Faculty Fellows in Community Engagement

Partner: Tacoma Public Schools Health Services

Partners: Adoptee Mentoring Society, AIREroots

Partner: Asia Pacific Cultural Center

External Partners: Restore Assemble Produce (RAP)

This project supports a Youth Participatory and Action Research Project (YPAR), Youth Agents of Change that was developed by leaders of the organization Restore Assemble Produce (RAP) in Kent, Washington in 2021. 

Primary goals and purposes:

• Contribute to the development of Racial Equity Plan for the Kent Police Department and contribute to enhancing police-community relations ore broadly
• Youth gain knowledge of and comfort with research
• Youth experience greater civic engagement, critical consciousness, sociopolitical efficacy, and wellness.
• Contributions are made to the scholarly literature about participatory research and youth development.

                                                                 Watch the Presentation Below!

External Partners: Pacific Lutheran University, Graduate Tacoma

The Tacoma Math Festival program was an exciting collaboration among Lincoln High School, Pacific Lutheran University (PLU), and the University of Washington Tacoma (UWT), aiming to bring the joy of mathematics and access to innovative teaching and learning math to the Tacoma area through the organization of three math festivals in 2023. The program provided comprehensive training to UWT and PLU students to design, create, and facilitate engaging math activities during the festivals. By involving these students, we fostered a sense of ownership and empowerment while inspiring the next generation of math enthusiasts and educators.
 

                                                                 Watch The Presentation Below!

External Partners: Tacoma Public Schools

Project UNIFY, Understanding Needs In Families and Youth, is a mutually-beneficial partnership between Tacoma Public Schools (TPS) and the Ed.S. School Psychology program in the UWT School of Education (SOE). The interest in this partnership was born out of our current work in social and emotional learning (SEL) and positive behavior interventions and supports (PBIS). TPS is currently engaging in SEL and PBIS-related work through the Tacoma Whole Child (TWC) department, and this work enhances an existing partnership with the Office of Community Partnerships (OCP) and one of the Co-PI’s in the current proposal (Dr. Feuerborn).

The aims of Project UNIFY are unique to the existing partnership work and arose from our previous work together and the scholarship of both Co-PIs. Thus, Project UNIFY is not redundant to the efforts of TWC but an extension of two areas of scholarly inquiry and a separate, expressed need in TPS: the need to engage and amplify the voices of diverse middle and high school students and families/caretakers in the areas of SEL and PBIS.

The goals of Project UNIFY are to hold focus groups to gain a better understanding of the needs and experiences of diverse secondary students and their families/caretakers in TPS. This understanding will then be used to inform decisions around equity-centered SEL and culturally responsive PBIS in the TPS community. Project UNIFY involves several partners: TPS secondary students and their families/caretakers, graduate students in the Ed.S. School Psychology program, two faculty in the School of Education, and TPS leaders.

                                                                 Watch The Presentation Below!

External Partners: Lucas McIntyre; Multicare Tacoma General Hospital

Through expanding the reach of behavioral health expertise in Multicare into the Tacoma School Population, this Co-HEAL project will address behavioral health concerns of all severity levels - from everyday stressors to suicidality.  

This project has three primary goals and purposes:

• This project is committed to diversity, equity and inclusion; with this commitment, the first goal is to create an alternative, low-barrier pathway for economically disadvantaged and marginalized youth so they may receive and have access to evidence-based behavioral health care. 
• The second area of focus for this project focuses on building a collaborative coalition in Pierce County to improve behavioral health above and beyond standard care. 
  • The purpose of this coalition is to empower the competence and self-efficacy of non-clinical individuals who can then implement these interventions in the school systems and learn informed triage with knowledge from experts in the behavioral health care field. 
• The last goal of this project is to launch a pilot program to be integrated through TPS training that will be both effective and sustainable. 

                                                             Watch The Presentation Below!

External Partner: Melody Rodriguez, Alma Vargas; Proyecto MoLE

With various recommendations of the Undocumented Student Support Group, which focused on the following 5 areas; Campus Support & Advocacy, Legal Support, Financial and Administrative Support, Community-Based Engagement, and Communication. The goals of this project are to shift from a model of individual support to institutional support.

In other words, rather than essentially asking students to seek out resources and support by connecting with individual faculty and/or staff members, this project's objective is to show progress in terms of a more comprehensive and visible allocation of resources; To create and centralize consistent and accurate information regarding available services and resources on - and off - campus and to develop formal protocols for sharing updates pertaining to policy changes, the presence of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the presences of Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) on campus, and other relevant information for students, staff and faculty.

Among the specific goals are: 

• Expanded efforts to advertise and expand Undocumented Peer Advising Services
• Bringing Leadership Without Borders Undocu Allies Training to UWT in Spring 2022
• Identifying Undocu Allies (points of contact) across campus units 
• Distributing UWT-branded Know Your Rights information/cards
• FAFSA/WAFSA and other workshops with campus units and community partners 
• Creation of online financial aid/admissions videos in English, Spanish and potentially other languages
• Identifying current available legal and other community resources
• Development of online resources related to profession development and career preparation for undocumented students
• Development of a tentative in-time communications plan for emergent issues related to risk and safety
• Development of a tentative ongoing communications plans for maintaining a welcoming space for undocumented students

                                                             Watch The Presentation Below!

External Partner: Michael Haeflinger; Write 253

With an understanding of the barriers to equity and access in education, as well as how writing can empower young people to cultivate their own voice and share their perspective with others, this project will create two paid internship opportunities for UW Tacoma students in collaboration with Write 253 and lay groundwork for the proposal of a new felony diversion program for first-time juvenile offenders in Pierce County. 

This project's primary goals and purposes:

• To create community-based internship opportunities to support students,  provide more engagement opportunities and to increase retention rates.  
• The shared long-term goal is the creation of a diversion program that will give first-time juvenile offenders training in Letterpress and print techniques as well as communication/marketing experience. 

                                                             Watch The Presentation Below!

External Partners/Organization: Dr. Denise Bill, Muckleshoot Indian Tribe

The goals for this project are to deepen the connections between the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe and surrounding tribal communities through the engagement of the Muckleshoot doctoral cohort to the community grounded praxis to develop an Indigenous centered approach to knowledge construction and sharing.

The focus and objectives for this particular project in deepening the work is to work on two specific areas:

• The first is to solidify an Indigenous Knowledge and Pedagogy Certificate that will be embedded through the current EdD curriculum while honoring the Indigenous focus of the content and approach with the Muckleshoot doctoral cohort.
• The second area of focus for this project is Indigenous writing sessions with an Indigenous scholar from Washington State. This funding would allow for twelve writing sessions throughout the 2021 calendar year for Muckleshoot doctoral students to develop their Indigenous writing voice and enhance their writing skills in preparation for the dissertation in practice centered in Indigenous knowledge and pedagogies.

External Partners: Ellen Lukens (Columbia University School of Social Work) and David Camacho (Post-doctoral Fellow, Weill

Cornell Medicine)

Gender inequality and women’s mental health are inextricably linked. In India - which has one of the world’s highest rates of domestic violence - women’s illness narratives are rooted in familial violence and discriminatory social contexts. Similarly, in the US, South Asian women of Indian origin* experience high rates of domestic violence and social stressors that adversely impact their mental health. Despite this, gender-sensitive mental health services are limited both in high- and low-income countries. There is an urgent need for local and global

strategic action and multilevel stakeholder engagement to integrate gender and culture-related needs in all aspects of mental health services. The proposed study will bring together researchers, providers, and service-users in India and the US to identify best practices, needs, and challenges in delivering gender-sensitive and culturally responsive care to women confronting interpersonal violence and living with mental health challenges.

This study builds on ongoing work in India. Dr. Anindita Bhattacharya has partnered with community-based agencies in India and this project would allow for new partnerships with agencies that serve the South Asian community in the US. The objectives of this project are to: 

• Promote a bidirectional flow of knowledge and resources between India and the US and build research partnerships. 
• Invite community partners to engage to enhance social work curriculum and field practicum opportunities at the School of Social Work and Criminal Justice at UWT.
• The partnerships will provide students with opportunities to work in international settings, engage with ethnically diverse and minority communities, and broaden their perspective on gender and mental health through a global diversity lens.

External Partners: Dr. Avery Shinneman (UW Bothell), Dr. Julian Olden (UW Seattle),  Wafa Tafesh, King County; Marisa Burghdoff, Snohomish County; Rob Zisette, Washington State Lake Protection Association (WALPA)

During a discussion with members of WALPA, Dr. Jim Gawel, Dr. Avery Shinneman and the panel identified the need to better ascertain who uses lakes besides lakeside homeowners, what the cultural ecosystem services that these lakes provide to users are, what uses are currently not met and therefore decrease public access, and how to best communicate with current users and reach potential users. The panel specifically called out the need to identify better methods to garner input from BIPOC communities in order to better address their needs. 

Additionally, through their research together, Dr. Jim Gawel and Dr. Julian Olden identified a cancer risk from consumption of snails, crayfish, and fish in arsenic-contaminated lakes. With these findings, the two brainstormed with government agencies how to identify at-risk populations and effective methods to communicate the health risk. They again identified a gap in knowledge of lake users, what they were using the lake for (e.g. crayfish or snail harvest), and how to reach those non-resident communities.

With these findings, this project aims to accomplish the following goals:

• Working with King County, develop multiple complementary data collection tools, including data mining of social media, online and in-person surveys, and observer protocols, to document cultural ecosystem services provided by lakes and to identify lake user populations;
• Using these tools, collect data on current lake use and desired lake use at a suite of lakes in King County across a gradient from urban to rural locations, and across neighborhoods with differing socio-economic metrics including racial and ethnic diversity, income, health and open space access, and others (we will also collect a smaller set of data from lakes in Snohomish County); and
• Analyze data collected to assess the efficacy of the tool kit for use in future management decisions and to inform the needs of our partners in the two counties and throughout the state via WALPA.

External Partners: Omari Amili, Tiara Dearbone, Metropolitan Development Council, Pierce County Juvenile

Division

This project was the vision of Omai Amilli, a formerly incarcerated Black UWT alumnus and contractor for Pierce County Juvenile Justice as well as Tiarra Dearbone, a formerly incarcerated Black and Indigenous UWT alumnus. They had both discussed with Dr. Beasley that they wanted stronger UWT support for BIPOC youth intertwined in the criminalization system. Similarly, they identified a gap in UWT’s relationships with communities of color in that many of our relationships were with more privileged segments of these communities, and that these more privileged BIPOC stakeholders were the ones UWT was often learning from.

Furthermore, these alumni and Dr. Beasley recognized a seemingly glaring underrepresentation of BIPOC formerly incarcerated students on campus, which is particularly concerning given that this disparity seems much more prominent than the campus’ general student body demographics. After some discussion, Omari, Tiara, and Dr. Beasley decided to pursue an initiative that had the potential to address each of these problems. They decided to develop a supportive co-learning community of faculty, staff, students, and youth intertwined in the

criminalization system. The overarching goals of this initiative are to:

• Strengthen the relationships between UWT and criminalized BIPOC youth as well as communities they're connected to,
• Expand criminalized BIPOC youth visions of their future and understanding of pathways for getting there,
• Center criminalized BIPOC youth as public scholars and experts in their experiences,
• Enhance UWT's understanding of criminalized BIPOC youth experiences,
• Invest in the leadership of formerly incarcerated BIPOC alumni, and
• Address inequities in Husky Post-Prison Pathways initiative.

External Partner Organization: Catherine Place, Tacoma

The project aims to deliver an online engagement tool that furthers the mission of a local non-profit to improve the quality of life for women by providing a safe digital space for care providers who have identified their schedules as a barrier to participation in regular Catherine Place activities.



The project will:

• Deliver an online program with accessible modules and engaging social media content  for the community partner
• Train students into human service professionals and socially responsible designers with opportunities to understand their communities, learn from community partner, and obtain internship opportunities
• Develop as a pilot program for a future collaborative project in developing accessible content to support wellness, self-care, and empowerment to bridge cultural differences

External Partner Organizations: Downtown on the Go! and Tacoma Community House



This project supported the formation and one-year (hopefully longer) sustenance of an interdisciplinary group of faculty at the University of Washington Tacoma whose research promotes the public good and whose teaching aims to prepare students for engaged work within communities. This project built on the community-engaged ethos of the university and sought to extend it by supporting faculty wishing to incorporate community-engaged teaching and learning into their courses.

The working group was composed by 6-7 faculty from across the university that came together to a) examine models of curriculum that ask students to engage with community ethically and productively, and b) develop community-engaged course assignments (compendium forthcoming).

The co-leads partnered with experienced community-engaged faculty members Linda Ishem and Chris Beasley as well as community partners Downtown on the Go! and Tacoma Community House in order to share participant's experiences from community partners’ perspective. Part of the CoP’s activities included looking at examples of poor and/or unethical assignments alongside examples of ethical and successful ones. After establishing a foundation in praxis (through the first three meetings), participants collaborated in designing or revising specific assignments, resulting in a repository of community-engaged assignments accessible to all faculty at UWT. (Repository is being compiled, link to be updated here).

The goals of this CoP were:

• Explore theories and practices of community-engaged scholarship
• Gain an understanding of ethics and practices informing sustainable community-engaged teaching and learning
• Expand our circle of partnerships through public scholarship

External Partner Organizations: City of Tacoma, WA Dept. of Labor & Industries*, Concrete Technology*; Tacoma Community House, SeaTac City Council, Asia Pacific Cultural Center, Providence Health, University of Florida

*Also member of Commission of  Immigrant and Refugee Affairs, City of Tacoma

The Designing Language Access Community of Practice (DLACoP) is a coalition of experts in translation, interpretation, language access, community engagement, and design working to improve language access for immigrant, refugee, and heritage language speaking communities in the Puget Sound. This group is comprised of local community leaders, civil servants, non-profit professionals, interpreters, translators, language access industry leaders, and scholars from the University of Washington Tacoma and University of Florida. This group represents broad expertise across social work, healthcare, non-profit services, language teaching and literacy, urban design, technology design, policy, human resources, communications, and community relations. This group meets monthly. This group is collaborating to conduct an initial needs assessment to holistically understand and work towards solutions for the continuing barriers to language access in the region.

External Partner Organizations: Green River College, Pierce College

Nursing is perhaps the most important profession in the country during a pandemic. Yet nurse burnout in the USA is at an all-time high. Nurses are exposed to trauma in the course of a regular workday; and many nurses come from backgrounds where they already bear the burden of exposure to what are known in the industry as Adverse Childhood Experiences. Before the pandemic, almost 25% reported feeling burned out; now it is reportedly close to double that number. Burnout leads to nurses quitting their positions while the daily news is rife with stories of nursing shortages. The Well Being for Life - RN project, sponsored by the Office of Community Partnerships, applied a Community of Practice model with two partnering south sound nursing education institutions (Green River and Pierce Community Colleges) to advance resiliency pedagogy. The group met fourteen times over the grant period, producing and distributing an innovative resilience tool for nursing educators in the state, and conducting focus groups with students and faculty. The Washington Center for Nursing recognized their activities in their end of year (4th Quarter, 2020) newsletter. The group plans to sustain their work seeking system change in nursing education in order to continue to design unique tools for promoting resiliency in students, faculty, and statewide nursing programs.

External Partners Organization: Proyecto MoLE

In partnership with Proyecto MoLE, a leading Tacoma-based Latino youth program, this project developed a youth participatory action research project (YPAR) aimed at promoting mental health, well-being, and support among Latina adolescents in Tacoma. The goal of YPAR was to:

• Understand how local Latinas understand mental health and well-being, and the common challenges they face (e.g., academic, familial, and sociopolitical);
• Support Latina Youth to develop strategies to diminish the influence of stressors and develop affirming relationships
• Strengthen identity development and healing through storytelling
• Promote self-advocacy and support among Latina youth; and 5) Create a bridge between the UWT community and Latina teens (and other MoLE youth)