The University of California’s Center for Collaborative Research for an Equitable California (CCREC) seeks contributions for an upcoming Casebook. CCREC is a University of California multi-campus research initiative that links university researchers, community-based organizations, and policy-makers in collaborative projects to address the state’s interconnected crises in the economy, education, employment, environment, health, housing, and nutrition.

The Casebook will highlight the unique ethical dilemmas that arise in collaborative, community-based research, using mini-case studies and vignettes to illustrate core ethical principles, and to invite readers to engage with the most vexing ethical conundrums collaborative researchers face. The Casebook will:

• Help researchers identify and navigate ethical tensions they face;
• Serve as a training guide for new scholars, community leaders, and policy makers; and
• Inform policy discussions about research ethics and possible IRB revisions.

To inform its analysis, CCREC is seeking contributors to share the ethical dilemmas that they have faced in their work. CCREC staff will incorporate these dilemmas into mini-cases and vignettes that will be discussed across topically organized chapters, and all contributors will be acknowledged in the appropriate places. CCREC staff will write the Casebook and will solicit your feedback on the parts that draw upon your work. CCREC is especially interested in ethical issues surrounding the following research practices: obtaining informed consent; protecting confidentiality and anonymity; navigating power dynamics (particularly regarding race, class, gender, and language); framing research questions; data interpretation and ownership; publishing and disseminating research findings; and participating in policy debates or political struggles.

Cases should:

• Be grounded in fieldwork that illustrates the complex ethical dilemmas that collaborative, community-based researchers and/or community partners face; and
• Be focused on one or more of CCREC’s focal areas: the economy, education, employment, the environment, health, housing, and nutrition.

Submissions:

• Submit a brief (two page max.) summary of your project that describes the context of the work and the ethical issues it raises AND/OR request to be interviewed by a CCREC staff member in lieu of writing a
  summary.
• Submission/interview request deadline is July 1, 2013, via email to arnewman@ucsc.edu.
• After reviewing the submissions, we will schedule interviews to discuss the proffered case in more detail.

Please contact Anne Newman (arnewman@ucsc.edu) for more information. Click here to download a flyer of this announcement for distribution.

Thanks to a generous grant from the Joy of Giving Something, Inc. (JGS), Imagining America is offering ten tuition awards of $2,000 each to publicly engaged students of photography, media, or visual arts selected from our member institutions. We are looking for students with demonstrated leadership facilitating community-based photo or media arts experiences with people unlikely to otherwise have access to art-making.

Criteria for the student awardees include:

1. Financial need
2. Artistic merit
3. Quality of community-engaged practice

To be considered, we ask the faculty or staff member to write a letter of recommendation and the student to complete a multimedia essay (please see prompt below). The submission deadline is May 22. Only one award will be given per school.

All awardees will be invited to participate in Imagining America’s virtual network and to attend the 2013 national conference, October 4-6, in Syracuse, New York. Additionally, awardees will be eligible for a limited number of travel stipends to attend the conference.

A committee of Imagining America constituents who have been involved in the program for the last two years will assess the applications. Winners will be announced in July and the funds will be released shortly thereafter. Checks will be distributed to each Imagining America institution, and the faculty or staff nominator will be responsible for seeing that the winning student receives the award funds.

Click here to apply!

Associate Director for Service Learning Institute

(Administrator II)

Job #: MB2013-ED1817

Apply Today! Open until filled. Application Screening Begins: Monday, May 20, 2013

The Service Learning Institute at CSU Monterey Bay, a national leader in service learning and civic engagement, is searching for an Associate Director. Service learning is a core requirement for all undergraduate degree programs at CSUMB. CSUMB’s unique approach to service learning is strongly grounded in the campus’ commitment to issues of diversity and social justice. The Associate Director manages the support and evaluation systems for service learning campus-wide, and with the Institute Director, provides leadership for the SLI’s faculty development efforts. The Associate Director serves as the leader of a dynamic group of service learning professionals in: coordinating the service learning community placement process; leading faculty development and training efforts; managing program evaluation and data-gathering processes; facilitating the production of the SLI’s written and electronic materials; and overseeing the continuing development of the SLI’s web-presence. The Associate Director also serves as Service Learning Liaison to the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, facilitating service learning course development efforts in that college. The Associate Director also participates in the development of the SLI’s academic program, and contributes to the intellectual growth of CSUMB’s service learning program and pedagogy, providing leadership for the SLI in the absence of the Director.

To find out more about California State University, Monterey Bay and our Service Learning Institute, please visit the following websites:

• Service Learning Institute
• Service Learning Basics@CSUMB

POSITION HIGHLIGHTS:

This isn’t an exhaustive list, but the main responsibilities of the Associate Director include:

• Providing overall direction and coordination to insure high quality service learning course and community partnership support campus-wide.
• With the Director, overseeing the creation and delivery of a variety of faculty development efforts designed to strengthen faculty knowledge and skills in service learning, social justice education, experiential learning, and community partnership building.
• Developing and overseeing the distribution of written and electronic materials related to the Service Learning Institute and CSUMB’s service learning requirement.
• Facilitating and analyzing annual evaluations of service learning courses and partnerships.
• Overseeing the management of the SLI yearly calendar of events, including faculty, community partner, and student leader workshops and trainings.

IF THIS IS THE JOB FOR YOU, THIS IS WHAT YOU’LL NEED:

Equivalent to a Master’s degree in a related field from an accredited college/university AND a minimum of three (3) years experience in implementing college-level service learning programs, multiculturalism and diversity programs, or community-based organization work. Experience in service learning curriculum development and pedagogy. A graduate degree in a related field may be substituted for one year of the required experience. Additional experience, which has demonstrated the requisite skills and abilities, may be substituted for required education on a year-for-year basis.

CAMPUS OVERVIEW:

California State University, Monterey Bay (CSUMB) is distinctive in serving the diverse people of California, especially the working class and historically under-served communities. Our 1,387-acre campus is approximately one mile from the shores of Monterey Bay, between the Salinas Valley and Monterey Peninsula. CSUMB has a great work/life balance. We’re a small, residential campus with an engaged faculty and staff. Students receive individual attention, plus access to the many opportunities of a comprehensive university.

SALARY RANGE: 

Up to $5,000 per month. CSUMB offers an attractive employee benefits package, This is a management level position with an attractive benefits package, which includes: a vacation accrual rate of 16 hours per month; an excellent choice of medical, dental and vision insurance; long term disability coverage; life insurance; educational incentives; and retirement benefits. For further information, please visit: Management Personnel Plan. Access to affordable campus housing is available, Employee Housing; check it out!

Ready to apply for this great opportunity? Is so, please visit: Assoc. Dir. for Service Learning Institute.

The John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage at Brown University invites applications for a postdoctoral research associate in public humanities for the academic year 2013–14. While the nature of an applicant’s specific interests and areas of expertise are left open, these should be complementary to the present makeup of the Center. Areas of interest: documentary studies, community memory, digital public humanities, cultural heritage, cultural policy, informal education, public art, and historic preservation. More information about the Center can be found here: http://www.brown.edu/academics/public-humanities/.

Applicants must normally have received their Ph.D. from an institution other than Brown within the last five years and have expertise and experience working in the public humanities, and an interest in working with students in an interdisciplinary and public context. In addition to pursuing his or her own projects, the successful candidate will be expected to teach one course per semester, and participate actively in the ongoing development of the Center, via organization of reading or working groups or community projects that extend or develop new university-community connections. This will be a one-year position, beginning August 1, or August 15, 2013, with possibility of extension to a second year. Annual (12 month) salary is $45,000 plus benefits.

For full consideration, candidates should submit a cv, 2-3 page statement of interests, two confidential letters of reference and potential syllabus via https://secure.interfolio.com/apply/21656 no later than June 15, 2013. The search will remain open until the position is closed or filled.

Brown is an EEO/AA employer. Minorities and women are encouraged to apply.

Application Deadline May 1, 2013.

601 Tully (Center for Engaged Art and Research) at Syracuse University announces two new full-time positions. Both opportunities are listed at www.sujobopps.com and all applications should be made online.

Curator of Arts and Public Programs
Maintain a full-time presence at 601 Tully—Syracuse’s newest contemporary arts space dedicated to artists with a social practice. Manage all aspects of interdisciplinary art and public programs forging connections with the community. Must have a Master’s degree in a related field, grant writing experience, and five years of related professional experience. Full time job with full benefits package. Salary $44k–55K, commensurate with experience. This job is listed as a Program Manager on the SU website (job number 030076).

Coordinator of Arts Programs
Maintain a fulltime presence at 601 Tully—Syracuse’s newest contemporary arts space dedicated to artists with a social practice. Maintain all aspects of scheduling and marketing artists in residence, school tours, classes, and open mic poetry series. Maintain social media and assist with installation of exhibitions. Must have B.A. and minimum of one year full-time work experience. Full time job with full benefits package. Salary $29k–33K. This job is listed as a Program Coordinator on the SU website (job number 030077).

All applications should be completed online: www.sujobopps.com.

601 Tully St., Syracuse, NY 13204
601Tully.syr.edu
601tully.blogspot.com
mobileliteracyartsbus.blogspot.com

The D.R.E.A.M. Freedom Revival (DFR), a Syracuse-based grassroots theater company that uses music and theater to spark conversations about freedom and democracy, is partnering with Move to Amend of Syracuse and Onondaga County to create a ”tent revival” on the issue of corporate personhood and the national call to amend the United States Constitution to limit the rights of corporations. They will perform onThursday, April 25, at 7 p.m., at Grace Episcopal Church (819 Madison Ave.). The performance, “We The People Move to Amend,” seeks to educate about the roots of corporate personhood and invite discussion about its effects on democracy, locally and nationally.

“An important but seemingly abstract issue, we’re hoping this performance sparks thought and dialogue about the concrete ways corporate personhood impacts people’s everyday lives,” says local sociologist and DFR organizer Michael Messina-Yauchzy. ”Once you realize that we’re equating money (often in the form of campaign contributions) with ‘free speech,’ it’s easy to see how so-called corporate personhood has a pernicious effect on the idea of true democracy.”

DFR’s contribution to the local theater scene has been marked by its embrace of urgent topical issues, as well as its commitment to high-quality aeathetics and innovation. The founder and artistic director of the DFR is Kevin Bott, a grassroots theater scholar and associate director of Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life, a national higher-education consortium based at Syracuse University. “I’m very aware of the need to get people’s attention,” says Bott. ”Whether it’s writing a new song or comedy bit, the audience never gets the same experience twice. Each show includes real conversation about important issues.”

Two local unsung heroes of the DFR are designer Joe Rial and musical director Susan Schoonmaker. Both trained in arts education, Rial and Schoonmaker add an important jolt of professional theater-making to the troupe. Bott is effusive: “I really can’t overstate the contributions Joe and Susan have made to the DFR’s growth. Susan arranges and teaches a new song every month to an amateur choir – no easy feat. Joe is so creative and talented; for this show, he’s created a giant Frankenstein puppet!”

Sponsored by Imagining America and the New York Council for the Humanities, this performance and dialogue is the third in a four-part series that the DFR is creating in partnership with local organizations. This event is additionally sponsored by the Syracuse University Department of Religion as part of their symposium, “The Beauty of Charisma,” which is exploring contemporary revivals.

The “We the People Move to Amend” performance will be followed by coffee, tea, dessert and facilitated conversation about the show’s theme. It is free and open to the public, but come early to guarantee a seat.

For more information, contact Jamie Haft, Imagining America’s communications manager, at jmhaft@syr.edu and 315-345-3931.

The Assessing Practices in Public Scholarship (APPS) research group of Imagining America hosted its first webinar recently. Whether you were able to participate or not, you can view a recording here. Here’s a little info about what the webinar covered:

Establishing integrated assessment protocols that establish community impact and evaluate outcomes is necessary to sustain successful engagement programs within institutions. Using community engaged music as the lens, presenters from the University of Minnesota will share an assessment framework that balances the assessment challenges of projects from three levels: The Festival of Community Bands (project level), the School of Music’s Community Engagement Mini-Grant Project (department/unit level), and the Institutional Priorities established through the Office of Public Engagement (university level).

Questions at the heart of this webinar are: How can the assessment tool account for culture, genre, and other contextual complications that impact performance quality, engagement, and learning? How do we all work together to create assessment tools and protocols that are reliable, valid, and useful? How do we develop sufficient expertise in assessment for the various involved constituencies?

Attendees were invited to participate and contribute their own questions and comments.

Presenters: Keitha Lucas Hamann, Associate Professor School of Music; Andrew Furco, Associate Vice President for Public Engagement; Kinh T. Vu, Ph.D. Candidate, Music Education, Graduate Facilitator, Office for Public Engagement

Click here to view the webinar!

Invincible on stage, center (Photo courtesy David Smith/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, via On Being Blog)

Imagining America is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2013 Event Sponsorship Awards. These awards are intended to provide monetary support to programs and events in Syracuse and Central New York that reflect IA’s Vision, Mission, Values, and Goals. This year, IA was also keen to support proposals that articulated a connection with IA’s 2013 national conference, to be held in Syracuse, October 4-6.

This year’s awardees are:

The Two Row Wampum Renewal Campaign, “Two Row Wampum Celebration at Onondaga Lake.” Part of the yearlong Two Row Renewal Campaign, the Celebration at Onondaga Lake on June 21 will begin with Tadodaho Sid Hill, Onondaga, offering a Thanksgiving Address at the Inner Harbor before the beginning of a paddling trek across Onondaga Lake. Traveling in two parallel rows, one row of Onondaga and other native people and a second of allies and supporters, the paddlers will land at Willow Bay on the north shore of Onondaga Lake for a festival featuring music, Haudenosaunee social dancing, and speakers. The celebration will provide an opportunity for people from throughout Central New York to learn about Onondaga and Haudenosaunee culture and the history of relations between our peoples. Haudenosaunee craftspeople will demonstrate traditional crafts and offer items for sale. Among the craftspeople will be Alf Jacques, one of the few people who continue to make traditional wooden lacrosse sticks. The event will include storytelling and other activities designed for children and youth.

SU Arts Engage, “Invincible.” The IA award will provide partial funding to bring renowned hip-hop artist and activist Invincible to Syracuse on April 23, 2013. Invincible, aka Ilana Weaver, has received acclaim from fans and critics, and her active involvement in progressive social change has taken her music beyond entertainment toward actualizing change. As a co-founder of EMERGENCE Media, she released her debut album ShapeShifters (2008), and produced award winning videos like The Revival (2009), about women in hip-hop, and Locusts (2008), exploring displacement and gentrification in Detroit. While in Syracuse, Invincible will engage local high school students about the connection between hip-hop and activism.

Community Folk Art Center, “Corporeal Contours.” This award provides partial sponsorship for an art exhibition, Corporeal Contours: Works by Firelei Baez and Andrea Chung. These artists address issues of identity as it relates to the Caribbean through silhouetted forms. The Community Folk Art Center has used IA funds to develop a designated area where the public can interact and respond to the exhibition. The exhibition runs through May 4, 2013.

The Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation, “A Minute of Women’s History.” This initiative was a collaboration between The Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation, the Honors Program at Syracuse University, and local radio station WAER. Gage Executive Director Dr. Sally Wagner and students in her Honors Women’s Studies course (HNR 260/WGS 200, History of Women’s Suffrage Movement: Through the Eyes of Matilda Joslyn Gage) prepared scripts for one-minute Women’s History spots, which were aired on WAER during women’s history month. The spots featured “lost from history” stories that the students studied in class, and were intended to educate listeners and to promote a public performance about the legacy of Matilda Joslyn Gage that was created with IA’s community-campus theater company, The D.R.E.A.M. Freedom Revival.

Black Syracuse Project, “Your Story Oral History Project.” The Your Story Series is a new BSP Oral History initiative. For Spring 2013, it entails four public sessions, in which two individuals per session will participate in 20-25 minute oral history dialogues. The two interviews will be followed by an “Open Mic” segment that allows individuals from the audience to share their experiences on the evening’s topic for five minutes each. The topics are Prison Stories, Learning Stories, Migration Stories, and Love Stories. The project runs through April 9.

601 Tully, “Talk by Dan Seiple.” This event, which took place on March 5 at The Warehouse, was a public citywide talk by 601 Tully Artist-in-Residence Dan Seiple. The talk was about Skulpturenpark (an artist’s space Seiple cofounded on the site of the Berlin Wall) as a model for Syracuse. As Syracuse continues its own city-wide revitalization effort through the arts, this talk provided an opportunity for the city to look at Berlin as a model. The lecture specifically sought to attract the local business community, and economic and community developers to open a dialogue about art and its public impact on the city.

Syracuse Eats, “Food Cultures and Food Sovereignty: A Community Meal.” This event, scheduled for the last week of April, will bring together food cultures of the city—of established and new immigrant groups—around a common meal in a public space. By documenting the sourcing, preparing, cooking, and social spaces of eating, and by sharing these narratives at a meal, Syracuse Eats seeks to open a dialogue about the role of cultural knowledge and practices that sustain communities.  Working collaboratively, the group will identify culturally based approaches for supporting food sovereignty in urban food system policy, planning, and practice.

Named in honor of the founding editor of The Public Historian, the G. Wesley Johnson award recognizes the most outstanding article appearing in the NCPH journal during the previous volume year.

This year’s award winner is Imagining America consortium representative Elizabeth Belanger, an assistant professor of History and director of the American Studies program at Stonehill College, for “Public History and Liberal Learning: Making the Case for the Undergraduate Practicum Experience,” The Public Historian Vol 34, No 4.

Abstract: This article explores a collaborative public history project between a small liberal arts undergraduate institution and a community social service agency. Drawing on evidence from student reflections and other course materials, it argues that undergraduate students gained important skills through the public history practicum including teamwork and problem solving skills, intercultural awareness, and reflective practices, as well as discipline specific learning outcomes. In documenting the student outcomes, it also demonstrates the potential of public history to contribute to undergraduate students’ civic capabilities.

Read the full announcement here.