August 2008

Happy Summer, Everyone:

Here are some updates—and requests for your input—from the CBR Networking Initiative, and some general announcements about funding and resources available (scroll down).

FYI, Trisha is out of the office now until August 20 and I will be out September 1-12.

Grantee Meeting

We’re planning for a spring 2009 meeting—not fall 2008—and would like to convene a group to develop that meeting’s format and content, including setting the date. Please email me now if you would like to be a part of that planning group.

Anticipating the opportunity to develop and share additional resources at our next meeting, we also want to invite participation in two new projects:

Practice of Interdisciplinary CBR

Trisha is working with Beth Paul from The College of New Jersey to develop a collection of interdisciplinary CBR papers (as discussed at last fall’s meeting). We anticipate providing more information and a call-for-papers soon and look forward to your feedback and participation (writers and reviewers).

Community Assessment Working Group

We would like to bring together a group of campus (and perhaps community) representatives who have gained some experience assessing the impact of CBR on their local community organizations. Our goal is to develop a practical, efficient, and effective assessment tool for use within and outside this network. Please email me with a short overview of your current community assessment activities if you would like to be a part of this group. If you have suggestions for format, topics, timing, etc., please include those as well.

Reporting completed for 2007-2008

Thank you for your help in meeting our reporting deadlines with CNCS, the Corporation for National and Community Service (Learn & Serve). We submitted our LASSIE report and our Progress Report for the entire project on July 30, one day before the deadline (whew!!) Next reporting deadline: December 15, 2008.

GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTS

Funding for Research that Supports Social Change

The Sociological Initiatives Foundation provides grants of $10,000 to $20,000 to support research that supports social change.

The Foundation specifically supports research that focuses on:

·       Clear social policy objectives
·       Institutional and educational practices
·       Legislative and regulatory changes
·       Organizing previously unorganized groups
·       Building collective community capacity and/or power (such as expanding membership base)
·       Linguistic issues, such as literacy, language maintenance and expansion, multilingualism and its implications, and their possible intersection with social and policy issues.

The Foundation supports projects that address institutional rather than individual or behavioral change and/or research and initiatives that provide insight into sociological and linguistic issues that may be useful to specific groups and or communities.

It supports projects that have an explicit research design and a concrete connection to public or community impact.  The research should ideally build an organization or constituency’s potential to expand public knowledge, impact policy, and create social change.  Complete guidelines and on-line concept application for the August 15, 2008 deadline are available at http://comm-org.wisc.edu/sif . Contact Prentice Zinn at pzinn@grantsmanagement.com or 617-426-7080×307.

New: Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship

The University of Alabama is the inaugural home for a new research journal that will disseminate scholarly works from all academic disciplines with the goal of integrating teaching, research, and community engagement. The journal website is under construction at http://www.jces.ua.edu/. For more information, contact the editor at jces@ua.edu or 205-348-4586.

Imagining America’s Tenure Team Initiative Report

In case you have not had an opportunity to read “Scholarship In Public: Knowledge Creation and Tenure Policy In the Engaged University,” you can access it here:

http://www.imaginingamerica.org/IApdfs/TTI_REPORT%20FINAL%205.2.08.pdf

Looking forward to our next opportunity to work together—remember to let me know which projects you would like to play a role in developing.

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