SCHEDULE OVERVIEW
9:00-9:30 Registration and Coffee/Light Breakfast
9:30-9:40 Welcome and Introductions
9:40-11:30 Introduction to Community-Based Research
11:30-12:15 Graduate Student Presentations
12:15-1 Lunch
1-1:10 Introductions of Roundtable Discussion Facilitators
1:10-1:55 Disciplinary Roundtable Discussion #1
1:55-2:40 Disciplinary Roundtable Discussion #2
2:40-2:50 Break
2:50-4 Final Discussions
SCHEDULE DETAILS
9:00-9:30 Registration and Coffee/Light Breakfast
9:30-9:40 Welcome and Introductions
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Ellen Knutson, Program Director, Graduate Engagement Opportunities, Center for Civic
Engagement
Dan Lewis, Director, Center for Civic Engagement, Professor of Human Development &
Social Policy
Eleanor Anderson, Learning Sciences PhD Student
9:40-11:30 Introduction to Community-Based Research
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Jen Kauper-Brown, Director, Alliance for Research in Chicagoland Communities
(www.ARCConline.net)
Hyeyoung Lee, Director of Senior Services and Public Benefits, Korean American
Community Services
David Victorson, Assistant Professor, Department of Medical Social Sciences, Feinberg
School of Medicine, Northwestern University
11:30-12:15 Graduate Student Presentations
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Andy Sabin, Communication Sciences and Disorders
Lauren Slubowski, Anthropology/MPH
Ananda Marin, Learning Sciences, with: Jasmine Alfonso, Jannan Cotto, and Laurie
Faber, American Indian Center
12:15-1 Lunch
1-1:10 Introductions of Roundtable Discussion Facilitators
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T.H. Breen, William Smith Mason Professor of American History and Director of the
Chabraja Center for Historical Studies
Danny M. Cohen Lecturer, School of Education and Social Policy, and Commissioner,
Illinois Holocaust and Genocide Commission
Mesmin Destin, Assistant Professor, Social Psychology and Human Development and
Social Policy
Mike Kennedy, Director, Science in Society
Bill Savage, Senior Lecturer, English
Laurie Zoloth, Director of the Brady Scholars Program in Ethics and Civic Life
and morning presenters
1:10-1:55 Disciplinary Roundtable Discussion #1
1:55-2:40 Disciplinary Roundtable Discussion #2
2:40-2:50 Break
2:50-4 Final Discussions
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PRESENTER BIOS
Jasmine Alfonso
Research Study Coordinator
Jasmine Alfonso (Oneida/Menominee) is a Research Study Coordinator in the
Psychology Department at Northwestern University where she is currently working on
community -based research projects focused on designing science programming for all
ages as well as early childhood in the Chicago Native American community. She has her
Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology from DePaul University and received her Master of
Arts degree in Learning Sciences from Northwestern University in 2010. Her master’s
thesis titled “A Portrait of Heritage Language Attitudes and Awareness in the Chicago
Native American Community” explored the practices and attitudes that Native
Americans in the Chicago area have around language and language revitalization using
participant observations, surveys and clinical interviews. She spent two years interning
at Chicago Public Schools, working with the Title VII Indian Education Program,
supporting Native American students by coordinating high school extracurricular
activities, workshops, and panel discussions. Jasmine was also the 2007/08 Miss Indian
Chicago, serving as a spokesperson and youth role model on behalf of the Chicago
Native American community.
T.H. Breen (PhD Yale, 1968), William Smith Mason Professor of American History, is
an Early American historian interested in the history of political thought, material culture,
and cultural anthropology. A Guggenheim fellow, he has held appointments at the Institute
for Advanced Study and the National Humanities Center as well as the Pitt Professorship
of American History and Institutions at Cambridge University and the Harmsworth
Professorship at Oxford University. He has won several awards for distinguished teaching,
including one from the Northwestern Alumni Society. His five monographs
include Imagining the Past: East Hampton Histories (winner of the Historical
Preservation Book Prize), the result of a year-long stint as "Resident Humanist" for the
East Hampton Historical Society. He has also written portions of the highly successful
undergraduate text, America: Past and Present. Breen currently serves as the director of
the Chabraja Center for Historical Studies.
Danny M. Cohen
Lecturer, School of Education and
Social Policy, and
Commissioner, Illinois Holocaust
and Genocide Commission
T.H. Breen
William Smith Mason
Professor of American
History
Dr. Danny M. Cohen is a learning scientist. He specializes in how collective
understandings of Holocaust victimhood impact pedagogical design, which led
him to design and facilitate the pedagogical track of the inaugural docent training
program at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center. Danny's doctoral
dissertation, "Historical Narratives in Tension: Holocaust Educators' Perceptions
of Victimhood" (Northwestern University, 2011), addressed how Holocaust
educators perceive the non-Jewish victims of Nazism. He is currently a lecturer at
Northwestern University's School of Education and Social Policy, teaching
courses on social program design, Holocaust education, and qualitative
methodologies for studying learning and organizational change. Danny also sits on
the Illinois Holocaust and Genocide Commission, which oversees Holocaust and
genocide education and commemoration throughout the state.
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Jannan Cotto, an enrolled member of the Wakanakising Odawa nation of
Michigan. Committed to the healing, sovereignty, and well-being of Native people
through education, she currently serves as the Director of Education for the
American Indian Center of Chicago where she is responsible for overseeing the
management of all aspects of the Education Department and contributing to the
overall success and strategic direction of the department and organization. Before
transitioning her current position, she served as the coordinator of youth programs
for the American Indian Center. Under her direction, the youth programs supported
and mentored Native students in positive youth development. She taught elementary
school, middle school, and high school students in the AIC’s after-school programs
while ensuring all of the programming, from literacy to fitness, validated and
incorporated Native perspectives, traditions, and values. Ms. Cotto is committed to
continuing contributing to the Native community through educational leadership
and this year will begin an MBA program with a focus on non-profit administration.
Mesmin Destin
Assistant Professor, Social
Psychology and Human
Development and Social
Policy
Mesmin Destin is currently an Assistant Professor at Northwestern University in the
Department of Psychology and the School of Education and Social Policy. Dr. Destin’s
research centers primarily on understanding broad societal issues and trends, such as
socioeconomic disparities in educational attainment, from a psychological perspective.
His work employs laboratory and field experimental methods, in addition to national data
analysis. Dr. Destin has developed and tested social psychological interventions, like
distributing college financial aid information and drawing attention to the financial
rewards of college, which significantly improved immediate academic motivation for
low‐ income youth during early adolescence. His work with national data, including the
Panel Study of Income Dynamics, highlights the influence of parental assets and
educational expectations on children’s likelihood of high school graduation and college
enrollment. Dr. Destin’s ongoing work continues to investigate the psychological factors
that underlie the connection of resources, including assets, to motivation and outcomes
for youth. He earned his PhD in social psychology from the University of Michigan, in
Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Lori Faber is a member of the Oneida Tribe of Wisconsin from her mother’s
family and German American on her father’s side. She is currently a full-time
research coordinator working on National Science Foundation grants in
collaboration with Northwestern University and the American Indian Center of
Chicago (AIC). After graduating high school in 2003, Lori moved to Chicago to
complete a BA in French language and literature at the University of Illinois at
Chicago. In 2009, she began working as a part-time research assistant in the
education department at AIC. This experience working in community has afforded
Lori many opportunities to learn more about and participate in Native American
culture, as well as give back to community. Lori has a wide range of interests,
which include playing the violin, learning other languages, and building her practice
as a licensed massage therapist.
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Jannan Cotto
Director of Education, American
Indian Center
Lori Faber
Research Study Coordinator
Jen Kauper-Brown, MPH, is Director of the Alliance for Research in Chicagoland
Communities (ARCC), the community-based participatory research (CBPR) program of
the Northwestern University Clinical and Translational Sciences (NUCATS) Institute.
The ARCC (www.ARCConline.net) mission is growing equitable and collaborative
partnerships between Chicago area communities and Northwestern University for
research that leads to measureable improvement in community health.
Jen Kauper-Brown
Director of the Alliance for
Research in Chicagoland
Communities
Jen has extensive experience and training and consults nationally in community health
and community-academic partnerships, with an emphasis on program development and
management, capacity-building training design and delivery, institutional change efforts,
network building and facilitation, and multi-institutional collaborations. Her most recent
position was with the University of Illinois-Chicago Neighborhoods Initiative. Prior to
her move back to the Midwest, Jen was the Program Director for the CommunityCampus Partnerships for Health, where she was responsible for managing the
organization's CBPR-related projects and programs. Jen currently serves on the
Executive Committees of the Chicago Consortium for Community Engagement (C3) and
the Consortium to Lower Obesity in Chicago Children, the Community Advisory Board
for the DePaul University Public Health Program, and the Board of Directors for
Community-Campus Partnerships for Health and the Chicago Women’s Health Center.
Dr. Mike Kennedy has been involved in science education and outreach for more
than a decade. He co-developed one of Northwestern’s first annual public outreach
events, the Science Outreach Series, geared towards informing citizens of
developments in the life sciences. This annual event, held from 2001-2007, brought
internationally prominent speakers to Northwestern’s campus to lecture on topics
including the Human Genome Project, stem cell biology, human cloning,
genetically modified foods, global warming, and neuroimaging.
Through his work with the Science Outreach Series, Kennedy recognized a need for
the University to better connect its research mission with the community. His idea
evolved into the Science in Society e-magazine, a broad web-based educational
resource designed to communicate advances in science and their impact on society,
with content authored by practicing scientists and trainees. In 2008, Kennedy cofounded Science Club, a mentor-based afterschool science initiative, developed in
partnership with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Chicago. The success and growth of
Science Club and the Science in Society e-magazine led to the establishment of a
new office for science outreach and public engagement at Northwestern under
the Science in Society name, of which Kennedy serves as founding director.
Hyeyoung Lee
Director of Senior Services
and Public Benefits, Korean
American Community
Services
Mike Kennedy
Director, Science in Society
Hyeyoung Lee joined Korean American Community Services (KACS) in 2007 and has
worked as a counselor, program manager, and program director. She demonstrates
strong capacities in developing, managing, evaluating programs, as well as developing
community partnerships, coordinating and carrying out public benefit seminars, and
facilitating groups for seniors. She excels in administrative skills, and has a long
history of serving Korean American clients in the clinical setting by providing
counseling and direct services. Ms. Lee is also a Senior Health Insurance Program
(SHIP) coordinator at KACS. She has a Master in Social Work from the School of
Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago, and she is fluent in the
English and Korean languages.
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Ananda Marin
Learning Sciences PhD
Student
Ananda Marin is a PhD candidate in the Learning Sciences Program at Northwestern
University. She earned a bachelor's degree in sociology from Yale University and a
Masters in Public Policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Ananda’s
research interests include culture and cognition, learning and development in multiple
contexts, and teacher sensemaking. She worked as a teacher-researcher at the American
Indian Center for the Cultural Context of Learning, a National Science Foundation
funded project that designed out-of-school science curricula from students’ community
based repertoires of practice. Prior to graduate school, Ananda served as Assistant Dean
of Student Services at Harry S Truman College where she worked closely with the Office
of Instruction on classroom redesign projects and occasionally taught courses for the
Social Science Department. Ananda also worked at the Chicago Children's Museum in
the Community Services Department. While there she participated in the exhibit
development process and co-facilitated a supplemental reading program with partner
schools.
Andy Sabin is a post doctoral fellow in Communication Sciences and Disorders at
Northwestern University. His primary academic work has been in auditory
perception on both the theoretical and practical levels. Alongside his academic
work, Andy has worked in audio software development and recording studio
production. He is currently the owner of Ear Machine LLC which uses knowledge
of the auditory system to create intuitive interfaces for audio manipulation.
Andy Sabin
Post Doctoral Fellow in
Communication Sciences and
Disorders
A life-long Chicagoan, Bill Savage is a Distinguished Senior Lecturer in English and
WCAS Advisor. He teaches and conducts research in several areas, including
hermeneutics, 20th century fiction, popular culture, and Chicago writers, especially
Nelson Algren. He co-edited the 50th Anniversary Critical Edition of Algren's The Man
with the Golden Arm and the Newly Annotated Edition of Chicago: City on the Make,
and has written several essays about Algren for both mainstream and scholarly
publications. He is a Series Editor for Chicago Visions + Revisions, a series of nonfiction
books about Chicago from the University of Chicago Press.
Bill Savage
Distinguished Senior
Lecturer in English
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Savage has also participated in the Chicago Humanities Festival, lectured on bar culture
for the Chicago Metro History Education Center, and written book reviews published in
the Chicago Tribune, for which he was awarded the James Friend Memorial Award in
Literary Criticism from the Society of Midland Authors.
Lauren Slubowski is a PhD/MPH candidate in biocultural anthropology. Her
research focuses on health disparities among adolescents, particularly in how
neighborhood context shapes disease risk via stress and behavior. Currently, she is
conducting NSF-funded research examining the role of structural violence in
obesity outcomes among a youth population on the West side of Chicago. Lauren is
also completing her Master’s in public health through the Program in Public Health
at Northwestern. Her thesis considers how the aforementioned framework might be
applied in community settings to improve health outcomes among youth and reduce
disparities.
Lauren Slubowski
Anthropology/Public Health PhD
Candidate
David Victorson
Assistant Professor,
Department of Medical Social
Sciences, Feinberg School of
Medicine
David Victorson, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medical Social
Sciences at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, and also a member
of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center and a Behavioral & Social
Sciences volunteer for the American Psychological Association’s Socioeconomic Status
Related Cancer Disparities Program. He received his Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology
from the University of Miami in 2003 and completed a 2-year postdoctoral fellowship in
Psychosocial Oncology at Evanston Northwestern Healthcare in 2005. As a licensed
health psychologist Victorson has specialized in working with people diagnosed with
cancer and other chronic medical conditions. His research has focused on discovering
ways in which people with cancer and other chronic medical conditions can become
more engaged in their own heath care and health promotion through psychosocial and
behavioral intervention, thereby preventing setbacks and disease burden, as well as
increasing health related quality of life. He is also the founder and executive director of a
nonprofit organization that supports young adult cancer survivors following treatment,
called True North Treks.
One of Victorson’s primary research questions is how we can reduce disease and
treatment related burden (e.g., symptoms/side effects, disability, costs) and improve
health related quality of life and functioning, through the provision of patient-centered
self management support and skills training. A related question is how this support can
be made most accessible and utilizable to individuals who have traditionally been
marginalized by the health care system.
In addition to being the director of the Brady Program, Laurie Zoloth is Professor
of Medical Ethics and Humanities at Northwestern University, Feinberg School of
Medicine, and Professor of Religion and a member of the Jewish Studies faculty at
Northwestern University, Weinberg College of Arts and Science. She has published
extensively on ethical issues in health care and science.
Laurie Zoloth
Director of the Brady Scholars
Program in Ethics and Civic Life
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STEERING COMMITTEE
Eleanor Anderson
Learning Sciences PhD Student
Matilda Stubbs
Anthropology PhD Student
Lauren Slubowski
Ruth Martin
Comparative Literary Studies PhD Student
Anthropology/Public Health PhD Candidate
Ellen Knutson
Center for Civic Engagement
Graduate Engagement Opportunities
[email protected]
Questions, comments about this year’s workshop? Want to know how to get involved with next year’s workshop?
Please contact us at: [email protected]
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