Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Impacting Community Well-Being In Lafayette, Indiana, In The Midst Of A Pandemic, Eli Coltin, Eric Flaningam, Jace Newell, Jason Ware

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

For the past five years, Dr. Jason Ware has centered community-based research and service-learning courses around local community partners’ needs as they focused collectively on community well-being issues. The nature of their work has prioritized qualitative research methods such as narrative inquiry via in-depth interviews and ethnography via immersive observations within varying service-providing institutions such as the Hartford Hub and the Hanna Community Center. COVID-19 and the constant threat of its transmission meant that Dr. Ware, his students, and their community partners had to approach their work differently. They responded with a pivot. They turned to mining large publicly accessible …