Students, faculty and their community partners have received Engaged Cornell research grants to study education, inequality and equity, and community health and sustainability in New York state and international settings.
Four teams – including nine faculty members and two extension associates from seven academic departments and eleven community partners – will use Undergraduate Engaged Research Grants to involve undergraduates in hands-on community-engaged research.
The following projects received funding:
- STEM Programs in Underserved Communities aims to understand how informal science institutions – such as science centers and museums – can foster equity, diversity and inclusion. The undergraduates will join an existing team of 15 community researchers representing underserved communities across the U.S. conducting community-based participatory research.
- Community Health in Coastal Ecuador is a 10-week intensive research and cultural immersion summer experience where students and faculty collaborate with local partners to conduct research in nutrition, technology, and maternal and child health at the Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral.
- Empowering Coffee Farmers to Understand Their Production Costsis a project in which undergraduate information science students are designing an online tool to help smallholder coffee farmers and cooperatives in Latin America calculate their full production costs – from preparing the land to drying the beans.
- Inequality Research Internship Partnership is a collaboration with the Social Science Research Council in Brooklyn, New York. During the summer, two student research interns gain in-depth knowledge of inequality and poverty in America and improve their ability to communicate research to the general public.
Three projects received Grants for Faculty Research on Engagement to examine the ways community-engaged teaching and research influence behavior, learning, quality of life, social identity, participation in society and other topics that are important to educators and to society in general.
Funded projects are:
- Sustainable Living in the Peruvian Amazon investigates the impact of Conservación de la Naturaleza Amazonica del Peru, A.C., a nonprofit dedicated to promoting conservation and social development through education in the rainforest of Loreto.
- Transforming Upstate New York From Rust to Green evaluates the impact of a university-community partnership to strengthen community resiliency and sustainability in New York state’s Rust Belt.
- Engagement through MOOCs has researchers assessing the outcomes of community partnerships that are part of massive open online courses.
Find more information about each project on the Engaged Cornell website.
Ashlee McGandy is the content strategist in the Office of Engagement Initiatives.
This story also appeared in the Cornell Chronicle.
