University Outreach and Engagement established its awards program to recognize highly engaged and scholarly community-based collaborations that positively impact both the community and scholarship.
Distinguished Partnership Awards
The Distinguished Partnership Awards comprise a series of four University-wide recognitions for highly engaged and scholarly community-based work that positively impacts both the community and scholarship. The awards are given in the categories of Research, Creative Activities, Teaching, and Service. Each award is jointly conferred on a faculty recipient and her/his community partner(s), and comes with a shared stipend of $1,500. The four award recipients are also finalists for the CESA award.
Distinguished Partnership Award for Community-Engaged Research
Helping National Guard Families After Deployment: A University-Military Collaboration
Adrian J. Blow, College of Social Science
Michigan Army National Guard
This partnership won MSU's 2018 Community Engagement Scholarship Award.
Since 2006, Adrian Blow has worked with a range of community partners, including clinicians, military personnel, the Michigan National Guard, the University of Michigan Medical School, the Veteran's Affairs of Ann Arbor Healthcare System, and the Michigan Public Health Institute, to address the challenges of reintegration faced by returning National Guard soldiers and their families.
The work of Blow and his team has had an immeasurable impact on military personnel and their families post-deployment through research-informed programming and policy change. It has led to the creation of an effective peer-to-peer support program as well as the Star Behavioral Health Provider Program, which trains mental health care providers in military cultural competency, and treatments for PTSD, insomnia, depression, and family resilience.
Distinguished Partnership Award for Community-Engaged Creative Activity
Indigistory
Gordon D. Henry, College of Arts and Letters
John W. Norder, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources and College of Social Science
Christie M. Poitra, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources
Saginaw Chippewa Tribal College, Inter-Tribal Council of Michigan, Michigan History Center
Developed in 2012 by leaders of MSU's Native American Institute, the Indigistory program provides a digital platform, support, and resources for Native youth to share their stories about their families, tribal histories, cultures, languages, and lifestyles with Native and non-Native audiences.
The program also offers an annual film camp held at Michigan State University for Native American middle and high school students (Native American Youth Film Institute, NAYFI), where students have created more than 40 films featured in eight festivals around Michigan.
The program is interdisciplinary, with a range of collaborative community partners who share in decision-making and leadership. Funding received from the Michigan Humanities Council has allowed for the workshops and NAYFI to be offered at no cost. Films made by the students are shown in film festivals that are free and open to the public.
Distinguished Partnership Award for Community-Engaged Teaching
Crain Michigan State University Detroit High School Journalism Program
Jeremy W. Steele and Joy Visconti, College of Communication Arts and Sciences
Crain Communications, Inc.
This program mentors 200 to 300 students in some 14 Detroit high schools each year, using journalism as a tool to develop critical skills that prepare them for college. Students learn how to gather information, think critically, write, and create information visually. They are connected with professionals—MSU faculty members and journalism students, as well as professional journalist mentors—to produce newspapers and website content about the issues affecting the students' schools, neighborhoods, and peers.
Students in the program work one-on-one with a mentor or MSU Journalism faculty member to develop and produce their story ideas. Four times a year, the program distributes more than 10,000 student-produced newspapers to students in Detroit schools.
Distinguished Partnership Award for Community-Engaged Service
Improving Workforce Productivity at Peckham
Sriram Narayanan, Eli Broad College of Business
Peckham, Inc.
People with disabilities can face significant barriers to getting a job, sometimes due to myths regarding their ability to work efficiently. A number of programs exist to help increase employment outcomes for people with disabilities, but these programs have not examined barriers within manufacturing processes that may impede persons with disabilities from full productivity.
Peckham, Inc. is a Lansing-based company that employs a significant number of people who have disabilities. Dr. Narayanan teamed up with Peckham leaders to utilize supply chain management methods to research and design an effective workplace environment that is inclusive of people with disabilities while maximizing productivity.
Much of the research focused on team dynamics in the workplace. Working with MBA, supply chain doctoral, and computer engineering students, as well as Peckham staff, the research team identified areas of Peckham's operations where diversity could be increased to improve productivity. The findings of the team were applied to Peckham's operations and have also been presented broadly within the field to increase workplace opportunities and the quality of such opportunities for employees with disabilities.
MSU Community Engagement Scholarship Lifetime Achievement Award
The Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes individuals of outstanding sustained accomplishment in community-engaged scholarship through research, creative activity, teaching, and/or service and practice over the span of a career.
William S. Davidson II
University Distinguished Professor
College of Social Science
Shortly after arriving at MSU in 1975, Dr. Davidson established the Adolescent Diversion Project (ADP), which is designed to decrease delinquency while helping juveniles to recognize their competencies. The ADP created a collaboration through which innovative educational experiences were offered, best practice interventions were developed and employed, and sound scientific methodology was used to address juvenile delinquency in mid-Michigan.
Since 1976, ADP has diverted 6,117 first-time offenders from the local juvenile court, with dramatic reductions in repeat offenses. In addition, an equal number—6,117 undergraduates—have participated in the diversion work. The project has saved the mid-Michigan community more than $20 million, and Davidson has built a solid foundation of support from officials at the Ingham County Circuit Court, along with parents, community leaders, and school officials. One book and more than 50 articles and presentations have resulted from this community-engaged partnership.
Davidson is an internationally-acclaimed scholar on behavioral psychology, and an exemplary community-engaged researcher. He has been recognized for achievements in his field by the United Nations, the American Psychological Association, the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and the State of Michigan.
