The Senior Vice Chancellor for Engagement’s Partnerships of Distinction Award, conferred annually at the Community Engaged Scholarship Forum, recognizes outstanding partnerships that are exemplars of community engagement. Honorees demonstrate reciprocity, mutual benefit and significant community impact.
Just Discipline Project at Woodland Hills
To address the problem of high suspension rates in Allegheny County schools, particularly among black students, a partnership between the School of Social Work’s Center on Race and Social Problems, the School of Education’s Motivation Center, and the Woodland Hills School District developed a comprehensive school climate and discipline intervention that began in the fall of 2017.
Participating in the project were: from the School of Social work were James P. Huguley, assistant professor; Shawn E. Thomas, restorative practice coordinator; Rachelle H. Haynik, research and evaluation coordinator; Shante Stuart McQueen, postdoctoral fellow; Dashawna Fussell-Ware, graduate research assistant; Rebecca Calaman, undergraduate research assistant; and Theresa DePace, undergraduate social work intern.
Other participants included Ming-Te Wang, associate professor, School of Education, and from the Woodland Hills School District, James P. Harris, superintendent; Allison Kline, principal, and more than 40 teachers and staff at the Woodland Hills Intermediate School.
AIDS Free Pittsburgh
AFP is a collaborative initiative comprised of government agencies, healthcare institutions, and community-based organizations that strive to support people affected by HIV/AIDS and end the AIDS epidemic in Allegheny County by 2020.
Several health organizations from throughout the county participated in this project. The participants from Pitt came from:
School of Medicine: April Churilla, Ken Ho, Deborah McMahon, and John Mellors, all Department of Medicine; Darren Whitfield, School of Social Work and Department of Psychiatry, Adrienne Walnoha, Psychiatry, and Harold Wiesenfeld, Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences
Graduate School of Public Health: James Egan, Mary Hawk, and Ron Stall, Behavioral and Community Health Sciences; and Linda Frank and Mackey Friedman, Infectious Diseases and Microbiology
Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation Partnership with the Kingsley Association
This partnership has been active since 2009 across a range of sustainability innovations, including the development of multi-generational, sustainable housing approaches to energy assessments, energy retrofits, and most recently, the Environmental Justice Community Alert Matrix. EJCAM was designed to inform residents about environmental risks within their communities and provide them with practical responses to mitigate risks.
Partnership members include: Melissa Bilec, deputy director, Mascaro Center and associate Professor, civil and environmental engineering; Harold Rickenbacker, civil and environmental engineering grad student; Malik G. Bankston, executive director, Kingsley Association; and Fred Brown, former associate director of program development, Kingsley Association, and current president, Forbes Fund.
Black Girls Advocacy and Leadership Alliance
This partnership, which is part of the Black Girls Equity Alliance, fosters community-based participatory research and advocacy to address the systemic inequities affecting black girls in the region.
Partnership members include: Kathi Elliott, Executive Director, Gwen's Girls; Convener, Black Girls Equity Alliance; Amanda Cross, Office of Child Development; Willa Doswell and Betty Braxter, School of Nursing; Alannah Caisey, doctoral student, Department of Sociology; and from the School of Social Work: Professor Sara Goodkind and masters students Edoukou Aka-Ezoua, Porscha Adams, Shenika McAlister, and ShaRae Edmonds.
Parks and the Pittsburgh EcoSystem
This partnership is a collaboration between the Department of Geology and Environmental Science and the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy to address challenges ranging from combined sewer overflows to social equity.
Partners include: Erin Copeland, senior restoration ecologist, Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, and Daniel Bain, associate director, Pittsburgh Collaboratory for Water Research, Education and Outreach, Department of Geology and Environmental Science.