The Engaged Scholar Magazine

10^th Anniversary Issue

Since its inception, The Engaged Scholar Magazine has focused on representing the work of MSU faculty and staff university-wide. In this issue, we report on highlights of UOE's current work and offer some perspective on the past 13 years of accomplishments.

Announcements

Coalition for Urban and Metropolitan Universities Annual Conference
Proposal Deadline: May 3, 2016

4th Annual Imagining America Cultural Organizing Summer Institute
Application Deadline: May 6, 2016

Corporation for National and Community Service (U.S.) Social Innovation Fund
Application Deadline: May 10, 2016

Transformations in Higher Education: The Scholarship of Engagement Series
Available from MSU Press

Tools of Engagement Learning Modules
Online curriculum modules are available for use by MSU faculty to introduce undergraduate students to the concept of university-community engagement.

MSU Graduate Certification in Community Engagement
Program prepares graduate students for careers that integrate scholarship with community engagement. It offers students a transcript notation indicating that they have completed the program.

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Engaging Flint: Context and Connections for Faculty Involvement

The Flint water crisis has emerged as one of the nation's gravest contemporary situations, forcing issues of public safety, government competency, racial and economic justice, and aging infrastructure to the forefront of the social and political landscape.

Michigan State University researchers are playing a valuable role in Flint, and many more are interested in doing so. At a meeting on March 25, 2016 organized by University Outreach and Engagement (UOE), faculty had the opportunity to hear from Flint residents and organizational leaders and MSU representatives who are working in the community.

At the request of Provost June Youatt earlier in the year, UOE was designated as the central repository of information related to ongoing MSU projects in Flint, while the College of Human Medicine and MSU Extension are coordinating MSU activities within Flint ... read more

Healthier Kids in Flint with CrimFit Youth Program

Karin Pfeiffer has a special place in her heart for two things: sports and the city of Flint. As an associate professor of kinesiology and member of MSU's Center for Physical Activity and Health, she also has the expertise necessary to combine the two interests by working collaboratively with the Crim Fitness Foundation to incorporate and assess the organization's CrimFit youth programming in the Flint schools and surrounding area.

The CrimFit Youth Program focuses on physical activity, nutrition, and, more recently, mindfulness, the ability to be "present" in the moment, pay attention on purpose, and accept one's feelings and thoughts. Partly based on the Michigan Fitness Foundation's PE-Nut (Physical Education and Nutrition) curriculum, CrimFit complements the curriculum with a wide variety of physical and nutritional activities. Mileage Clubs, after-school sports programming, school gardens, nutrition education, and Brain Breaks, which incorporate physical activities with academic lessons to give the kids a chance to move around and be active, are offered by the program ... read more

Partnering in Flint to Research Suicide Prevention and Reduction

In 2015, more than 41,000 people committed suicide in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Suicide is the second leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 15 and 34. While one of the main predictors of suicidal behavior is the presence of major depression, stressors play a role.

Jennifer Johnson is a clinical psychologist and principal investigator on a four-year, $6.8 million project awarded to MSU by the National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH), National Institute of Justice, and National Institutes of Health's Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research to study effective suicide prevention strategies for recently-released pretrial jail detainees. The Suicide Prevention Intervention for at-Risk Individuals in Transition (SPIRIT) Trial, will follow 800 recently released pretrial detainees from the Genesee County Jail in Flint, Michigan, and the Department of Corrections in Cranston, Rhode Island ... read more

Community-Campus Partnerships for Health International Conference
New Orleans, Louisiana
May 11-14, 2016

Innovations in Collaborative Modeling Conference
East Lansing, Michigan
June 14-15, 2016

Community Indicators Consortium, Impact Summit: GPS for Well-Being
Washington, DC
September 26-27, 2016

International Association for Research on Service-learning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE) Annual Conference
New Orleans, Louisiana
September 26-28, 2016

Imagining America Annual Conference
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
October 6-8, 2016

Engagement Scholarship Consortium Annual Conference
Omaha, Nebraska
October 11-12, 2016

Looking for Project Partners?

University-Community Partnerships

Collaboration and partnership with communities are at the core of engaged scholarship. In all of its work, University Outreach and Engagement emphasizes university-community partnerships that are collaborative, participatory, empowering, systemic, transformative, and anchored in scholarship. If you are a faculty or academic staff member wanting to establish a community partnership to work on a specific research issue, University Outreach and Engagement can help you. Our staff, specialists, and researchers have established connections across the state in a number of areas such as education, mental health, human services, business, and government. For more information, contact Laurie Van Egeren, Assistant Provost for University-Community Partnerships at (517) 353-8977, or vanegere@msu.edu.

Focus: HOPE, Detroit, MI

Opportunities for partnership exist around the following areas: Service-Learning, Student Internships and Placements, Faculty Research Partnerships, and Development of Innovative Solutions to Pressing Social Problems. For more information, contact Deborah E. Fisher at (313) 494-4306 or fisherd@focushope.edu, or visit http://ucp.msu.edu/partnerships/.

ES 360° Feedback ...

We would like to hear from you. Contact us with comments, suggestions, announcements, or “engaged scholar” project information for future e-newsletters. Send to Carla Hills: engaged.scholar@msu.edu or call (517) 353-8977.