CCESL's June 2022 Public Good Impact Newsletter

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First Student Photo Celebration

"WHAT DOES COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT MEANT TO YOU?"

CCESL held its first Student Photo Celebration that showcased student photos and stories reflecting on their community-engaged work and the impact it's had on their DU experience. Submissions that best exemplified one of CCESL's pathways - think, connect, act, reflect - received an award at the opening reception complete with celebratory Marie Empanadas. The exhibit will be on display in the Community Commons art gallery through the month of June

View Photos

DU Grand Challenges Celebration

In May, CCESL highlighted the amazing work done by individuals and teams across campus through the DU Grand Challenges initiative. The celebration included lightning talks, community, food, sharing of ideas and continued action to address the far-reaching issues facing our community. Learn more about DUGC and ways to connect with current and future opportunities below.

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DU Grand Challenges by the numbers

Seeing a bird's eye view of this year's Advancing Community-Engaged (ACE) Student Scholars Grants, Fireside Chat series focusing on "What is Community," and DU Grand Challenge's Collective Impact Cohort Members.

Fireside Chats were made possible by a generous grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations.

Introducing the 2022 Crimson & Gold Recipients

Congratulations to this year's Crimson & Gold recipients! Each year, CCESL honors outstanding students by nominating an undergraduate and graduate student in the following categories: Public Good Student of the Year, Service Student of the Year, and Community Organizer of the Year. These students are recognized through the university-wide Crimson & Gold Award Ceremony put on by the Office of Student Engagement.

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Learn about some of the community-engaged work this year's recipients have worked on:

Megan Holiday, Sarah Schuller, & Derek Brannon

STRIVE PREP SUSTAINABILITY EDUCATION

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CCESL Scholars Megan and Sarah and CE Fellow Derek created and delivered culturally responsive sustainability curriculum to middle school students at STRIVE Prep Rise, a charter school within DPS with a diverse student body. Normally, sustainability education isn't prioritized, but through this project they were able to teach students about food deserts and other environmental issues who otherwise wouldn't have access to this education.

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Bertrand-Evans Taylor

BLACK HISTORY TOMORROW

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Through community-engaged events and research, Bert worked to understand what professional development needs artists of color specifically in Denver have and how they can work exclusively in their creative fields. The team worked with youth artists in Denver as well as mid and late-career artists to get an understanding of what needs the community had.

Jessica Villena Sanchez & Brandon T

VALVERDE MOVEMENT PROJECT

The Valverde Movement Project seeks to bring community health and wealth to the historically marginalized and redlined Valverde neighborhood in west Denver. Part of this ongoing project, CE Fellow Jessica has created different storymaps that built narratives rooted in community knowledge and go beyond simplistic representations of the Latinx and Chicano culture.

CCESL Scholar Brandon has been collaborating with the Valverde community members to gather stories, oral histories, and archival documents to highlight their individual stories which has been key to combating the false narratives that often result from suppressing marginalized communities such as Valverde. This collection will be presented to the community in June and sent to media outlets to uplift the history and voices of Valverde.

Read About Jessica's Work

Introducing the 2022 Kimmy Foundation Awardees

Congratulations to 2022's awardees - Leah York and Josue Rodriguez! The Kimmy Foundation's mission is to support youths who exhibit creativity, character, and compassion in keeping with the life and ideals of Kathryn Dougherty Galbreath. The Kimmy Foundation Community Service Professional Award is given to two graduating seniors from DU’s traditional undergraduate program who have contributed to community service as a DU student and aspire to make future contributions to society via community service/engagement.

Learn More About this Award

Meet the 2022 Public Good Fund Recipients

Congratulations to the faculty awarded a 2022 Public Good Grant! The Public Good Fund supports projects that will result in measurable public impact through community-engaged research or creative work that is conducted in the context of mutually-beneficial and reciprocal community partnership.

Dr. Sarah Bexell | Associate Professor
Graduate School of Social Work, Institute for Human Animal Connection

Project: Co-Creating K-12 Humane and Ecologically Minded Professional Development Programming

Dr. Alejandro Cerón
Associate Professor
Anthropology

Project: "Esencial: An online community archive to disseminate the stories of Colorado agricultural workers"

Linda Mendez-Barrientos | Assistant Professor
Josef Korbel School of International Studies

Project:

Science to Empower: Leveraging groundwater-level modeling for domestic water security in California

Dr. Rebecca Galemba

Associate Professor
Josef Korbel School of International Studies

Project:

Due Process and the Dedicated Docket

Angela Narayan

Assistant Professor
Psychology

Project:

A Child-Focused Benevolent Childhood Experiences (BCEs) Scale for Community Providers who work with Families

ACE Student Scholar Grants

ACE Student Scholar Grants are available to support undergraduate community-engaged research or creative work projects that are faculty-mentored.

Community-engaged research and creative work projects are co-developed with community partners with a focus on being mutually beneficial and reciprocal. For example, a project might answer a research question that is important to the student researcher while also meeting a need that is important to the community. Potential partners include nonprofits, grassroots organizations, government agencies or entrepreneurs and businesses.

ACE Student Scholar Grants are available to DU undergraduate students thanks to the generous support of the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations for DU Grand Challenges.

Learn More

On May 11th, we had our final Fireside Chat in the "What Is Community?" series. This Fireside Chat focused on how we can work together to better support community members who were previously incarcerated.

Our panelists were Carol Peeples & Roohallah Mobarez from Remerg, Linda Agripino & Paul Galloway from Red Rocks Gateway Program, Jeffrey Lin a DU Associate Professor in Sociology & Criminology, Maddie Heiken a DU undergraduate student, and JoyBelle Phelan & Eric Davis from DU Prison Arts Initiative.

Thank you to everyone who helped make this series possible! You can read the Five Takeaways from this chat or catch up on all four Fireside Chats held this year:

Catch up on this year's Fireside Chats

Donate to CCESL