Civic and Community Engagement Commons^™

Torch (October 2010), Brandon Baldwin, Civil Rights Team Project

Torch: The Civil Rights Team Project Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Ua68/1/3 Arts & Letters, Vol. 2, No. 1, Wku Potter College Of Arts & Letters

WKU Archives Records

Magazine created by WKU Potter College of Arts & Letters regarding faculty and student research, events and programs.

The State-In-Society Approach To Democratization With Examples From Japan, Mary Alice Haddad

Mary Alice Haddad

How does an undemocratic country create democratic institutions and transform its polity in such a way that democratic values and practices become integral parts of its political culture? This article uses the case of Japan to advocate for a new theoretical approach to the study of democratization. In particular, it examines how theoretical models based on the European and North American experiences have difficulty explaining the process of democratization in Japan, and argues that a state-in-society approach is better suited to explaining the democratization process diverse cultural contexts. Taking a bottom-up view of recent developments in Japanese civil society through …

Nevada Interagency Volunteer Program: Helping Hands Across Public Lands – Phase Ii: Quarterly Progress Report, Period Covering July 1, 2010 To September 30, 2010, Margaret N. Rees

Get Outdoors Nevada

• The number of records in the volunteer database increased by 0.05% over the last quarter. The database now contains 7,669 records.
• Results show an average of 1,060 visits per month, and with an average of 2,597 pages viewed per month.
• Five National Public Lands Day events have been completed.
• The Interagency Volunteer Standard Operations Manual has been updated and revised.
• Get Outdoors Nevada supported six volunteer events in a variety of ways. These events utilized 630 volunteers whom contributed 3,686 hours of service.
• Preparations for the volunteer recognition banquet continued.

Southern Nevada Agency Partnership Cultural Site Stewardship Program – Program Expansion And Steward Retention: Quarterly Progress Report, Period Ending September 30, 2010, Margaret N. Rees

Cultural Site Stewardship Program

The Cultural Site Stewardship Program is working with the Desert Wildlife Refuge (DWR) in accordance with a request by the Archaeologist for USFWS.

Several classes were offered to stewards, including map and compass orientation, site photography and lithics instructions.

Twenty-three newly trained stewards along with 12 existing stewards were assigned to the Desert Wildlife Research area, and will be introduced to sites during early fall. The Abandoned Mines Lands project operated by the National Park Service will continue with new objectives this fall.

Community Engaged Research At The Regional Research Institute For Human Services, Diane Yatchmenoff, Laurie E. Powers

Regional Research Institute for Human Services

Participatory models of research, in which communities are actively engaged in the research process through partnerships with academic institutions, are restructuring how scientific knowledge is being created. Community engaged research, also known as, community based participatory research (CBPR), and participatory action research (PAR) is increasingly recognized as a framework for high quality scientific inquiry. In community engaged research, researchers and evaluators work side‐by‐side with community members in all phases of the research process, from defining social problems and research questions, conceptualizing research design, carrying out research, and interpreting and disseminating findings. It requires partnership development, collaboration and cooperation, and commitment …

Motivations And Benefits Of Student Volunteering: Comparing Regular, Occasional, And Non-Volunteers In Five Countries, Ram A. Cnaan, Karen A. Smith, Kirsten Holmes, Debbie Haski-Leventhal, Femida Handy, Jeffrey L. Brudney

Departmental Papers (SPP)

Programs targeting student volunteering and service learning are aimed at encouraging civic behaviour among young people. This article reports on a large-scale international survey comparing volunteering among university students in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The data revealed high rates of student volunteering and the popularity of occasional volunteering. It also revealed that other young people were the main beneficiaries of students’ voluntary activities. Student volunteers were influenced by a mix of motivations and benefits, with differences on acontinuum of volunteer involvement between those volunteering regularly, those volunteering occasionally, and those not volunteering.

Arts-Based Social Inclusion: An Investigation Of Existing Assets And Innovative Strategies To Engage Immigrant Communities In Philadelphia, Mark J. Stern, Susan C. Seifert

Arts-Based Social Inclusion and Immigrant Communities—2010-2011

This document reports on a study of the role that arts and culture play in Philadelphia’s migrant communities—that is, Puerto Rican and foreign-born residents and their families, including children born in the U.S. The project explored the concept of “arts-based social inclusion”—the idea that organizations and artists use culture and the arts as a means to improve the life circumstances of new Philadelphians and integrate them more fully into community life. The study confirmed that arts-based social inclusion is a productive perspective with which to make sense of this work.

The report first examines the changing presence of the foreign-born …

Social Work And Civic Engagement: The Political Participation Of Professional Social Workers, Sunny Harris Rome, Susan Hoechstetter

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This article examines the involvement of practicing social workers in one type of civic engagement: the use of political processes to promote the public good. Based on a survey of 1,274 randomly selected members of NASW, this is the largest study to date examining the involvement of social workers in political action and policy advocacy. Findings suggest that approximately half of social workers demonstrate high levels of participation in the policy process. The authors analyze the frequency with which respondents engage in specific political and policy-related activities, and compare these results to those of other studies. They also examine respondents'attitudes …

Newsletter, September 2010: Progression Through Partnerships, Alive Center, Western Kentucky University, Aurelia Spaulding

ALIVE Center Publications

No abstract provided.

"Everything Has Changed": Narratives Of The Vietnamese American Community In Post-Katrina Mississippi, Yoosun Park, Joshua Miller, Bao Chau Van

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

In this qualitative study of the Vietnamese American community of Biloxi, Mississippi, conducted three years after Katrina, we attended not only to individual experiences but to the relationship of individuals to their collective and social worlds. The interlocked relationship of individual and collective loss and recovery are clearly demonstrated in respondents' narratives. The neighborhood and community of Little Saigon was significant not only as a symbolic source of identity but as a protected and familiar space of residence, livelihood, and social connections. The post-Katrina changes in the neighborhood are, in multiple ways, changing participants' experience of and relationship to their …

Torch (September 2010), Brandon Baldwin, Civil Rights Team Project

Torch: The Civil Rights Team Project Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Professor Emeritus Speech, August 26, 2010, Grady Johnson

Saffy Collection - All Textual Materials

Dr. Grady Johnson's speech accepting professor emeritus on behalf of the Late Dr. Edna Saffy.

Knowing Your Community: Fostering Biodiversity Awareness In Our Students’ Daily Existence, Tony Cummings Bs, Academic Director

Fostering Multicultural Competence and Global Justice: an SIT Symposium

There are strong arguments suggesting that developing students’ sensitivity to local biodiversity and conservation issues is as important as emphasizing an understanding of global conservation issues happening in faraway lands (Ehrenfeld, 2009). Many students arrive at a Study Abroad destination, with a good understanding of theory, but with little field experience at home. Environmental educators in Study Abroad are able to use the novelty and grandeur of our exotic destinations to systematically teach students the patterns and processes of ecological and human communities at our sites, while inspiring a sense of place in our students. By immersing students in the …

Giving Voice To Our Students And Partners: From Principles To Actions, Ana Rita Diaz-Munoz Ma, Academic Director

Fostering Multicultural Competence and Global Justice: an SIT Symposium

The principle of reciprocity guides our daily work: the idea that we are giving something back to the community in order to make a difference. We try not only to implement it, but pass it on to our students.

The core of our work as educators is possible thanks to the relationship with the host communities and organizations with which we work. This is the reason why it is crucial to find ways to give back to those organizations that work to improve the community.

Based on a dialog with students, colleagues and partners, we intend to answer a few …

Business Community Outreach: Exploration Of A New Service Role, Patrick Griffis, Sidney Lowe

Library Faculty Presentations

Benefits of Business Outreach:

- Promotes value of library in a community
- Increases awareness of library services in a community
- Provides opportunities for external fundraising
- Connects library to other community agencies
- Increases library awareness of community services
- Provides opportunities for programming activities

End Of Program Evaluation On Catchment Demonstration Initiative (Cdi), Urs

Natural resources commissioned reports

In 2003 the Department of Agriculture and Food, Western Australia, developed a Catchment Demonstration Initiative (CDI) Project as a contribution to the National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality. Joint Commonwealth and State funding allocated $6 million towards a project aimed at demonstrating viable salinity management systems in the agricultural area of Western Australia. The CDI sought to deliver its outcomes in partnership with NRM Regions by co-investment in targeted, large-scaled, catchment-based demonstrations of integrated salinity management practices.

Submissions were invited from interested groups to provide proposals, and following an assessment process at the local, state/Commonwealth level against predetermined …

'The Edge Of The Island': Neighborhood Identity And Evolving Community In 'Liminal Places', Gordon Douglas

Faculty Publications, Urban and Regional Planning

This paper examines the contemporary processes at work in urban areas without clear spatial identities that are simultaneously facing the challenges of cultural change and gentrification. I do so through the close analysis of one such ‘liminal place’ on Chicago’s West Side. I use the phrase ‘a community on the edge of the island’ to describe the area, inspired by an interview subject who referred to the tenuous search for a sort of ideal bohemian hipness as the need to stay as “close to the edge of the island” as possible without actually leaving it. Making use of ethnographic and …

Exploring The Boundaries: Attitudinal Autonomy In Healthcare Interpreting, Maria A. Aguilar-Solano

Maria Aguilar-Solano

Patients who visit hospitals on the southern coast of Spain range from social immigrants such as tourists and EU expatriate residents to economic immigrants from less developed countries. Both groups have in common their lack of ability to communicate in Spanish. However, while for the first group qualified interpreters are easily accessed, for the second there is a lack of them. As a result, healthcare interpreters must deal with many different agents and an ever-changing social context as regards the power relations that are constantly emerging between doctors and patients. This divergence affects the way interpreters are perceived by healthcare …

Take Pride In America In Southern Nevada: Quarterly Progress Report, Period Covering April 5, 2010 – July 4, 2010, Margaret N. Rees

Anti-littering Programs

• With Board approval, the next phase of the Don’t Trash Nevada marketing campaign began.
• The Hector’s Helpers program with the Clark County School District began curriculum development.
• The team participated in the strategic planning process for Keep Las Vegas Beautiful.
• The team met with the Education Director of Keep America Beautiful to begin the process of developing a statewide program.
• The team continued to develop the GIS database.
• A total of 15 clean-up events were conducted this quarter.