CBLR Fellows 2016-2021 - Office of Connected Learning

Community-based Research and Learning 2020 – 2021 Fellows

Dan Bustillos

Assistant Professor, School of Nursing & Health Studies
Project: Our Community’s Access to Washington’s Charity Health Care System

The fellowship will help in developing community partnerships and establish curricular programs and resources at UW Bothell that will assess and enhance community access to Washington State’s charity health care system—especially for communities with high concentrations of people with limited English proficiency (LEP). The project will accomplish this by appraising healthcare institutions’ compliance with applicable laws and commitments, and advocating for reform. Dan Bustillos, in collaboration with the School of Nursing & Health Studies at UW Bothell and partners like Washington State Coalition for Language Access (WASCLA), Washington Community Action Network (WA CAN) and Columbia Legal Services (CLS), will address issues such as patients not receiving care to which they are entitled because of discriminatory hospital policies and practices.

Cynthia Chang

Associate Professor, School of School of Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics
Course: STEM Majors for Social Justice

Ongoing and recent global, national, and local events have highlighted the need for scientists to participate in social justice to address systemic inequities that exist in our society. As scientists, STEM majors are uniquely poised to use their scientific training and knowledge to tackle social injustice. This course offers an opportunity for students to examine social justice topics relevant to their own lives and studies, and participate in student-driven social justice activism of their choosing. This course is designed to be a “D” course and fulfil Diversity requirements for all majors (including STEM majors).

Ching-In Chen

Assistant Professor, School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences
Project: Creatively responding to environmental justice challenges in Eco-Justice: Writing the World

This fellowship will seek to expand students’ creative ability to understand and respond to issues of environmental justice. Within Ching-In Chen’s Eco-Justice: Writing the World course, students will be “conspirator-generators”, collectively imagining a speculative future world, including community cultural and legal norms around education, economy, government, hierarchy and inequality. Using the speculative world as a seed, conspirator-generators collaborate to “remember” origin stories for their specific neighborhoods and communities (which live in the speculative future world) through individual and collaborative writing, movement and performance as well as develop individual avatars to navigate this world.

Paola Rodríguez Hidalgo

Assistant Professor, School of School of Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics
Course: BPHYS 101 Introduction to Astronomy

BPHYS 101 Introduction to Astronomy is a lower division general education (GE) course offered by the Physical Sciences Division is taught by Paola Rodríguez Hidalgo. It includes goals such as acquiring basic astronomical knowledge and exhibiting clear communication skills. This fellowship looks to meet the university’s newer goals of inclusivity, equity and diversity by integrating a Community-Based learning project within the BPHYS 101 Introduction to Astronomy course. In this project, Paola asks students to educate and reach different audiences to teach them concepts of astronomy using their communication skills to deliver effective information. Through the integration of CBL Paola hopes to have their students become role models for children in low-income schools and make astronomical knowledge more accessible.

Michele B. Price

Assistant Teaching Professor, School of School of Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics
Course: The Diversity of Sex

200 Level- B Bio- The Diversity of Sex (Spring 2021) will include evolutionary analysis of reproductive behavior, taking a comparative approach among animals, including humans, to better understand our own sexuality and behavior in a biological context. Topics will include scientific processes, evolution, sexual behavior, reproductive biology, and diversity with respect to sexual orientation, reproductive strategies, and gender identity.

Min Tang

Assistant Teaching Professor, School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences
Course: BIS 235 Critical Media Literacy

Through the collaboration between the Northshore School District and Min Tang’s BIS 235 Critical Media Literacy course, students will reflect on and critique media representations in relation to identity politics. Students will engage in a project in which they will pitch media education workshop ideas to a panel of judges from the Northshore School District (NSD), and later present their workshops both in high school classrooms and at the Students of Color Conference in Spring 2020. This project will also expand on NSD’s newly launched ethnic studies curriculum. This course project is designed to: (re)educate students, both from UWB and local high schools, on issues of stereotyping and under-/mis-representation in media, engage students with media education and public advocacy for diversity and equity, empower minority students through critically evaluating popular cultural artifacts, and bridge classroom teaching and learning to practices.

Ursula Valdez

Lecturer, School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences

Martha Groom

Professor, School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences

David Stokes

Professor, School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences

Martha Groom

Professor, School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences

Sara Maxwell

Assistant Professor, School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences

Courses: Conservation and Restoration Science

Several instructors in IAS within the Conservation and Restoration Science major are interested in David Stokesadvancing their courses to formal ‘D’ Diversity courses. Major courses already incorporate elements, but faculty would like to codify and advance the diversity elements to meet and exceed university requirements. The faculty propose to work collaboratively, sharing relevant content, ideas and structures within several courses including BES 485 Conservation Biology; BIS 480 International Study Abroad; BIS 459 Conservation and Sustainable Development; BIS 458 Energy, Environment Sara Maxwelland Society; BIS 390 Ecology and the Environment; BIS 306 Marine Diversity and Conservation, and BIS 243 Introduction to Environmental Issues.

2019 – 2020 Diversity, Equity, & Community Engagement Fellows

Dan Bustillos

Assistant Professor, School of Nursing & Health Studies
Project: Our Community’s Access to Washington’s Charity Health Care System

Ching-In Chen

Assistant Professor, School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences
Project: Creatively responding to environmental justice challenges in Eco-Justice: Writing the World

Paola Rodríguez Hidalgo

Assistant Professor, School of School of Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics
Project: “By Teaching We Learn”: Serving Underrepresented Populations in the Community by Implementing Service Learning in a General Education Course

Min Tang

Lecturer, School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences
Project: Media Workshop Pitch

Through the collaboration between the Northshore School District and Min Tang’s BIS 235 Critical Media Literacy course, students will reflect on and critique media representations in relation to identity politics. Students will engage in a project in which they will pitch media education workshop ideas to a panel of judges from the Northshore School District (NSD), and later present their workshops both in high school classrooms and at the Students of Color Conference in Spring 2020. This project will also expand on NSD’s newly launched ethnic studies curriculum. Students from both UW Bothell and local high schools will be educated in the issues surrounding the under and misrepresented populations in media, thus working towards achieving better equity, inclusivity and diversity. This course project is designed to: (re)educate students, both from UWB and local high schools, on issues of stereotyping and under-/mis-representation in media, engage students with media education and public advocacy for diversity and equity, empower minority students through critically evaluating popular cultural artifacts, and bridge classroom teaching and learning to practices.

2017 – 2018 Fellows

Hoa B. Appel, PhD, MPH

Lecturer, School of Nursing and Health Studies
Behavioral and Mental Health among Korean Americans

Through the Fellowship, Hoa Appel hopes to expand on a behavioral and mental health pilot project with the Korean Women’s Association (KWA). Using the outcomes of the current Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) project, the fellowship will help the Korean communities in King, Pierce, and Snohomish counties identify community members with behavioral and mental health issues. The first aim of the project will analyze data from SBIRT project, assess the prevalence of substance use and mental health care needs, and consider how to improve on the intake process at KWA. The second aim is to learn how to decrease the time it takes to identify these community members and to obtain referral and treatment for their substance-abuse, mental and/or physical health needs. We hope to address the social determinants of health by learning and understanding the needs of community members. Specifically, we plan to identify individuals with needs, make referrals for them, and provide services to improve their health outcomes. This Fellowship will extend research opportunities to undergraduate students to further their knowledge and encourage them to apply graduate schools.

Avery Cook Shinneman, PhD

Lecturer, School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences
Small Lakes Management with Snohomish County

This fellowship will support working with the Snohomish County Surface Water program to collect data on the health of small lakes in the county, research management solutions to restore or maintain the lakes, and communicate with stakeholders in the watershed. Students will have an opportunity to go to field sites with county scientists and observe and assist with their work, as well as develop means of communicating best management practices to local homeowners and other local stakeholders.

Raissa DeSmet PhD

Lecturer, Full-Time, School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences
Decolonizing Collections – A Partnership with the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture

In this collaboration, Raissa DeSmet will connect students of Asian visual culture and museum studies with the Burke Museum’s Ethnology Department. Working closely with Curator Holly Barker and Collections Manager Kathy Dougherty, students will participate in three overlapping projects: helping to catalog, pack, and transport the ethnological collection of 50,000 objects into storage in preparation for the opening of the New Burke in 2019; reaching out to community members who helped mount the important exhibit Pacific Voices in the 1990s to learn their needs and desires around the closing of the exhibition, and documenting the “farewell” process; and drawing on the knowledge and narratives of community members to help curate the inaugural exhibit that will replace Pacific Voices. Some of this work will be undertaken in partnership with Prof. Barker’s anthropology students on the main campus. The object of this collaboration is to challenge and help dissolve the colonial structures that have undergirded Western knowledge systems and museum practice since the Renaissance, and to shift authority from anthropologists and curators to source communities and their descendants in diaspora.

Rajib Doogar, PhD

Associate Professor, School of Business
Speaking for the Defenseless

For the past three years, in conjunction with the local Certified Fraud Examiner community and the law enforcement community, Rajib Doogar has been teaching B BUS 590 Forensic Accounting as a project-based course in which graduate accounting students assist the King County Economic Crimes Unit unravel allegations of fraud committed by trusted agents of youth organizations and by individuals exploiting the infirmities of certain elderly individuals. The main objective of the Speaking for the Defenseless project is to broad the scope of the course to include undergraduate students and to reach out to a broader population of communities that have even fewer resources than King County to devote to the prosecution of such predations. The results of this project will enrich the social consciousness of our undergraduate students while bridging a gap in our current social services network. Rajib also expects to develop a body of teaching materials and scholarly research based on actual cases processed by the students.

Pierre, Mourad, PhD

Professor, School of Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics
Community-Based Learning and Research within Engineering Capstone Projects: A Pilot Study

With this support, several faculty from several Divisions within STEM will work with 21 Acres (a local farming community) to support a specific project (a vertical garden with ‘IoT’ components). Students from various Divisions will contribute, including senior ME Capstone students (the core group) as well as from Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering (working within their Capstone sequence led by their faculty advisors) and Biology (as research students). Pierre and his colleagues will perform a retrospective analysis of the year’s efforts in order to transform the recruitment and implementation process into codified tools and lessons, which we will test the following year. Of particular interest: optimal coordination of the efforts of students from several degree programs in a way that enhances their community engagement while supporting the community’s needs.

Jed Murr, PhD

Full-Time Lecturer, School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences
Black Arts Northwest

Black Arts Northwest is a multi-year, multi-form collaborative project aimed at 1) supporting the work of Black artists and cultural workers in the Pacific Northwest, 2) providing opportunities for UW Bothell undergraduates, graduate students, librarians, faculty, and staff to participate in research about Black political and aesthetic movements in the Pacific Northwest; and 3) engaging multiple publics and communities in ongoing traditions of Black art in relation to the particular historical and political locations of the West Coast, the Pacific Northwest, and Seattle. Black Arts Northwest attempts to open new avenues for thinking critically and comparatively about race and racialization, shifting models of liberal governance, and the problems and possibilities of social justice and antiracist work that emerge from spaces and cities often understood to be white. In 2017-18, the project will involve convening a research working group, collaboratively curating a series of public events, and developing digital infrastructure and building blocks for participatory research in K-12 and university classrooms.

Arkady Retik, PhD

Lecturer, School of Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics
Inspiring Local Community Teens through Computing Education

Current UWB CSS 295 K-12 Computing Education course aims to prepare our students teach programming to K-12 audience. It also involves community partners enabling our students to deliver classes in local communities. Because of time and space constrains, this course is only available to a dozen of students. Through CBLR Fellowship, Arkady Retik wants to expand participation, improve access and enrich the course experience to both our students and community partners. The ultimate goal is to take this course learning experience to the next level and scale it out so more of our students can become better teachers and engage with more communities. By using creative and modern curricula, we want our student to inspire dreams of many kids as well as provide opportunities to those who have no access to computing education. To achieve that, we plan to partner with School of Education, CBLR members and K-12 educators to learn about and integrate the best pedagogical and curricular practices available. We will also work together with our community partners, such as YMCA and others, so we can make our engagement smoother and increase community participation and reach.

Anna Winquist, MN, RN

Lecturer, School of Nursing and Health Studies
A Problem-Solving Community Partnership: RN-BSN Students and Providence

Through the CBLR Fellowship, Anna Winquist plans to develop a CBLR course for BNURS 460: Translating Scholarly Knowledge to Practice. Anna will partner with the UWB School of Nursing and Health Studies and Providence Regional Medical Center (PRMC) in Everett. This academic and community collaboration will be based on the literature that indicates improved health outcomes and well-being are not solely associated with medical services; rather, community partnerships are essential to health promotion and prevention advocacy. PRMC partners are being asked to provide students with a “population problem,” and then RN-BSN students will apply their course work to formulate an evidence-based question, create a literature review, provide a well-developed argument, and offer recommendations for change and/or further research. Anna hopes PRMC will be co-educators to shape nursing students as autonomous and empowered voices in healthcare, and the partnership will experience a sense of reciprocity and mutual exchange of evidence-based knowledge to ultimately, enhance the health of the community and underserved populations.

2016 – 2017 Fellows

Shima Abadi, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, School of STEM Engineering and Mathematics Division
Project: Partnership Development for Ocean Engineering and Research Impact

Shima Abadi aims to develop an underwater sensor network in collaboration with the School of Oceanography at UW Seattle for her Ocean Engineering course. UW Bothell students will design, build, and deploy several sensors at the ERIS cabled observatory off the dock of the School of Oceanography at the University of Washington Seattle to collect long term data that will be made public for environmental monitoring purposes. This cross-disciplinary collaboration will help students to learn the ocean engineering concepts better and expand their job opportunities in the Pacific Northwest area. This partnership will also enhance the relationship between two campuses and will facilitate the future collaboration between the ocean engineering program in UW Bothell and the School of Oceanography at UW Seattle. Shima aims to explore other partnerships through this project such as with NOAA, WA STATE, and Department of Transportation.

Elyse Gordon

Part-Time Lecturer, Ph.D Candidate, School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences
Project: Archival community-based research with Social Justice Fund

Through the Fellowship, Elyse Gordon will develop a community-based research project with the Seattle nonprofit Social Justice Fund (SJF), which supports grassroots organizing across the Northwest. As SJF prepares for their 40th anniversary, students in BIS 393: Reimagining Nonprofits and BIS 340: Approaches to Cultural Research will learn and practice archival and qualitative research techniques that advance the mission and reach of Social Justice Fund. This collaboration will result in artifacts for SJF to use that highlight their historical impact across the northwest, between social movements, and spanning multiple decades. Students will be learning about the history and scope of the nonprofit sector while directly contributing to a regional nonprofit invested in supporting people of color and rural led grassroots organizations fighting for equity and social justice.

Jason Naranjo, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Special Education, School of Educational Studies
Project: Understanding Transition Education through Community-Based Research

Through this Fellowship, Jason Naranjo will deepen an existing research-practice partnership with Everett Public Schools in the area of special education. This work will focus on a district wide study of teacher knowledge and professional practice in secondary special education and school-to-community transition for youth with disabilities. This project has been co-designed with the partner school district. The goal of this work is gauge both general and special educator’s professional knowledge about teaching and planning practices that support inclusion and positive long-term outcomes for youth with disabilities. The results from this work will inform policy and practice in Everett Public Schools and also contribute to the scholarly literature in this area of inquiry.

Ian Porter

Part-Time Lecturer, Ph.D. Candidate, First Year and Pre-Major Program
Project: Sustainable and Just Cities

During the fellowship, Ian Porter will work on two projects. His main project is the redesign of his BWRIT134 Interdisciplinary Writing course into a hybrid and community-based course based on the topic of Sustainable and Just Cities. The course will focus on broader discourses of urban sustainability while giving students first-hand experience working with organizations on the front lines of this movement in the Seattle metro area. Such a project requires strong, reciprocal partnerships with community organizations and careful crafting of assignments and activities that fit well in a hybrid course (50% in-class, 50% online or out-of-class). Such a redesign embodies the value of praxis as a synthesis of thinking, writing, making, and doing in service of a more equitable and just world.

Second, he will initiate an oral history project that seeks to document the stories of individuals and organizations in the Seattle area who promote urban sustainability and justice in the context of rapid urban transformation. He will use the fellowship as an opportunity to define the oral history project goals, connect with individuals and organizations in the area, and create a detailed plan for recording and archiving the oral histories in a publicly-accessible and engaging format.

Jade Power-Sotomayor, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences
Project: Circles and Cyphers: Engaging Student Bodies through Participatory Arts Practices

This project will develop and nurture already established links between communities engaging in participatory arts practices in the Seattle area (son jarocho, bomba, etc.) and classroom spaces at UW Bothell. Focusing on arts practices that require embodied participation (as opposed to relating to the material through a distanced and disembodied observation) we will develop a curriculum that privileges the embodied pedagogies of select artists and practitioners with whom students will interact both on and off campus. In doing so, we create space for and value corporeality and communality as viable intellectual approaches.

Thea Quiray Tagle, Ph.D.

Lecturer, School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences
Project: Connecting Socially Based Artists and the UW Bothell Community

Thea Quiray Tagle wants to develop projects that expand the presence of diverse art and artists around campus, in order to engage students in meaningful conversations about the role that visual art and performance play in larger movements for social transformation. As a scholar who has worked with socially engaged artists and art institutions in the San Francisco Bay Area, Quiray Tagle has learned that mutually fulfilling collaboration between artists, institutions, and communities requires building trust, accountability structures, and relationships over time. As a new resident of Seattle, she plans to use the CBLR fellowship period to research and build those connections in the Seattle metro area’s arts landscape—especially with artists and arts organizations working in the south side of Seattle on issues of racial and environmental justice— with an eye towards collectively brainstorming what socially engaged arts practice looks like, and thinking about how UW Bothell students can become part of those ongoing initiatives.

Greg Tuke, MSW

Lecturer, International Collaborations Facilitator, First Year and Pre-Major Programs
Project: Act Locally, Interact Globally

Most of the major social problems we face locally can only be addressed effectively with an understanding of its global dimensions. And, when we work with others globally, we gain a deeper, more complex picture of the problem and new ideas for solutions that comes from multiple perspectives across cultures and continents. This Fellowship will result in new course designs for local community engagement to integrate into the Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) courses I teach. These COIL courses involve partnering with other universities internationally so that students work in small global teams to help solve specific contemporary social problems such as water pollution, racial discrimination, and climate change. Being able to design COIL courses that provide meaningful community engagement within the limited time available in a course will not only inform my course design, but help me as I train other COIL -interested faculty.