludes Highly Successful Engagement Scholarship Year at The University of Alabama

• July 16th, 2013
• in News

By Kirsten J. Barnes
CCBP Graduate Assistant

The Center for Community-Based Partnerships celebrated its big day on Friday, April 26, at Hotel Capstone on the UA campus, recognizing the year’s top projects and scholars, while taking a look back on the University’s most successful year ever in the engagement scholarship field.

Here are some of the accomplishments and current and future plans outlined by several speakers at the seventh annual awards program, including Dr. Heather Pleasants, CCBP director of Community Education:

• UA became the first non-land-grant institution to host the National Outreach Scholarship Conference, the most important international conference dedicated to engaged scholarship (now known as the Engagement Scholarship Consortium — ESC), setting records for overall attendance (613, twice the previous conferences’ average), for student attendance (145, 115 of whom made presentations), number of states represented (39), colleges and universities (84), and community organizations (47).
• Dr. Samory T. Pruitt was named vice president of the ESC Board of Directors.
• The Parent Leadership Academy was one of only 15 school leadership programs to receive the National School Board Association’s Magna Award. Dr. Heather Pleasants, CCBP director of Community Education, is the director of the program.
• The Teacher Leadership Academy, an initiative that will provide professional development for teachers invested in building strong family-school partnerships, will be launched in the coming year.
• Beginning this summer, STEM/Entrepreneurship Camp, which blends the science/technology/engineering/math fields with entrepreneurship will be launched this summer and will include in-service training for teachers.
• Eleven seed fund awards (click here for seed fund award announcement) were announced, up from four last year, aimed at positive change and tangible benefits for schools, organizations and communities across the state and nation and even around the globe.

Dr. Edward Mullins, director of research and communication at CCBP, introduced the various speakers and program segments. “When you see students, faculty and members of the community working together to improve schools, athletic facilities, health, water supplies, to stop bullying, produce more scientists and engineers, those are just a few of the signs of engagement scholarship. But there’s more to engaged scholarship than ‘doing things’,” he said.

“There is also the research component. Just conducting these projects is not sufficient to qualify as engagement scholarship. Only when teaching, research and service are integrated does true engaged scholarship occur. Only when scholars have collected and analyzed the data and reported the results, i.e. presented and interpreted the evidence, have we closed the circle on engagement scholarship.”

Pruitt began the awards portion of the program by announcing an award that surprised the recipient.

“It is an absolute honor and a pleasure for me to present the Distinguished Special Achievement in Engaged Scholarship Award to my friend and colleague, Dr. Joe Benson,” Pruitt said. “Joe has been an outstanding advocate for engaged scholarship. He’s been here every year to help us give out the awards. In addition to that, over half of the dollars for the seed funds each year have come from Joe’s budget.”

In accepting his award, Benson said: “I did not see this coming. It’s a good thing I came today. I very much appreciate this award and the thoughtful presentation, but the real award goes to you all because this effort started very, very small and there were many, many questions as to whether this [engagement scholarship as an academic movement] was something that could actually succeed.

“Through the hard work of people like Samory (Pruitt), Ed (Mullins), Janet (Griffith), Heather (Pleasants) and all of you, this has grown into a real honest to goodness research effort on this campus,” Benson said. “I think The University of Alabama has to be very, very proud for the accomplishments that this initiative has brought. And in my mind this initiative is still in its infancy. I think the really good things are still to come. So, I am very, very pleased to be here today to recognize you for what you do.”

Pruitt expressed appreciation for the early critiques and suggestions Dr. Benson made with regard to what is now the leading journal in engagement scholarship, the UA-published Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship, but in the beginning had some rough edges.

Janet Griffith, assistant provost, as she has done each year, presided over the awards presentations. Following is a summary of those awards:

Distinguished Achievement in Engagement Scholarship — Faculty/Staff

Dr. Karl Hamner wears many academic and engagement hats. He is the Assistant Dean of Scholarly Affairs for two major campus academic programs, the Capstone College of Nursing and the School of Social Work. He is the person behind the initiation of the UA-Veterans Administration Collaboration, begun in 2007 to increase collaboration and expand research, education and training, including the VA-funded Rural Health Training and Education Project that trains nursing, medical and social work students to serve rural veterans. There is the 2008 Walker Area Transformational Coalition for Health (WATCH), a rural health network addressing health in Walker County. WATCH has received local, state and federal funds to improve health and is now becoming the Health Action Partnership of Walker County, partnering with the United Way of Central Alabama and the Health Action Partnership of Jefferson County. Finally, there is the Holt Community Partnership, which Hamner helped found in 2009. The partnership is dedicated to making Holt a vibrant, healthy and safe community. After the 2011 tornado, the partnership has taken on helping rebuild the community. Hamner co-chaired this year’s Holt Community Festival. In addition to his administrative and teaching duties, Hamner is a health researcher, evaluation consultant and a training specialist and has conducted many multicultural health and social research studies. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1993.

Distinguished Achievement in Engagement Scholarship — Student

Jackie Brodsky, a Ph.D. candidate in Communication and Information Sciences, got her start in community-engaged scholarship while a master’s student helping senior citizens become fluent in information technology at a local senior center. The project sparked her interest in the research/evaluative aspects of engaged scholarship. Today, she is the graduate research assistant for Project ALFA (Accessible Libraries for All), helping prepare 30 master’s students to facilitate information access for people with disabilities by creating partnerships with community agencies serving these populations. Brodsky is the author of several peer-reviewed journal articles on accessibility and plans to continue to conduct research in this field as a fulltime faculty member. Brodsky’s mentor is Dr. Laurie Bonnici, with whom she has worked on several projects throughout her master’s program and whom she credits with inspiring her to concentrate her research in the community-engagement field. They have co-authored one peer-reviewed journal article, and Dr. Bonnici is her dissertation committee chair.
(Click here for Brodsky’s remarks.)

Distinguished Achievement in Engagement Scholarship — Community Partner

Friends describe Mason Bonner as the ultimately dependable partner for any project, the kind of partner all organizations want on their team. He has worked closely with CCBP on the entrepreneurship education component of the Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development (WIRED ) Initiative. He has helped CCBP organize workshops in several rural counties in West Alabama, and he has developed a business plan workshop and competition for students in Lowndes County. He has participated in a teacher-training institute hosted jointly by Alabama and Mississippi REAL programs in which teachers from these states and Georgia received activities-based training and curriculum resources. In addition to his partnership work with CCBP, Bonner is one of the founding members of A Few United Men, a 501(c)3 organization that provides mentoring and tutoring for at-risk youth in West Alabama.

Outstanding Faculty/Staff-Initiated Engagement Efforts

• Dr. Marcus Ashford, associate professor of mechanical engineering. Project title: Rockets and Race Cars. This hands-on approach heightens students’ interest in and mastery of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
• Dr. John Giggie, associate professor of history. Project title: Religion and Civil Rights. Students explore the role of religion and African-American churches in the civil rights movement.
• Dr. Jeffrey G. Parker, associate professor of psychology. Project title: Practicum in Positive Youth Development and Civic Engagement. Students learn civic engagement principles to help improve the community of Holt in areas ranging from schools to law enforcement, from courts to at-risk youth.

Outstanding Student-Initiated Engagement Efforts

• Jackie Brodsky, with Dr. Laurie Bonnici, School of Library and Information Studies. Project title: ALFA – Accessible Libraries for All. A professor and her protégé developed this program that enables individuals with disabilities to access information in the digital age.
• Fan Yang, School of Social Work. Project title: Heart Touch. This project builds cultural competency for children in the after-school program of Tuscaloosa’s One Place. Among the activities was a pen-pal exchange between children here and in China.
• Kelsey Balzli, Jacquie McMahon, Benjie Ladrillono, Julia Gardial, Haley Flanagan, graduate students in advertising and public relations. Project title: “I Can” Anti-Bullying Campaign for Tuscaloosa City Schools. Tuscaloosa middle school students received training in strategies to prevent bullying. They created posters, newsletters, and other means of communication to reach parents, students and faculty to combat the problem.

Outstanding Community Partner-Initiated Engagement Effort

• Rev. Larry W. Corder, Alberta Baptist Church; Rev. Kelvin Croom, College Hill Baptist Church; and Dr. Chandra Clark, instructor in telecommunication and film. Project title: Alberta City History Project. Alberta City ministers formed a partnership with UA’s Dr. Chandra Clark to preserve the history of the area following destruction by the April 27, 2011 tornado that devastated the Alberta City community.
• Rev. Richard L. Morgan, Mary Rogers Brooks, Georgia White, Linda O’Rourke and Jane Wells, First African Baptist Church; Rev. Tyshawn Gardner, Phyllis P. Rogers, Erica Walker and Rebecca Hood, Plum Grove Baptist Church; Rev. Kelvin Croom, Marcie McMullen, Jahnese Hobson, Regina Hughes, Rena Heard, Willie Robinson and Jessica McCaskill, College Hill Baptist Church; Dr. Rebecca Kelly, Dr. Pamela Payne Foster, Dr. James King and Dr. Martha Crowther, The University of Alabama; and Marvin Wilson, the Joseph and Lauretta Freeman Foundation. Project title: Saving Lives, A Community-University Faith-Based Initiative for Health and Well-Being. University health researchers combine forces with local churches to combat illness using faith, scripture and health science. A five-month pilot study completed with three local churches addressed key health concerns such as cancer, obesity and diabetes.
•  Rev. Tyshawn Gardner, Plum Grove Baptist Church, and Dr. Karen Baynes-Dunning, associate professor, Human Environmental Sciences. Project title: West Side Scholars Academy. Pastor Gardner and his church collaborated with Dr. Baynes-Dunning to enrich the scholarship of middle school students in Tuscaloosa city and county schools. The students study various academic disciplines and will travel to Costa Rica this summer.

A research poster session, organized by Tommie Syx of the CCBP staff, preceded the awards program. Veteran attendees agreed that it was the largest and best poster session of any held in conjunction with the awards luncheon. More than 20 posters were on display.

UA Chinese Student's Project Promotes Cultural Understanding

• July 16th, 2013
• in News

By Sirui Shao
CCBP Intern

Fan Yang began her Heart Touch project this semester with the aim of enhancing cultural competency and to contribute to greater understanding and knowledge of other ethnic groups.

Heart Touch connects primary school students between America and China by providing opportunities for them to communicate through writing letters as pen pals.

“I hope each student who takes part in this project can understand different cultures and get some knowledge about different countries,” said Yang, a School of Social Work graduate student at The University of Alabama, who added that knowing different cultures is really important for personal development.

This project collaborates with Tuscaloosa’s One Place, a family resource center, which assists people in achieving their full potential. The center provides resources to promote self-sufficiency, strengthen families and prevent child abuse and neglect improving the quality of life for all members of our community.
So far, Heart Touch has about 100 fourth grade students from each country and 30 volunteers who oversee the project. Most of the volunteers are graduate students at The University of Alabama. However, there also are two or three undergraduate students involved.

The program has a six-week curriculum, with the first three weeks focusing on presentations given by Yang and other UA Chinese student volunteers. To promote the program, Yang and her volunteers visited Tuscaloosa’s One Place four days a week for one semester to conduct classes. During the class, students ate foods provided by Lailai, a Chinese restaurant in Northport.

Afterward, Yang taught the American children about Chinese culture by telling them stories and other interesting things related to China, such as the Chinese New Year, Chinese foods and Chinese names. Yang and her volunteers also teach them life skills related to safety.

Yang selected a primary school in Hunan, China as the cooperating school for the pen pals because Hunan is where she received her bachelor’s degree. Therefore, she was familiar with the province, which made it easier for her to connect with schools.

Letters arrive every two-to-three weeks via email. After receiving these emails, Chinese student volunteers scan them before translating them from Chinese to English or English to Chinese. They then give the emails to the Chinese and America children. Children respond to the letters they receive in English or Chinese, and then volunteers perform their translations again and the cycle repeats itself.

“I will continue doing this project at least one year,” said Yang. “I hope I can expand it into various countries. We need more volunteers.”

UA's Pauline and Philip Johnson Define the "Scholarship of Engagement"

• July 12th, 2013
• in News

By Kirsten J. Barnes
Graduate Assistant
Center for Community-Based Partnerships

(Editor’s Note: Work by two engineering professors at The University of Alabama provides insights into the field of engaged scholarship, while also highlighting aspects of a sister discipline, service-learning.)

Reflecting on their years at UA, the husband and wife engineering team of Dr. Philip Johnson and Dr. Pauline Johnson concluded that their students were naive when it came to understanding global engineering. Few had traveled outside the United States; some had not even been outside the Southeast. Those who had traveled abroad had gone for the most part as tourists.

Having visited 99 countries, many of them in the third world, the Johnsons were determined to do something about their students’ insularity.

“There are a lot of places in the world that are much, much, different from the United States,” said Dr. Philip Johnson, who has taught in UA’s civil, construction, and environmental engineering department for 23 years. “As an educator who routinely talks to students about sustainable engineering projects, I know that unless they go to a third-world country they don’t fully understand what that means.”

The couple are co-sponsors of UA’s Engineers Without Borders chapter and have helped develop the International Engineering Service-Learning Program at UA. Together they create learning experiences based on modern engineering practices through partnerships with UA’s Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility and the Center for Community-Based Partnerships. In all, the couple has accompanied more than 50 students on international trips to Peru, Cambodia and Vietnam.

Dr. Philip is a petroleum and civil engineering specialist, while Dr. Pauline’s expertise is in water and wastewater treatment.

“We started in 2005. I think we’ve had seven trips abroad with the students,” said Dr. Pauline, who is in her 18th year on the UA faculty. “Engineers Without Borders likes for you to go back to the same community to build on what you’ve done and check on the systems you’ve already created.”

In addition to partnering with UA groups and non-profits in the destination country, students collaborate with universities in the host country. In Peru they worked with students and faculty from the University of Iquitos, which provided field equipment and took part in field testing, surveys, group discussions, shopping for supplies and social outings.

These experiences build invaluable soft-skills (problem solving, communication) while introducing them to the inevitable global challenges of their career path, according to the Johnsons.

In an article they published along with Noam Shaney of Peru in the Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship (JCES) in 2008, they argued that service-learning opportunities develop leadership, teaming, management, communication and cross-cultural skills. In addition, the students grow personally as they learn flexibility, adaptability, maturity, independence and the ability to analyze, adjust to and appreciate local culture and context. The students also gain a global perspective, an appreciation of the societal implication of their work, and the satisfaction of working with a client in taking an international community project from conception and planning to fruition.

Their purpose in traveling widely with their students, Dr. Philip said, was “to do something for the students to help them experience the world. When you work with people on projects and incorporate the locals from the community, you really get a different perspective and feel for the community.”

Because these trips are in conjunction with the student organization Engineers Without Boarders, the students set the agenda and decide which country to visit and which projects to take on once they arrive.

Many of the students they get are the very best students in the College of Engineering, and are already motivated when they join Engineers Without Borders, which provides outlets for this motivation.

These trips have career implications for many students. For example, one student joined the Peace Corps after returning from a trip. Another student had her immediate sights set on medical school but instead pursued a master’s at Oxford University before starting medical training.

The Johnsons say most of the students have the opportunity to travel with them on only one trip because of costs. However, Ynhi Thai is an exception. As an undergraduate, she traveled with them to Peru in 2006 and Cambodia in 2009. Born in Vietnam, Thai immigrated with her parents to the United States where they made Long Beach, Miss., their home.

“On the first trip we were basically surveying the area to see what the villagers needed,” said Thai, who completed her master’s degree in medical anthropology from Oxford University this month (August 2012), after earning her bachelor’s in chemical engineering from UA in 2010.

During her trip to Cambodia, Thai participated in a project to build a water treatment plant for the 20,000 people in the province. “Our first job was to test the water filters to make sure they were working properly and that the people knew how to take care of them.”

Although her international background gave her some idea of what to expect in the area, it was still an enlightening adventure. A developing country “is really eye-opening,” she said. “The trip encouraged me to initiate a project in Cambodia.”

When the group returns from a foreign project, the Johnsons encourage them to develop their own ideas, which helps them become decisive leaders, traits essential to a successful engineering career where failure to prioritize can sink a budding career.

Having discovered that in real-world Amazonian settings that expensive equipment is not the best way to go, Thai and a UA professor submitted a proposal to the Bill and Linda Gates Foundation to purchase a water treatment tester for field use. They knew there was a need for an inexpensive, portable water testing kit that didn’t require power, said Thai. “It’s important when testing water to be able to get good results right away.” Their grant was funded for $100,000.

Not all of the Johnsons’ work is international. They and their students have taken on water and recreational projects in nearby Hale and Greene counties and have helped with storm-damage repairs in several communities near the University.

But as their JCES article points out, international settings seem to create the greatest opportunities for learning. “Experience abroad forces students to deal constructively with cultural differences and situations they would not otherwise face,” Dr. Philip said, adding “there is no comparison between working in an environment where getting supplies is relatively easy and in primitive environments, where a one-way trip to the hardware store is twelve hours from the village you’re working in.”

The Johnsons’ published research concludes that overseas projects facilitate valuable across a broad learning spectrum, but especially in organizational and communication skills; learning without the aid of formal instruction; experiencing other cultures; personal growth; and expanding views of the developing world.

In addition to their article in JCES, the Johnsons have also published “Safe Water Evaluations in the Peruvian Amazon” (with Andrew Magee, Rebecca Macdonald, and Beth Todd) and “Illuminating Villages and Minds in Rural Peru” (with Hannah Betty and Todd), both in the International Journal for Service Learning in Engineering.

With the ability to work in environments and work across language and cultural barriers, the Johnsons’ students gain intangible skills and knowledge about themselves as people and professionals. They develop confidence, Dr. Philip said, “because the obstacles put in front of them seemed overwhelming, but they managed to put it together pretty well … [and] they return home believing they can accomplish anything.”