Digital Commons Network^™

Community Engagement Institute 2017, Vedette Gavin, Lynn E. Pelco, Katie Elliott, Valerie Holton, Jennifer Early, Erin B. Brown

Community Engagement Institute

Agenda documenting time and dates of speaker presentations. Presentations varied from topics surrounding higher education, community-engaged research, service learning, collaboration between education and communities, and community-academic partner spotlights.

Learning To Be A Prison Educator, Nicole Patrie

Journal of Prison Education and Reentry (2014-2023)

This paper explores the process by which instructors learn to teach in prison. First, research on the challenges correctional educators encounter is explored. Second, an instructor training and mentorship program developed in Alberta, Canada will be presented, followed by a discussion of the importance on ongoing professional development that is specific to correctional educators.

Ink (2017 Spring)

Ink, 2008-

The student-run features magazine covering the fashion, art, music and culture worlds at VCU and in Richmond. Published annually in print and updated regularly online.

2017-18 Guide For Participants: Virginia Commonwealth University Peer Mentoring Program, Lynn E. Pelco, Cristina Stanciu

Division of Community Engagement Resources

The Peer Mentoring Program Guide for Participants provides information for both university faculty mentees and their faculty mentors to help establish and develop a productive mentoring relationship. This Guide is the handbook for the Virginia Commonwealth University Peer Mentoring Program, which seeks to support early career faculty members, enabling them to succeed and thrive in the academy as both scholars and educators. The VCU Peer Mentoring program is part of the VCU Office of Faculty Affairs.

The Emerging Role Of Universities In Collective Impact Initiatives For Community Benefit, Jason Smith, Lynn E. Pelco, Alex Rooke

Division of Community Engagement Resources

Universities are increasing their efforts to more clearly demonstrate their social value. This article illustrates how higher education administrators can incorporate collective impact partnerships in their community benefit strategies. The article explores two of the more familiar paradigms for community benefit—community engagement and anchor institution. Collective impact principles and practices are then presented. Finally, a case study provides a tangible example of how one university’s role in a collective impact initiative transitioned in response to the community. We end the article with ten takeaways and an invitation for higher education administrators to identify their own learning and action steps that …

Virginia Commonwealth University Commencement Program [2017], Virginia Commonwealth University

VCU Commencement Programs

No abstract provided.

Virginia Commonwealth University Fall Commencement Program [2017], Virginia Commonwealth University

VCU Commencement Programs

No abstract provided.

Virginia Commonwealth University Undergraduate Bulletin [2017], Virginia Commonwealth University

VCU Bulletins

Undergraduate bulletin for Virginia Commonwealth University for the academic year 2017-2018. It includes information on academic regulations, degree requirements, course offerings, faculty, academic calendar, and tuition and expenses for undergraduate programs.

Virginia Commonwealth University Graduate Bulletin [2017], Virginia Commonwealth University

VCU Bulletins

Graduate bulletin for Virginia Commonwealth University for the academic year 2017-2018. It includes information on academic regulations, degree requirements, course offerings, faculty, academic calendar, and tuition and expenses for graduate programs.

Virginia Commonwealth University Courses [2017], Virginia Commonwealth University

VCU Bulletins

Listing of courses for the 2017-2018 year.

Why Do Racial Disparities In School Discipline Exist? The Role Of Policies, Processes, People, And Places, Adai Tefera, Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, Rachel Levy

MERC Publications

This brief is part of larger regional study of racial equity in discipline policies and practices conducted by Virginia Commonwealth University’s Metropolitan Educational Research Consortium (MERC). The goal of the broader project is to: (1) analyze racial disproportionality in discipline across the Richmond area, (2) explore various interventions designed to ameliorate disproportionality, and (3) provide recommendations that inform policymaking and practice in the Richmond region. This is the first of two research briefs on racially inequitable school discipline. The subsequent brief will examine the history and theory of action behind different discipline models or interventions, as well as evidence of …

Cumu Annual Conference, Jennifer Early, Catherine Howard

Division of Community Engagement Resources

The VCU Division of Community Engagement mobilizes university-community partnerships that generate innovative solutions to societal challenges and prepares the engaged citizens of tomorrow; they host the CUMU Conference (Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities) annually. Students, faculty, and community partners collaborate to effect positive change in social, organizational, and economic impact. Value Propositions are created to clearly summarize the value that students add to an organization, and the relevance and distinction. This information is complied through assessment, development, and communication.

Creating, Collaborating And Adapting: Implementing A Decentralized Youth Policy, Tina C. Carter, Alyssa King

Division of Community Engagement Resources

The first year implementing a new policy on campus comes with unique opportunities as well as challenges in ensuring appropriate controls and protections for minors. A decentralized policy can often highlight these barriers, but can also create space for innovation. When a policy is located in departments like human resources and risk management infrastructures designed to bolster policies and manage liability are present. For policies in non-traditional areas of higher education, the journey to a sustainable policy model requires a different approach. Virginia Commonwealth University’s policy, Safety and Protection of Minors, is located under the Division of Community Engagement, within …

Lessons On Citizenship And Democratic Power Literacy From Undocumented Youth, Hillary Parkhouse

Teaching and Learning Publications

To create a society in which power is more equally accessible, we must teach our youth not only about civics and government, but also how to use political tools in order to effect social change. In this essay, I argue for teaching power literacy in place of traditional citizenship education on the grounds that the former has greater potential for increasing students’ political efficacy and their abilities to apply knowledge of civics to the real-world issues that affect them. To illustrate the concept of power literacy, I draw on a case study of a grassroots, undocumented youth activist organization fighting …

Cultural Appropriation And The Plains' Indian Headdress, Marisa Wood

AUCTUS: The Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Scholarship

“Cultural appropriation” can be defined as the borrowing from someone else’s culture without their permission and without acknowledgement to the victim culture’s past. Recently there has been a conversation taking place between Native American communities and non-Indian communities over cases of cultural appropriation, specifically the misuse of the Plains’ Indian headdress, which Natives compare to the Medal of Honor. The “hipster subculture”, which can be defined as a generally pro-consumerist, anti-capitalist group of middle-to-upper class non-Indian Americans, has selectively appropriated aspects of many minority cultures; this action has heavily trended toward aspects of Native American culture. As a result, Native …

Colonialism's Role In The Success Of The Filipino Skin Whitening Industry, Francine Singson

AUCTUS: The Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Scholarship

In the Philippines and other developing countries, the skin whitening industry is prolific and expanding among native populations. However, this desire for white skin has dire health repercussions, both physical and psychological. Many researchers in the field of Filipino-American psychology attribute this desire for whiter skin to the American colonial rule of the Philippines, which began in 1898 and lasted for nearly fifty years. Historians often characterize the American occupation as cruel and demeaning, leading to colonial mentality that has continued into the post-colonial era. As a result, in order to ameliorate this dilemma, one must explore how the internalized …

Analysis Of The Progression Of The Representation Of Female Protagonists In The Sci-Fi/Fantasy Tv Shows Orphan Black And Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Girl Power, Appropriated “Masculinity” In Conjunction With Femininity, Empowered Sexuality, And The Heterosexual Script, Dakota Becker

AUCTUS: The Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Scholarship

Buffy Summers goes from urban Los Angeles to Sunnydale, California after she is expelled from her previous high school on the grounds of an assortment of Slayer-related incidents. Chosen as the Slayer, Buffy is fated to fight against the forces of darkness, although this responsibility is not always conducive to leading the life of an average teenage girl. Upon moving to Sunnydale, Buffy quickly learns that Sunnydale High School sits directly above a “Hellmouth,” a hub for demon activity. Specifically, the entrance to the Hellmouth is located directly beneath the Sunnydale High School library, home to a curious collection of …

#Black Lives Matter, Bahar Davary

Ethnic Studies Review

This short story begins with a reference to the tragic killing of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of his killer as part of a pattern of behavior that shouts loud and clear: “black lives don’t matter”. The story traces the injustices of slavery and life and work on the plantations. It takes us from Jim Crow laws in the U.S. to the stifling of the national movement of the Congolese, from assassination of Patrice Lumumba, to the killings of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. In short, the story is a reflection on the responsibility of educators in addressing the …

Abstracts

Ethnic Studies Review

Abstracts for Ethnic Studies Review, Vols. 37 and 38, 2014-2015.

What The Black Lives Matter Movement Demands Of Ethnic Studies Scholars, Melina Abdullah

Ethnic Studies Review

“Come in. Sit down. Close your eyes. Be silent and listen.” Melody engulfed the room. Our bodies unwittingly swayed softly to rhythms that conjured Ancestral memories. The bald, brown-skinned, goateed, dashiki-wearing man in front of the room exuded both warmth and strength. As a fourteen year-old ninth grader, the constancy of my giggle was interrupted by the sanctity of the space. Squeaks of the crotchety wooden desks that formed a large circle joined the music that hummed from the old record player at the front of the room. Minutes felt like days. Sound transported us through time and space and …

Yi, Observational Documentary Aesthetics, And The Identity Politics Of Transcultural Migrancy, Jiacheng Xu 4159187

Theses and Dissertations

There is a moment in Edward Yang’s acclaimed film Yi Yi (2000) in which a young boy in a conversation with his father observes that he cannot see what his father sees and that his father cannot see what he sees, prompting two questions: “How can I know what you see?” and “Can we only know half of the truth?” Unable to provide adequate answers, his father instead offers his son a camera. Later in the film, the same boy presents his uncle with a picture he took of the back of his head. When asked why, the boy responds …

Smoking Behavior In Arab Americans: Acculturation And Health Beliefs, Roula Ghadban

Theses and Dissertations

Background: Arab Americans, a growing population in the U.S., tend to have high rates of smoking and low rates of smoking cessation. Arab Americans and their families are at a high risk for poor health outcomes related to smoking.

Objective: The purpose of this study is to better understand the smoking behaviors of Arabs in the U.S., using the two publishable manuscripts format. The first manuscript is a systematic review of the literature exploring the smoking behavior, prevalence and use among Arab Americans and examining studies addressing the effect of acculturation on this behavior. The second manuscript is a cross-sectional …

What's Haunting Jackson Ward? Race, Space, And Environmental Violence, Rachel Spraker

Theses and Dissertations

This research is about examining the way in which racialized environmental violence contributes to exploitative social relations becoming embedded in the everyday world. I argue that the space of the everyday has been produced through cycles of social relations proceeding from and/or tied to racialized environmental violence. I continue the work of critical scholars in asserting that social and environmental violence is linked in the same ideological impulse which seeks to hide itself behind a variety of alienating processes. The slow way in which environmental violence works is particularly impactful in these processes because of its attritional lethality, contributing to …

Wise Choices? The Economics Discourse Of A High School Economics And Personal Finance Course, Tamara L. Sober

Theses and Dissertations

Today’s high school students will face a host of economic problems such as the demise of the social safety net, mounting college student debt, and costly health care plans, as stated in the rationale for financial literacy provided by the Council for Economic Education’s National Standards for Financial Literacy. These problems are compounded by growing income and wealth inequality and the widespread influence of neoliberal ideology. Although one of the major goals of economics education is to teach students to make reasoned economic choices in their public and private lives and provide the skills to solve personal and social …

Communication, Empathy, And Trust: Exploring Teachers' Partnerships With The Families Of Their Most Challenging Students, Kimberly W. Mcknight

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this embedded mixed methods collective case study was to explore eight kindergarten, first, and second grade teachers’ experiences partnering with families of their students who are at risk for emotional or behavioral disorders (EBDs). The teachers worked in two high-poverty, non-accredited Title-1 schools in an urban city. The study was part of a federally funded intervention called Behavioral, Emotional, and Social Training: Competent Learners Achieving School Success (BEST in CLASS- Elementary; BiC-E; Sutherland et al., 2017), which is targeted for students at risk for the development of EBDs. It uses evidence- based instructional practices to decrease students’ …

Impact Of School-Based Sex Education On College Students’ Rape Myth Acceptance: An Exploratory Analysis, Erika Carpenter

Theses and Dissertations

Research indicates nearly one-fourth of college women fall victim to sexual assault (Cantor et. al., 2015). Two predictors of high proclivity to rape are endorsement of rape myths and adherence to traditional gender norms (King & Roberts, 2011). Additionally, research shows school-based sex education in the United States presents gender and sexual norms in troubling ways that disproportionately harm women (Kendall, 2013). However, research on sexual assault and rape myths have not examined the impact school-based sex education has on rape supportive attitudes. This study aimed to bridge that gap by using original survey data from undergraduate students at a …

Designing For Divorce: New Rituls And Artifacts For An Evolving World, Yang Soon Ju Ms.

Theses and Dissertations

Our interactions with objects build cultural codes, reflecting lifestyles, values, and identities beyond functional expectations. With open connectivity in the contemporary consumer environments, we have access to homogenized material cultures not only for daily activities but also for ceremonies and rituals to mark important events, such as birth, marriage, and death. What will happen to our cultural codes and diverse traditions when various cultural norms meet, exchange, clash, hybridize, and evolve?

In this research, globalized material cultures were investigated to discover metaphoric comparisons, to formulate conceptual frameworks, and to develop informed design, which can address evolving cultural conditions appropriately, in …

Challenging The System? The Potential For Radical Politics In The Age Of Ferguson, Danae Hart

Ethnic Studies Review

As a social movement continues to grow challenging the justice system that fails to prosecute and convict police officers use of deadly force, it is crucial to note what hegemonic constructs maintain the institutional power structures that continue to harm people of color. When police officers are acquitted when they inflict deadly harm on unarmed citizens the justice system is working to maintain the power structures that devalues Black lives. When hegemonic power structures perpetuate injustice it appears necessary to challenge and deconstruct the system as a whole. Do the protest movements choose to challenge hegemony or rather seek to …

Table Of Contents

Ethnic Studies Review

Table of Contents for Ethnic Studies Review, Vols. 37 and 38, 2014-2015.

Black Lives Matter: Imagining And Realizing An Equitable Black Future, Ravi K. Perry

Ethnic Studies Review

The idea for this special Ethnic Studies Review edition, Black Lives Matter: Imagining and Realizing an Equitable Black Future, germinated prior to the election of the 45th president of the United States. However, what this series of articles and commentaries contribute to the movement for Black lives is even more critically important.