Awards Ceremony Honors Exemplary Community Engagement

Join us in celebrating the accomplishments of faculty, staff, students, and community partners who will be recognized at the annual Michigan State University Outreach and Engagement Awards CeremonyExternal link - opens in new window on Thursday, March 20, at the Kellogg Hotel and Conference Center.

The ceremony, which will also be livestreamed, shines a light on exemplary high-quality community-engaged scholarship and university outreach activities.

By connecting university knowledge with partner/community knowledge, this year’s award winners have actively demonstrated MSU’s unwavering commitment to collaborative, participatory, and transformative work.

“The efforts of university representatives and their community partners is a true testament to the vast impacts that can be made when we work together,” said Kwesi Brookins, vice provost for University Outreach and Engagement. “The award winners we recognize this year are all great examples of the importance of university-community partnerships.”

Recipients of the 2025 awards include:

Michigan State University Community Engagement Scholarship Lifetime Achievement Award

Recognition of outstanding and sustained accomplishment in community-engaged scholarship through research, creative activity, teaching, and/or service. Given the special nature of this distinction, it is not an annual award but is conferred on those occasions in which the individual’s extraordinary accomplishments are sustained over the span of a career.

Lorraine B. Robbins, College of Nursing

Lorraine Robbins is an internationally recognized researcher who has collaborated with educators, health professionals, and community stakeholders to improve the health and well-being of underserved adolescents in Michigan. A professor of nursing, Robbins came to Michigan State University in 2005. Over the past two decades, she has devoted her career to research, education, and community engagement. Her work focuses on the issue of declining physical activity and poor nutrition among adolescents ages 10-14, which places this population at risk for obesity, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes. Two notable National Institutes of Health-funded studies included the Girls on the Move Intervention ($3.76 million) and Guys/Girls Opt for Activities for Life Trial ($3.38 million). Together these studies involved 2,000 adolescents from disadvantaged communities. Robbins has established longstanding partnerships with Michigan schools, particularly in underserved urban communities. More recently, she has expanded her efforts to include parents and guardians in interventions to support adolescents’ physical activity and nutrition.

Institutional Champion Award for Community Engagement Scholarship

Recognition of an individual, team, or initiative for leadership in institutionalizing community-engaged scholarship and university outreach at MSU.

Charles Stewart Mott Department of Public Health, College of Human Medicine

The College of Human Medicine’s Charles Stewart Mott Department of Public Health is the first academic department to be co-developed and co-governed in partnership with those it is designed to serve, the Flint community. In 2011, the Flint community (including area hospitals and the Mott Foundation) approached MSU, proposing the creation of an academic Division of Public Health in Flint. MSU agreed. With a 2012 grant from the Mott Foundation, MSU took an unprecedented community-participatory approach, co-designing the new division’s entire infrastructure (including focus areas, priorities, faculty to hire) with the Flint community. Elected community members serve on decision-making committees as partners in faculty hiring and departmental governance. This innovative model has achieved remarkable success, securing nearly $200 million in external funding to address community-identified priorities, including health equity, maternal child health, mental health and substance use, chronic disease, healthy behaviors, and social determinants of health. In 2022, further support from the Mott Foundation enabled the creation of the Charles Stewart Mott Department of Public Health as MSU’s first fully philanthropically named department.

Distinguished Partnership Award for Community-Engaged Research

Recognition of a university-community partnership for significant, contextually responsive, scholarly, and impactful collaboration in inquiry and the discovery of new knowledge and/or the development of new insights.

An Academia-Industry-Government Partnership That Monitors and Predicts Outbreaks in the Tri-County Detroit Area

Irene Xagoraraki, College of Engineering, with her partners:

CDM Smith, Detroit Health Department, Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, Great Lakes Water Authority, Macomb County Health Division, Oakland County Health Division

The Tri-County Detroit Area (TCDA) is the 12th most populous metropolitan area in the United States, with over 3 million people. Multiple communicable diseases are endemic in the TCDA. In 2017, to explore innovative methods that may provide early warnings of outbreaks affecting populations in the TCDA, Xagoraraki initiated an exploratory partnership funded by a U.S. National Science Foundation EArly-Concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER). The project team included the College of Engineering at Michigan State University, the City of Detroit, the Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA), industry, and local government and health departments. The team has been testing municipal wastewater from the TCDA to survey communicable diseases in the area. The TCDA partnership, led by Xagoraraki, resulted in significant breakthroughs in the field of wastewater-based epidemiology. The results of the TCDA wastewater surveillance efforts assist local health departments in their efforts to prevent and manage communicable diseases, public health messaging, targeted clinical testing, and vaccination efforts.

Distinguished Partnership Award for Community-Engaged Teaching

Recognition of a university-community partnership for significant, contextually responsive, scholarly, and impactful collaboration in sharing knowledge with learners through either formal or informal arrangements, whether credit-bearing, noncredit, guided by a teacher, or self-directed.

The Youth Voices Project

Joanne E. Marciano and Beth Herbel-Eisenmann, College of Education, with their partner:

Edgewood Village Housing Nonprofit

As youth of Color and youth with limited access to economic resources continue to encounter educational disparities, the Youth Voices Project, an ongoing community-university partnership, amplifies youths’ voices. Through Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR), the project provides strengths-based examples for teachers, teacher educators, and researchers of what’s possible when youths’ identities, dynamic cultural practices, and perspectives about issues that matter to them are centered in curriculum and teaching. Since 2019, the Youth Voices Project has involved more than 40 middle and high school students who live at Edgewood Village, a subsidized housing community. The reciprocal partnership provides free after-school YPAR programming for youth as they examine issues of equity and social justice during weekly two-hour sessions. Youth-led projects include improving the community’s basketball court; raising money for residents’ needs as the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded; designing and facilitating a book club to increase residents’ awareness of the Black Lives Matter movement; advocating for school policy changes during the pandemic; and facilitating an online college readiness program.

Distinguished Partnership Award for Community-Engaged Service

Recognition of a university-community partnership for significant, contextually responsive, scholarly, and impactful collaboration in the utilization of scholarly expertise to directly address specific issues identified by individuals, organizations, industries, or communities.

Empowering Local Communities in Natural Resource Conservation Efforts Through the Michigan Conservation Stewards Program

Bindu Bhakta, Julie Crick, and Georgia Peterson, MSU Extension, with their partners:

City of Ann Arbor Natural Area Preservation; Huron-Clinton Metropark Authority; Huron River Watershed Council; Legacy Land Conservancy; Michigan Nature Association; River Raisin Watershed Council; Southeast Michigan Land Conservancy; The Stewardship Network Huron Arbor Cluster; Washtenaw Conservation District; Washtenaw County Parks and Recreation Commission; Washtenaw County Water Resources; University of Michigan Matthaei Botanical Garden; University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability

The Michigan Conservation Stewards Program (CSP) was designed in 2003 to provide training and support to empower volunteers and build a network of skilled, committed conservationists who could join in local conservation activities and leadership efforts. The CSP seeks to bring together MSU researchers and local conservation communities through ecosystem-based learning experiences. It provides a balanced, integrated, practical course in ecosystems, conservation, and land management. A central tenet of the CSP is to foster lasting partnerships between MSU and organizations and agencies that share a desire to promote and sustain conservation efforts in their local areas. Before program delivery begins, the CSP gathers input from interested community partners about their needs. MSU coordinators then collaborate with partners and local experts to tailor content that showcases work happening in that community. The ongoing relationships forged have resulted in long-term, sustained impacts on the environmental health of Michigan’s communities.

Graduate Student Awards for Community Engagement Scholarship

Jointly sponsored by the MSU Graduate School, this award is conferred in recognition of exemplary community-engaged work by a graduate or graduate professional student. This year, three students were recognized in three categories:

Jia Bin, College of Communication Arts and Sciences (Community-Engaged Service and Practice)

Patricia Guillante, College of Engineering (Community-Engaged Research)

Kara Haas, College of Education (Community-Engaged Teaching and Learning)

Graduate Student Award for Science Communication and Outreach

Jointly sponsored by the MSU Graduate School, this award is conferred in recognition of the exemplary translation and communication of scholarly ideas, research findings, and advancements in all academic disciplines to the public by a graduate or graduate professional student. This year, the award was conferred upon:

Alyssa Saunders, College of Natural Science

Spartan Volunteer Service Awards

A presidential recognition, the award celebrates MSU students’ commitment to community-engaged learning and is given to students who volunteer 100 hours or more in one year. Of the 205 students who received the Spartan Volunteer Service Award, three students volunteered over 1,000 hours during the 2023-2024 academic year:

Elijah Cole, Lyman Briggs College

Amanda Croft-deHagen, College of Human Medicine

Sumaiya Imad, College of Social Science

Learn more and join the livestream of the ceremonyExternal link - opens in new window