Community-Engaged Scholars
This listing serves as an introduction to community-engaged scholars at UNC Greensboro including new faculty who have strong records of or potential for cross-disciplinary community-engaged scholarship. To learn more about the specific community engagement activities UNC Greensboro faculty are involved in, visit Collaboratory. To have your name and scholarship included or your description updated, please email communityengagement@uncg.edu. In addition, view our listing of network leaders who connect and/or convene scholars for inter/cross-disciplinary scholarship to provide university-wide support for community-engaged scholarship.
Janet Allard, Theatre
Janet and UNCG theatre students conducted a Young Playwrights workshop at Caldcleugh, as part of UNCG’s Community Arts Collaborative Arts After School program with the theatre students performing the children’s original plays. Janet’s partners included the Greensboro Boys and Girls Club, City Arts, and Greensboro Parks and Recreation.
Matthew Barr, Media Studies
Since 2016 Barr has presented ‘Union Time’ at the headquarters of the National Labor Relations Board in Washington, D.C., universities including Cornell University and UCLA, organized labor conferences, festivals, and churches. In September the film will be shown at the Japanese Labor Film Festival in Tokyo, its first international venue. Thanks to a $5,000 grant from the Faculty First Summer Scholarship Award, a shorter version of ‘Union Time’ is now complete and ready for educational distribution. Barr is now in the early stages of his next oral history/documentary project, ‘Unsung Heroes: Stories of unknown civil rights activists’.
Janet Boseovski, Psychology
Janet has interests in developmental psychology, social cognition in early to late childhood, trait attributions, and children’s acquisition of knowledge from other people. She has partnered with Greensboro Downtown Parks/LeBauer Park for “Crafts and Conversation” where children can engage in developmentally appropriate crafts while parents learn about development such as language, social skills, or challenges that other kids are facing.
View Janet’s Collaboratory profile
Allison Bramwell, Political Science
Allison’s current research focuses on collaborative urban governance and the political economy of restructuring with an emphasis on economic transformation in mid-sized cities. Other recent work includes local labour market planning and workforce development, the role of colleges and universities in regional economic development, and the social dynamics of economic performance in urban regions. As an expert on community economic development with a particular focus on inclusive innovation in mid-sized cities, she is helping Greensboro’s InnovateNC develop its strategic direction and policy ideas.
Jeremy Bray, Economics
Jeremy’s research focuses on two primary areas of interest: the economics of substance abuse and the economic evaluation of behavioral health interventions. In his work on the economics of substance abuse, he has examined the labor market effects of substance use, abuse, and dependence and has studied the role of prices and taxes in consumers’ choices regarding alcohol, tobacco, and drug use. He was the project director of the national, cross-site evaluation of the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment’s (CSAT) Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) grant program. He was Principal Investigator of the Data and Methodological Coordinating Center for the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development’s Work, Family, and Health Network.
Rachel Briley, Theatre
Rachel is drawn to work in the drama classroom that explores social inequities and inspires students to become more actively involved in their communities. Rachel was a member of the 2006 Leadership Greensboro class where she assisted in the development of the Guilford Education Alliance’s first Education Leadership Academy. She is the head of the M.F.A. program in Theatre for Youth and the Artistic Director of the North Carolina Theatre for Young People.
View Rachel’s Collaboratory profile
Erick Byrd, Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Hospitality and Tourism
Erick’s research interests include agritourism, wine tourism and tourism stakeholder understanding and participation. He has a special interest in rural tourism. His research and partnerships have included undergraduate and graduate students, the City of Greensboro Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, and the North Carolina Department of Commerce.
Nadja Cech, Chemistry and Biochemistry
Nadja searches for new treatments for infection from natural sources. Her research is aimed at understanding how alternative therapies (primarily plant based medicines) can be used for combating conditions such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). She has partnered externally with farmers across the state of North Carolina and Appalachia, as well as small businesses and other universities to help increase understanding about alternative medicines. Her work has garnered significant external funding, and has brought small farmers into important conversations about the future of alternative medicine.
Jewell Cooper, Academic Affairs and Student Services, School of Education
Jewell currently serves as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Student Services, and is a Professor in the school of Education. Jewell’s community-based engagement has involved coordinating a professional development school partnership with Guilford County Schools’ Ben L. Smith High School (where over 40 languages are spoken and approximately 80 countries are represented) and the UNCG School of Education. She is also lead principal investigator on the Real-World English grant (CDLC project) where UNCG faculty, graduate students, preservice teachers, and Guilford County Schools’ teachers and administrators work with immigrant parents who desire to learn to read and write in English.
Donna Duffy, Kinesiology
In addition to her faculty responsibilities, Donna is the Program Director for the Program for the Advancement of Girls and Women in Sport and Physical Activity, which is housed in the Center for Women’s Health and Wellness at UNCG. Her efforts are dedicated to conducting collaborative and interdisciplinary evidence-based scholarship to inform our educational programming, and community based service in issues related to girls and women in physical pursuits and to gender issues both historically and currently.
Matt Fisher, School of Education, Self-Design Studio
The SELF Design Studio is a teacher education STEM studio located in the School of Education. The SELF Design Studio offers opportunities for in-service and pre-service teachers to utilize a variety of emerging technologies and tools including 3D printers, robotics, art supplies, and circuitry kits.
Melissa Floyd-Pickard, Social Work
Melissa’s scholarship focuses on practice with people who have serious mental illness; issues in family substance abuse recovery, innovative alternatives to involuntary treatment, and professional dissonance in social work practice. She, along with other Social Work colleagues, has a deeply collaborative partnership with the Peacehaven Farm, a sustainable farm located on 89 beautiful acres of organic gardens, rolling pastures, and lush woodlands that connects people with special needs to their community.
View Melissa’s Collaboratory profile
Laurie Wideman Gold, Kinesiology
Laurie’s scholarship in community-based prevention programs has led her to partner with health providers. Recently, she collaborated with colleagues to develop the Heart of Hypertension Project in which they developed a community-based prevention program for young African-American men.
David Gwynn, University Libraries
David is digitization coordinator for the University Libraries and is responsible for developing the library’s collections of digitized historical materials. He works with local community groups and individuals along with libraries, museums, and archives to make historical documents, photographs, publications, and other materials avilable to the public.David is currently working with library faculty and community groups on projects including PRIDE! of the Community, documenting the Triad’s LGBTQ+ community, Well Crafted NC, documenting the history of brewing in the Triad, and People Not Property, an NHPRC-funded initiative to digitize documents related to enslaved people in North Carolina. David is also chair of TriadHistory.org, a collaborative local history web portal connected digital collections around the region.
View David’s Collaboratory profile
Lauren Haldeman, Nutrition
Lauren works closely with UNCG’s Center for New North Carolinians and community agencies to develop and offer theory-based interventions and resources to a wide array of communities to address dietary behaviors. Having assessed the effects of health beliefs, barriers, food insecurity, and psychosocial issues on nutrition, Lauren designs targeted nutrition education interventions and materials for Latinos and African Americans in the Piedmont Triad, and is working to assess the impact of programs such as the School Breakfast Program.
Justin Harmon, Community and Therapeutic Recreation
Justin Harmon’s research includes a focus on health and aging, specifically in regards to the use of leisure for coping and identity maintenance for people with serious and terminal diseases, and the use of music for affecting quality of life and life course development. He has a hiking program for people with cancer and survivors called Celebrate the Trail to Recovery, and a drumming clinic for the same population called Restorative Rhythms. He works closely with oncologists and clinical social workers at the Cone Health Cancer Center and staff at the Hirsch Wellness Network (a local nonprofit arts-based cancer support group) to meet the needs of those diagnosed with cancer. Harmon also explores concepts of community development, including how municipalities provide support and allocate resources to their diverse citizenry. In these initiatives he works with the Greensboro Parks and Recreation Department and the Homeless Union of Greensboro.
View Justin’s Collaboratory profile
George Hancock, SERVE Center
George directs the National Center for Homeless Education and is the Executive Director of UNCG’s SERVE Center. In this capacity, he works in the areas of training, technical assistance, document development, webinars, inter-organizational collaboration, and policy review. With funding provided by the US Department of Education, NCHE provides information to schools and universities all over the country on how to identify homeless students, increase enrollment, and keep students from falling behind in their classes. He has been a teacher, a principal, state coordinator for School Improvement Grants (SIG), a Title I program administrator, and brings knowledge of educational policy and implementation to help educational systems.
Ye He, Teacher Education and Higher Education
Using a strengths-based approach, my research bridges local engagement and internationalization in education through programs serving diverse language communities and involving participants from diverse linguistic and cultural (DLC) backgrounds. Specifically, my recent research efforts focus on the application of the appreciative education framework in exploring teacher development in and for DLC communities; community-based heritage language and English language programs; international students’ strengths and transition; and teacher intercultural competency development.
View Ye’s Collaboratory profile
Michael Hemphill, Kinesiology
Michael is interested in positive youth development through sports. His research considers pedagogical approaches to youth development in sports settings and leadership development among youth. He collaborates with non-profit sport-based youth development programs to assist in program design, evaluation, and fundraising. He previously worked with several school and youth programs in Charleston, South Carolina and is seeking to establish new partnerships in the Greensboro community.
View Michael’s Collaboratory profile
Daniel Herr, Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering (JSNN)
JSNN continues to create, evolve, and nurture a synergistic research and educational environment, with high value opportunities for Nanoscience graduate students, faculty, visiting researchers, research staff, undergraduate interns, and members of our UNCG, NCAT, and local community. JSNN’s faculty and staff have worked with Guilford County middle schools on their Student Spaceflight Experiment Project, have received grants to support the ten week SRC Education Alliance Undergraduate Research Opportunity summer internship program, and has hosted a NC Science Festival to introduce Guilford County students and their families to Nanotechnology.
View Daniel’s Collaboratory profile
Travis Hicks, Center for Community-Engaged Design, Interior Architecture
Travis is the director for the Center for Community-Engaged Design (CC-ED). CC-ED conducts community outreach to extend the teaching environment and encourage students to be civic-minded and committed to creating socially relevant and engaged design for the public good.
View Travis’ Collaboratory profile
Jennifer Hill, Anthropology
Jennifer is the Co-Principal Investigator and Program Manager for the Recipe for Success program. She was part of the team that began the NCHHS/USDA SNAP – Ed program in the Triad, NC area in 2005. In the past ten years, Jennifer has expanded the program from Guilford county NC to Rockingham and Randolph counties. She also leads the adult education services focusing on eating for best health while on a tight budget, and accommodating different cultural and dietary needs.
David Holley, School of Music
David is the Director of Opera at UNCG and Artistic Director of Greensboro Opera. One of the primary missions of the UNCG Opera Theatre is outreach to the community, and in particular, educating children about opera. Activities include on-campus matinee performances and an annual tour to elementary schools; the latter has trained many singers who have gone on to year-round Young Artist Programs. The UNCG Opera Theatre annually introduces over 18,000 school children to the wonderful world of opera.
Channelle James, Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Hospitality and Tourism
Channelle has deep experience engaging students with communities through service-learning courses. Of special note, she has taught student teams working with guests of the Interactive Resource Center to create plans for personal empowerment through establishing their own businesses and applying for microloans. Currently she is working with vendors of the Grove Street Farmers Market in Glenwood.
View Channelle’s Collaboratory profile
Spoma Jovanovic, Communication Studies
Spoma has served numerous roles to support community-engaged scholarship among her students and colleagues. In the community, her community-engaged scholarship has served to change guidelines for bus bench design to allow for artistic installations that reflect the city’s identity and values (with Dudley High School & Action Greensboro’s synerG); change in policy for city bus shelter and bench guidelines that now allow for unrestricted placement on city-owned property (with Dudley High School); to launch city Participatory Budgeting process (with PB GSO and Fund for Democratic Communities); and to change policy at Center City Park to allow for political speech (with Reclaiming Democracy faculty team).
View Spoma’s Collaboratory profile
Judy Kinney, Community and Therapeutic Recreation
Judy’s research interests include pediatric pain management, the impact of disability and hospitalization on child development, program evaluation, and violence prevention in schools. She has engaged with the community in a variety of settings, including Behavioral Health inpatient and community based programs, inpatient Pediatric Rehabilitation, and a residential facility working with individuals with intellectual disabilities.
View Judy’s Collaboratory profile
Stephanie Kurtts, Specialized Education Services
Stephanie collaborates with colleagues on program initiatives related to inclusive practice between special and general education teacher preparation programs, as well as community agencies that serve individuals with disabilities. Her research interests include collaborative practice for inclusive education, Universal Design for Learning (UDL), service-learning for community engagement, and teacher education for special education.
View Stephanie’s Collaboratory profile
Carl Lashley, Educational Leadership and Cultural Foundations
Carl’s primary intellectual and advocacy interests in educational equity, justice, and community come from his career long concerns about poverty, equitable opportunity for all children, and the power of schooling as a mode of social change. He currently serves as the Co-Director of the Moss Street Partnership School, a collaboration between UNC Greensboro and Rockingham County Schools, and he is the Co-Principal Investigator for PPEERS, a principal preparation collaborative that serves ten rural school districts in central North Carolina.
View Carl’s Collaboratory profile
Erin Lawrimore, University Libraries
Erin uses her knowledge of archival theory and practice to help community groups and small business owners manage their historical records and preserve their stories. One example of this work is Well Crafted NC, a project focused on documenting the history of beer and brewing in North Carolina. Well Crafted NC combines oral history interviews with leaders in the craft beer industry, digital records from brewers and breweries across the state, and historical research. Ultimately, Well Crafted NC allows the public to learn about this important industry while also allowing those in the industry to more effectively use their individual and collective histories to tell the story of NC beer.
View Erin’s Collaboratory profile
Jocelyn Smith Lee, Human Development and Family Studies
My program of research aims to enhance the health, development, and family relationships of Black boys and men. In particular, my research focuses on the health disparity of homicide and works to understand how race, gender, and socioeconomic status intersect to create unique contexts of vulnerability to violence and traumatic loss, but also unique opportunities for growth and healing. I take a community-engaged approach to this work.
Marianne LeGreco, Communication Studies
Marianne’s scholarship focuses on health and organizational communication, food policy, community engagement, and discourse analysis. She has partnered with a number of community organizations and schools to address healthy eating practices and food programs. She received special recognition from Warnersville Community Coalition for her community engagement.
Noah Lenstra, Library and Information Studies
Noah’s research focuses on how public libraries adapt their services through community engagement. He has partnered with several public libraries in the US and in Canada to support, understand, and enhance their efforts to increase healthy physical activity in the diverse communities they serve.
View Noah’s Collaboratory profile
Barbara Levin, Teacher Education and Higher Education
Barbara is part of a collaboration between the Coalition for Diversity in Language and Culture, Allen Middle School, and the ESOL Department of Guilford County Schools, and many UNCG faculty, staff, and students called Real World English. RWE offers free classes to ESL adults and STEAM activities for school-age children. Barbara has research interests in teacher education, elementary education, teacher development, teacher beliefs, integrating technology into K-12 curriculum, problem-based learning, case-based learning, and teacher leadership.
Kristine Lundgren, Communication Sciences and Disorders
Kristine’s community-engaged scholarship is concerned with issues of traumatic brain injury in survivors of intimate partner violence. In collaboration with an interdisciplinary group of faculty and students at UNCG, Kristine has focused on increasing awareness of this issue and is in the process of developing an at risk screening tool that can be used in the community.
View Kristine’s Collaboratory profile
Rebecca MacLeod, School of Music
Rebecca has established partnerships with the Greensboro Symphony and Peck Elementary School to provide music education to diverse populations that typically do not have access to music education. She helped to establish the Lillian Rauch Beginning Strings Program, which provides free violin and cello instruction to students attending Peck Elementary School, as well as the new Peck Alumni Leadership Program to help students continue their studies and practice through high school.
View Rebecca’s Collaboratory profile
Anna Marshall-Baker, Interior Architecture
Through her role as chair of the Interior Architecture department, Anna has supported the department’s efforts towards increasing opportunities for students and faculty to engage with communities through teaching and research. IARc community-engaged research reaches audiences beyond academic peers, emerges from a process of creative collaboration, and culminates in products such as a built environment, neighborhood plan, website, or exhibition — an application of scholarship meeting contemporary community needs.
Tom Martinek, Kinesiology
Tom’s community engagement includes: 1. Community Youth Sport Development provides students in both undergraduate and graduate programs with service learning opportunities by working with children from local community programs and schools and international youth serving agencies. 2. Project Effort is centered around elementary and middle school sports clubs. Graduate and undergraduate students work one-on-one with club members on goal setting at the schools. Project Effort also includes teacher and parent involvement through in-services and Parent Nights. 3. Middle College at UNCG involves multiple faculty and staff from a variety of departments, focuses on health and medical careers as well as youth development, and students can earn up to two years’ college credit.
View Tom’s Collaboratory profile
Cristina Moreira, Biology
Cristina partners with the American Association of University Women (AAUW) for a STEM career conference to attract girls in sixth through ninth grades to these fields. The AAUW Tech Savvy program also includes an important parent program that encourages families to reinforce girls’ interest in future education and careers in STEM. Through this partnership, Cristina has also helped to bring a AAUW to campus to facilitate a workshop that addresses the gender pay gap and teaches negotiation skills.
View Cristina’s Collaboratory profile
Sharon Morrison, Public Health Education
The focus of Sharon’s community-engaged teaching, research and scholarship is refugee and immigrant health and health education outcomes. This work involves collaboration with interdisciplinary colleagues and students, and diverse community stakeholders, and is grounded in community-based participatory action research (CBPR) and service-learning principles. The goals are to respect and support community agendas, enhance community capacity for health and wellness, and facilitate equitable research collaborations between academic institutions and communities. CBPR projects include the Montagnard Hypertension Project; the Montagnard Population Count Project; Bhutanese Maternal Health and Chronic Disease Education, the Community Advisory Council for the Montagnard/SEA Community Disparities Research Network, and the UMOJA group for refugee women.
View Sharon’s Collaboratory profile
Art Murphy, Anthropology
Recipe for Success in collaboration with public and private entities in North Carolina provides direct and indirect nutrition and obesity prevention education to individuals and households who are either SNAP recipients or SNAP eligible. There are three primary target audiences: 1) Individuals over the age of 18 from a variety of socio-economic groups who participate in programs hosted by mental health associations, veteran’s associations, faith-based organizations, etc., 2) Children under age 18 who attend Title 1 schools and their associated after school and summer recreational programs, and 3) households with children under the age of 18 through 8.
Christine Murray, Center for Youth, Family, and Community Partnerships
Christine’s community-engaged scholarship centers around promoting healthy relationships and the prevention and response to intimate partner violence and other forms of abuse and interpersonal violence.
View Christine’s Collaboratory profile
Tracy Nichols, Public Health Education
My primary interests focus on understanding (a) health-promoting relationships within family and community settings and (b) the evaluation and refinement of gender-appropriate and transformative interventions. I pursue these interests through reproductive justice issues. For the past eight years I have been working with my community partner, the YWCA, to evaluate and revise their doula and childbirth education programs for adolescent mothers and for mothers in treatment for addictions. I am also concluding a 5-year study on perinatal substance use service provision in Guilford County.
Nicholas Oberlies, Chemistry and Biochemistry
The Oberlies Research Group studies bioactive compounds from nature, largely from the viewpoint of natural products chemistry. We isolate and characterize bioactive compounds from fungi, bacteria, and plants, every single day. All of our projects take a team oriented approach, collaborating with scientists in diverse disciplines, including pharmacology, virology, ecology, and metabolism, to name only a few, such that we are focused on revealing the biological potential of compounds from nature.
Christina O’Connor, Teachers Academy
Christina’s interests are in collaborative work with schools and school districts to simultaneously improve educator preparation and educational outcomes for P-12 students. Her recent work includes two Teacher Quality Partnership grants in partnership with Guilford County Schools and Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools. The current grant, Transforming Teaching through Technology, is developing a transformational model for teacher preparation in which candidates, alongside university and school-based faculty, integrate existing and emerging technologies into P-12 instruction to ensure that students have the knowledge and skills to become lifelong learners and productive workers in the 21st century. Academic coursework, field experiences, hands-on activities in “makerspaces,” and summer technology camps led by pre-service candidates, faculty and teachers support the integration of technology in teaching and learning in all subject areas.
Sheryl Oring, Art
Sheryl’s work examines critical social issues through projects that incorporate old and new media to tell stories, examine public opinion and foster open exchange. Using tools typically employed by journalists – the camera, the typewriter, the pen, the interview and the archive – she builds on experience in her former profession to create installations, performances, artist books and Internet-based works. Her work has been shown at the 01SJ Biennial; Bryant Park in Manhattan; the Jewish Museum Berlin; and the McCormick Freedom Museum in Chicago. She has also presented work at Art in Odd Places in New York; the Art Prospect festival in St. Petersburg, Russia; and Encuentro in Sao Paolo, Brazil. She is presently working on a public art commission at the San Diego airport.
Mila Parrish, Dance
Triad area students are invited to join UNCG’s exciting dance community. Young dance artists ages 3-16 take dance classes focusing on dance technique, improvisation, choreography, and performance. Dancers Connect unites interested students with expert dance educators to support collaboration and creativity, without cost constraints. Dancers Connect serves both the community and the pre-service dance education students as they grow as teachers and future leaders in dance. Volunteers include graduate and undergraduate students plus high school students. Parrish currently has Dancers Connect satellite programs running at The University of South Carolina and The College of Charleston.
Anne Parsons, History
As a public historian, I work to create community learning spaces and dialogues about the history of incarceration. I am working on a book manuscript From Asylum to Prison: Deinstitutionalization and the Rise of Prisons, which will come out in Spring 2018 and I will then curate a traveling exhibition with the National Library of Medicine on the themes of the book. I am currently working with students to bring the exhibition States of Incarceration to the International Civil Rights Center and Museum. We are also organizing an Open Mic Night, a Mass Story Lab, and guided tours with formerly incarcerated individuals.
View Anne’s Collaboratory profile
Chris Payne, Center for Youth, Family, and Community Partnerships
Chris directs the Center for Youth and Family Community Partnerships. Center initiatives focus on school-based prevention and intervention programs; childhood mental health and positive youth development; family strengthening; juvenile justice, court interventions and community safety; community health; system of care and cultural competency; and workforce development to advance educational success, health and well-being.
Fran Pearson, Social Work
The Congregational Social Work Education Initiative (CSWEI) and the Partnership to Address Co-Occurring Disorders in Vulnerable Populations are two projects funded by the Cone Health Foundation that have engaged social work students with nurses in the Congregational Nurse Program (CNP) here in Greensboro. Graduate and undergraduate students engage with nurses in community based services that are free to recipients. Services include screening, assessment, brief clinical intervention, case coordination, referral, and health literacy education. Services are shaped according to the needs identified by the participants. The programs have been recognized nationally and internationally as unique, interdisciplinary approaches to community-based integrated care.
Maryanne Perrin, Nutrition
My research is focused on the safe and equitable provisioning of expressed human milk through donor milk banking and peer-to-peer milk sharing. This research supports action item #12 in the Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Promote Breastfeeding which calls for addressing obstacles to the provisioning of safe donor milk. Current projects include a bacteriological and nutrient analysis of expressed human milk exchanged through a variety of non-compensated community models; an analysis of antimicrobial activity of fortified, pasteurized donor human milk during extended refrigerator storage; and a study of brain-related nutrients in the expressed milk of vegetarian and vegan women.
View Maryanne’s Collaboratory profile
Lisa Phillips, NC Homeless Education Program (NCHEP), SERVE and Office of Research and Engagement
Lisa is the State Coordinator for the NC Homeless Education Program which is the Education for Homeless Children and Youths Program for the state of North Carolina. In January 2009, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction contracted with The SERVE Center at University to oversee the program. The NCHEP ensures that all children and youth experiencing homelessness in the state have access to the public education to which they are entitled under the federal McKinney-Vento Act. Additionally, Lisa oversees the monitoring, data collection, and the distribution of subgrant funding for school districts. Lisa has been a trainer for at risk populations, a parent liaison, school social worker, principal, business owner, and is an alumna of UNC Greensboro.
Stephanie Pickett, Adult Health Nursing
My overall program of research focuses on reduction of hypertension-related risk factors among African Americans women. My current research focuses on understanding psychosocial factors that influence weight management such as weight beliefs, perceived stress, emotions, and eating behaviors.
Jay Poole, Social Work
The Congregational Social Work Education Initiative (CSWEI) and the Partnership to Address Co-Occurring Disorders in Vulnerable Populations are two projects funded by the Cone Health Foundation that have engaged social work students with nurses in the Congregational Nurse Program (CNP) here in Greensboro. Graduate and undergraduate students engage with nurses in community based services that are free to recipients. Services include screening, assessment, brief clinical intervention, case coordination, referral, and health literacy education. Services are shaped according to the needs identified by the participants. The programs have been recognized nationally and internationally as unique, interdisciplinary approaches to community-based integrated care.
View Jay’s Collaboratory profile
Jennifer Reis, Arts Administration
Jennifer engages with artists, artisans, and creatives in Central Appalachia with educational programming to help them survive and thrive in for-profit and non-profit marketplaces. Informed by her work as an artist, entrepreneur, and educator, her research and curriculum development focus on entrepreneurship and small business development trainings for adult learners that positively impact their artistic venture growth and sustainability. She is a trained facilitator for programs such as the AIR Institute of Berea College, Etsy’s Craft Entrepreneurship Program, Kauffman Foundation’s FastTrac Program, and consults for community development, trade and cultural organizations including the Kentucky Arts Council, Mountain Association for Community Economic Development, and the Association for Creative Industries.
She is currently working with The Reynolds Homestead in Critz, Virginia., on a series of workshops called “Art to Market” which will manifest in an ecommerce website and a winter art sale to assist with the launch of “Patrick County Proud”, an economic development effort.
Daniel Rhodes, Social Work
Daniel’s scholarship focuses on community mental health, immigrant and refugee populations, conflict resolution, restorative justice, peace and social justice issues, Engaged Buddhism, ecopsychology, international social work and social development.
Jeremy Rinker, Peace and Conflict Studies
Jeremy researches the intersections between narrative, violent conflict, and nonviolent conflict transformation. His community engaged focus has involved working with restorative justice and issues of reconciliation after lasting legacies of trauma. As a conflict transformation practitioner, Jeremy has mediated and facilitated discussion about marginalization and conflict in the United States and abroad. As a proponent of community-based participant action research, Jeremy has worked with refugee and immigrant communities, past offenders, and other disadvantaged groups to build resilience and transform their situation.
Pamela Johnson Rowsey, Adult Health Nursing
Pamela became Chair for the Department of Adult Health Nursing in August 2016. She is a basic scientist and her program of research has addressed the role of inflammatory cytokines and their link to fever and the capacity of exercise to induce an inflammatory response and/or change in thermoregulatory set-point (fever) that serves to protect the host. Her career as a basic scientist has provided opportunities to learn different aspects of the scientific process and reinforced her desire to use her knowledge and skills to translate into clinical practice and understanding factors that might contribute to Black Americans diagnosed with chronic illnesses disproportionately dying of the disease compared to White Americans. Compared to White Americans, Black Americans live sicker and die younger. Her desire is to engage community members, organization leaders and researchers in a community-based participatory research partnership to investigate the role of stress and inflammatory markers in chronic disease progression in Black Americans.
Diane Ryndak, Specialized Education Services
Diane’s work focuses on teacher and doctoral level preparation, with a focus on collaborative teams meeting the complex needs of students with significant intellectual and other disabilities through the use of evidence-based practices that result in access to general education curriculum and contexts. Additionally, she works with school districts to facilitate sustainable systemic reform and multi-tiered systems of support to improve outcomes for all students. She has completed Fulbright Research related to inclusive education in Poland, where she continues to work with colleagues at universities and in the schools.
Caitlyn Schrader, College of Visual and Performing Arts
Caitlyn is the Director of Greensboro Project Space, a contemporary art center at UNC Greensboro, and Director for Community Engagement for the College of Visual and Performing Arts where she supports community-engaged projects and advances partnerships between the college and the community.
Stuart Schleien, Community and Therapeutic Recreation
Stuart is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Community & Therapeutic Recreation and an Executive Director, along with Ms. Ginger Walton, of InFocus. InFocus is an organization that empowers marginalized individuals through skill development and engages the community through advocacy efforts to create more welcoming, accessible, and inclusive communities. He has developed best practices that have helped parents and professionals design inclusive recreation, physical activity, friendship, and volunteer programs for children and adults with diverse skills and abilities.
View Stuart’s Collaboratory profile
Sandra Shultz, Kinesiology
Sandra is core leadership team member of Lifetime Eating and Physical Activity Practices (LEAP), an initiative that aims to improve the eating and physical activity practices of individuals and families in Guilford County. Sandra’s research interests stemmed from her clinical practice as a certified athletic trainer and has focused on the underlying factors that increase a female’s susceptibility to ACL injury during physical activity.
Mark Schulz, Public Health Education
My community-engaged scholarship is concerned with issues of bicycling and pedestrian safety and access. I have engaged in evaluation of programs aimed at extending access to safe bicycling. I work to link data on bicycling and pedestrian deaths to advocacy efforts to improve bike-ped safety and break down barriers to bicycling and walking.
Sudha Shreeniwas, Human Development and Family Studies
Sudha’s community engagement includes: 1. ARTmail for Alzheimer’s: Partnership with Creative Aging Network NC, funded by the NEA. CAN-NC designs and delivers a participatory creative visual art program for seniors with memory symptoms; seniors participate; and UNCG (ie Sudha, HHS methods expert Jeff Labban, and student team) evaluates the program, using mixed methods. 2. The Montagnard Hypertension Research Project: Partnership of UNCG, Guilford College, NC A&T, and members of the Montagnard refugee community in Greensboro. This project was requested by community leaders, and examines hypertension in this group that has experienced disruption of life and chronic stress. We use multiple methods (survey and qualitative). Sudha was awarded the 2018 Applied Gerontology Award from the Southern Gerontological Societey based on her community engaged activities.
View Sudha’s Collaboratory profile
Lenka Shriver, Nutrition
Lenka’s research expertise is in the area of childhood nutrition and obesity, with particular focus on associations between parenting characteristics (i.e., feeding practices, parenting and feeding styles) and children’s obesity-related outcomes (i.e., dietary intake, weight status, body esteem). Since joining the UNCG faculty, she has established close collaborations with Dr. Cheryl Buehler (Human Development and Family Science) to identify parenting feeding practices that are associated with greater fruit and vegetable intake and lower obesity risk among 2-5 year-old children. They have been closely collaborating with the Guilford County Child Development program and the Head Start program in Guilford county for the past 3 years.
Stephen Sills, Center for Housing and Community Studies (CHCS), and Sociology
CHCS is a university-based research, evaluation, and technical assistance center. We are actively engaged in community-engaged research on fair housing, continuum of care for the homeless, housing market trends and market segmentations studies, county and regional community planning, and studies of the impact of housing on health. We have developed several innovative approaches to data-driven policy and planning including a GIS-based health-surveillance system to drive health education interventions for environmentally-linked asthma, a process for conducting city-wide parcel-level assessments of housing stock, and a model for housing market-segmentation that accounts for social, economic, and structural predictors of neighborhood stability.
Julia Mendez Smith, Psychology
Julia’s work involves partnerships with local schools to promote parent engagement and children’s early school success, particularly for low-income, ethnically diverse children. She is interested in early care and education access and school readiness for Hispanic families in particular.
View Julia’s Collaboratory profile
Bob Strack, Public Health Education
Bob’s research has primarily focused on the health and social issues of youth and adolescents which specifically includes research interests in: Photovoice methodology, program planning and evaluation, adolescent programming and health promotion advocacy and policy. His aim is to build on the science around photovoice and to provide a tool that will help community’s address social issues from their own lens. With the eventual roll-out of our PhotovoiceKit tool, he hopes to be able to observe, hone and measures the utility of this applied research endeavor and witness positive changes in communities throughout society.
Sam Troy, Business School
Some years ago, the former Dean of the Bryan School asked me to identify industry clusters that might be important to the UNCG service area in the years ahead. One of the clusters identified was the North Carolina wine industry as we are located in the very center of this growing cluster. The Bryan School and UNCG have received considerable positive press, engaged several faculty members in the process, conducted numerous research projects, actively involved students in the research, published multiple journal articles and even have UNCG graduates employed in the industry.
leila villaverde, Educational Leadership and Cultural Foundations
My current work is with area schools and arts organizations, working with educators/directors to build critically informed curriculum integration and redesign spaces towards an aesthetic/curricular ecology.
Debra Wallace, Community Practice School of Nursing
As a PI for TRIAD2, Debra partners with Guilford, Forsyth, and Rockingham County Schools, NC A &T, GTCC and others to conduct community education and outreach. TRIAD2 works with middle and high school students to increase a diversity of students in health science careers. They’ve held campus tours, panel and open Q&A sessions, and hands on demonstrations or health site visits. They also supported summer camps by providing staffing, information, meals, and transportation.
Lee Walton, Art
Lee is an artist with an expanded practice that includes drawing, performance, and social practice. His experiential art works employ system of rule, chance, and open collaboration. He works with museums, institutions, universities, and cities to develop participatory public events, lead workshops, exhibit, and educate. Lee created the Interdisciplinary Art and Social Practice minor at UNCG. This minor provides students with the opportunity to explore a range of diverse creative strategies for socially-engaged art across fields of study.
Tyreasa Washington, Social Work
Since joining UNCG in August 2011, I have been involved with the UNCG and NCA&TSU joint field program as a faculty field liaison. Thus, I have supervised student interns and worked with human service personnel to facilitate efficient and effective field placements for students at the following agencies: Women’s Resource Center, Forsyth Communities in Schools, Tristian’s Quest, Guilford Child Development, and Guilford County Department of Social Services. Additionally, I have partnered on research projects with various community agencies including Guilford and Rockingham Counties Department of Health and Human Services, Children’s Home Society, and Guilford Child Development to explore strengths and resources of African American kinship care families that contribute to children’s social, academic, and behavioral outcomes.
Bob Wineburg, Social Work
Bob has maintained a long-time partnership with Odell Cleveland and they’ve collaborated on numerous initiatives within the Welfare Reform Liaison Project. Bob is interested in the role of faith communities in providing social services, collaborating with Cone Behavioral Health, Cone Health Foundation, Greensboro College, Mount Zion Baptist Church, Temple Emanuel, and Wake Forest School to hold a Behavioral Health Faith Summit in 2015 that provided community education about a spectrum of mental health concerns.
Zhiyong Yang, Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Sustainable Tourism and Hospitality
Zhiyong’s research focuses on three primary areas of interest: (1) how consumers are affected by contextual cues, such as ads, word-of-mouth, and social media; (2) how family and peers affect children’s tobacco use; and (3) how individuals’ cultural orientation (e.g., self-construal, power distance belief, and local-global identity) affects their donation behavior. He has completed more than 15 consulting projects along these areas, and published over 30 articles in leading scholarly journals on these topics. Zhiyong’s research has been funded by Statistics Canada, Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la société et la culture of Canada, the National Science Foundation of China, and the Association for Consumer Research. He also received competitive research awards from Harvard University, the University of Texas-Arlington, and Cardiff University in UK.
