Community Engaged Research, Scholarship, Creative Work: Course Development Grant
The Course Development Grant for Community Engaged Research, Scholarship, Creative Work was a pilot partnership between CSUMB's Service Learning Institute (SLI) and the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Center (UROC). This grant opportunity was intended to support faculty members to develop new courses, or revise existing ones, to incorporate course-based research projects with a community engagement focus. The intent was to facilitate projects that engage creatively with real world issues in the classroom that expand and transform the research/teaching/learning environment and that generate research products that will be of use to communities.
Three grants of $1,500 each were awarded to facilitate projects that engage creatively with real-world issues in the classroom and that expanded and transformed the teaching/learning environment. Applicants were encouraged to use these grants as seed funding for larger projects and/or external grant applications.
Outcomes
A humanities-based research and theory intensive course (From HCOM MLO 3): Develop competency in creative practice, such as creative writing, journalism, and/or media projects and community storytelling, that responds to a social issue and engages the public. (From HCOM MLO 4): Apply inquiry-based methods informed by humanistic traditions to investigate, interpret, and critique diverse ideas and texts.)
Grant recipients were invited to join the UROC CURE Fellows Pprogram. Projects must be led by CSUMB Faculty who are encouraged to apply their expertise in anew and creative ways in partnership with communities; UROC does not fund proposals submitted on behalf of organizations outside of CSUMB. Preference is given to projects addressing community needs in CSUMB's directly adjacent communities (Seaside, Marine, Monterey). Funds may be used for faculty stipends to develop the course, course supplies, and student/instructional assistant time to support course implementation. Applications must be supported by the appropriate administrator (i.e. Chair, Dean, Director).
Kelly Medina-López and Shantel Martinez
Kelly and Shantel used this grant to support the development of a research and theory intensive experience that examined the US/Mexico borderlands. Central to this experience is a 10-day visit to the US/Mexico border in El Paso, Texas. This research-intensive experience will allow students to dive deep and cultivate nuanced understandings concerning transborder lives and narratives at the El Paso/ Juárez border. El Paso/Juárez provides a unique research opportunity as it is one of the largest and most militarized ports of entry for the United States and Mexico border with 6.8 million pedestrians, 12.3 million personal vehicles, and 760,000 commercial vehicles crossing in 2015 (Department of Homeland Security). Given the rich and often contentious political history of the region, El Paso/ Juarez presents itself as a unique border site to conduct research, often not presented to Undergraduate students. Additionally, with Trump’s rhetoric of border security, the lives in El Paso/ Juárez are delicately contingent upon border crossing and transmigratory politics, culture, and bodies. The goals of this class is for CSUMB students who are interested in border narratives to immerse themselves in a trans-national research experience in shared expertise with our colleagues at University Texas, El Paso, and La Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez.
CSUMB's Kelly Medina-Lopez, Shantel Martinez, & UROC Researchers with UTEP faculty