The Center for Social Concerns recently selected its spring semester Community Impact Grant recipients. Grants are awarded to faculty and students doing community-engaged work that advances human dignity, solidarity, and the common good, values central to Catholic social tradition. The grants were awarded based upon a proposal submission and selection process and are part of the center’s continuing effort to support collaboration between campus and community partners for social justice impact.
Heidi Beidinger-Burnett, assistant professional specialist with the Eck Institute for Global Health, and Matthew Sisk, GIS librarian specializing in anthropology and archaeology based in the Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship, were selected for research seeking to understand environmental lead distribution in urban and rural St. Joseph and Elkhart Counties. They are part of the Notre Dame Lead Innovation Team, a collaboration among several Notre Dame faculty members working to expand the Lead Sample Collection Kit project to rural areas of St. Joseph County and both rural and urban environments in Elkhart County. They were awarded $10,000.
Pam Butler, associate director of the Gender Studies Program was awarded $2,800 for professional development to attend a seven-day instructor training institute with the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program. Inside-Out is an educational program that brings together campus-based college students with incarcerated students for a semester-long course held in a prison or jail.
Ann-Marie Conrado, assistant professor with the Department of Art, Art History and Design, and Ron Metoyer, associate professor and assistant dean in the College of Engineering were awarded $5,000 for their work with CARE network. The network is addressing the problem of outdated social services directories by working on a dynamic open-source social service network and referral engine built on social determinants to more effectively connect individuals to the web of available resources.
Richard G. Jones, Annenberg Director, and Victoria St. Martin, visiting journalist, of the John W. Gallivan Program in Journalism, Ethics, and Democracy were awarded $5,000 for a course called “Covering America | Puerto Rico: Journalistic Storytelling with Compassion, Empathy and Professionalism.” The course involves a six-day reporting trip during spring break to Puerto Rico and is designed to combine digital technology with foundational reporting skills to cover complex stories for national audiences with a sense of both professionalism and empathy.
Grant Mudge, Ryan Producing Artistic Director for Shakespeare at Notre Dame was awarded $500 for “Shakespeare in Fremont Park,” a seven-week program focused on the city of South Bend’s west side neighborhoods. In collaboration with the Fremont Youth Foundation, Shakespeare in Fremont park invites young people to work directly with adults to create, rehearse, and perform a theatre production inspired by Shakespeare.
John Odhiambo Onyango, associate professor of architecture was awarded $3,000 for his work with the South Bend Sustainable Housing Lab (SBSHL). SBSHL is an interdisciplinary course within an emerging larger initiative serves as a vehicle for study, analysis, and community partnership and contribution for students from majors in the School of Architecture, College of Engineering, the newly formed Real Estate Institute, and the College of Arts and Letters.
Community Impact Grant proposals are reviewed once in the fall and once in the spring. The fall application deadline is September, 2019. Applicants may request grants up to $15,000. For more information on grants, please visit the grants webpage.
Contact: JP Shortall, director of communications and advancement, (574) 631-3209, jshortal@nd.edu