Grant program seeks community engagement projects to support

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Have an idea for a community engagement project that links Virginia Commonwealth University and a community partner? VCU’s Council for Community Engagement wants to hear about it and may have some money to support the project.

Each May, the council awards several one-year seed grants of up to $20,000 to support interdisciplinary university-community programs. The grants, made possible by the offices of the provost and the vice president for health sciences, are meant to support partnerships with the community and also to contribute to community-engaged research, teaching and outreach.

“We are committed to advancing community engagement at VCU,” said Catherine Howard, Ph.D., vice provost of the Division of Community Engagement. “And we are seeing evidence that many of these partnerships go on to become self-sustaining.”

Since the program’s launch in 2007, more than $800,000 in seed grant money has been awarded to support 57 projects.

This year, the council will also award community-engaged research partnership development grants of up to $10,000 to support new or potential university-community partnerships that lay the groundwork for drafting a community-engaged research proposal.

Recipients for both awards will be selected from a pool of applicants from both campuses. There is still time to be considered for the next round of awards. This year’s application deadline is midnight on Feb. 20. An information session will be held on Jan. 15 from noon to 1 p.m. in the Larrick Student Center, Church Hill Board Room. This session will provide information to assist in interpreting the guidelines, to assess the feasibility and merit of project ideas and to address technical issues associated with the application process.

Here’s a sample of some of the successful projects funded through the years that continue to thrive today:

Community Health and Wellness Program for Older Adults is a partnership among the Schools of Nursing, Pharmacy, Medicine and Social Work and the Dominion Place Apartments to conduct a brief intervention focused on diabetes and hypertension to address the wellness and chronic disease management of community elders. The program received a grant in 2012 and continues to support the health and wellness of seniors in the community.

“The Community Engagement Grant strengthened our opportunity to garner more extensive funding in two ways. First, by demonstrating internal university support for the concept and secondly, by demonstrating that the program had actually already moved from concept to practical implementation,” said Pamela Parsons, Ph.D., associate professor of family and community health and primary investigator.

Health Sciences Academy is a collaboration of the Division of Health Sciences Diversity, Kinesiology and Health Sciences, and the Division of Community Engagement. The academy helps high school students make informed choices about the health professions they wish to pursue while providing resources to pursue their chosen careers. 

The program offers a health sciences exploration course to high school students attending Cosby High School Health Sciences Specialty CenterJohn Marshall High School and Richmond Community High School. The course includes interactive lectures from health care workers, a mentoring program with VCU undergraduates and field trips to the Monroe Park and MCV campuses.

More than 25 percent of the graduates who complete the course choose to attend VCU for their undergraduate studies. Participants also report that the curriculum has a dramatic impact on their career choices and makes them feel prepared for the academic rigor of the college experience.

The project received grants in 2007 and 2008.

“The monetary awards provided the seed money to start the project, but even more importantly the awards acknowledged the significance of the Health Sciences Academy, giving us the ability to sustain and grow the project over the past seven years,” said primary investigator Seth Leibowitz, Ed.D., executive director of health sciences programs and advising. “Our budget for the project now is in excess of $200,000 and it is great to see how Health Sciences Academy has grown from a small startup.”  

Middle of Broad + Storefront = mOb+s isa collaboration of the School of the Arts, nonprofit partner Storefront for Community Design, and the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs. The partnership received a grant in 2012 to empower traditionally marginalized residents, entrepreneurs and communities in the City of Richmond to participate fully in the design and development of their communities through increased access to design services, resources and education through both service-oriented design internships and participation in the MoB Experimental Design Studio. mOb+s received a VCU Quest Innovation Grant in 2013-14 and has been recognized regionally and nationally.

“Community Engagement Grant funds gave our partnership the leverage we needed to pilot mOb+Storefront,” said primary investigator Kristin Caskey, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Fashion Design and Merchandising.“This partnership has put students into direct meaningful community service with 15,120 hours served in the first two years and over $96,865 worth of design work generated for our community in our first three semesters and we are still going strong!”

CMoR Learning: Developing Interdisciplinary Partnerships for an Inclusive Learning Community isa partnership between the Department of Occupational Therapy, School of Education and Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU. The program received a grant in 2012 to allow faculty and students to work with Children’s Museum of Richmond staff in assessing and adapting the physical and learning environment of the museum, developing collaborative training to support the engagement of young children with disabilities and their families, and marketing to the community.

“The Department of Occupational Therapy has continued to partner with the Children's Museum of Richmond,” said Carole K. Ivey, Ph.D., assistant professor, Department of Occupational Therapy and primary investigator. “We continue to work on the specific focus of the CMoR learning grant — adapting the museum to be a more inclusive environment for all children. We have also expanded this focus to developing a living laboratory research space in the museum, where we are conducting research at the museum.”

Open Minds is a collaboration of the Departments of English, Religious Studies, Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies in the College of Humanities and Sciences and the Richmond City Sheriff's Office, which received a grant in 2011 that enables VCU students and prisoners to learn from each other in service-learning courses. By incorporating critical reflection about crime and incarceration into the coursework, Open Minds collapses the distinction between who serves and who is served: All participants serve one another by sharing their unique and diverse struggles and insights about life.

"The grant from the division helped transform my previous solo effort teaching life writing at the jail into a collective movement to mobilize the humanities for the cause of social change,” said David Coogan, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of English and primary investigator for the project.

Documentary on Down Syndrome: To enhance their quality of life, people with Down syndrome, as well as their family members and service providers, must have access to up-to-date information as well as health care and educational programs. This collaborative project will develop a documentary that will illustrate the spectrum of abilities seen in people with Down syndrome and provide answers to questions regarding their needs and aspirations for a diverse group of community members, including parents, service providers, and VCU trainees who will be future leaders in service fields.

For more information, contact Tessa McKenzie at tcmckenzie@vcu.edu or (804) 827-2187 or visit http://community.vcu.edu/about-us/council-for-community-engagement/cce-grants/.

 

Feature photo at top: Nurse practitioner and pharmacy students work with a resident of Dominion Place. Photo provided by Sierra Alewine.

 

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