Libby Kelley | Community-Engaged
The US has some of the highest rates of teen pregnancy among developing countries with approximately 200,000 babies born to teens aged 15 to 19 in 2016 (1,2). Additionally, nearly 50% of diagnosed STIs are seen in people under the age of 25 (3). These high rates of teen pregnancy and STIs may be due to abstinence-only sex education in schools, which some studies show have minimal effectiveness in preventing STIs and teen pregnancy (4). Michigan state policy requires an emphasis on abstinence, and some schools choose not to provide information on contraceptives at all (5). The purpose of this study was to assess whether abstinence-only sexual education provides the same teen level of education as comprehensive sexual education using a review of relevant literature to compare the two.
A Deeper Look into the World of Addiction
Madeline Wilten | Community-Engaged
The United Community Addiction Network (UCAN) empowers those in the community of Genesee County, Michigan struggling with substance use disorders and addiction. UCAN networks with hospitals, law enforcement, the judicial system, schools, and other systems to evolve how people are treated and how professionals treat co-occurring disorders. They combine the community and clinical aspects of treatment to empower people and to help them find sobriety and reach their potential. Less than 10% of people in need of treatment are being treated for co-occurring disorders alongside their substance use disorder, which causes too many people to relapse and to lack the treatment and resources they need. UCAN is creating an interdisciplinary model for treatment across the world that gives people the resources they need and makes the recovery process easier and more manageable. Through this research project and the current work of UCAN, by analyzing data, we are able to identify gaps in multiple systems and create a cohesive program that addresses every aspect of substance abuse and provides every resource to those who need it.
A Deeper Look into the World of Addiction
Emily Bunnell | Community-Engaged
The United Community Addiction Network or UCAN is a community organization based in Genesee County, Michigan that is working to evolve the way addiction is addressed and treated. The project “A Deeper Look into the World of Addiction” sought to aid the planning, development, and implementation of a new treatment program combining community and clinical services for a pathway to recovery. The focus of the new program is to use evidence based practices in order to treat co-occurring substance use and mental health disorders more effectively. Some evidence based practices include consumer-driven treatment, family and community involvement, and having cross-trained specialists. Alongside the development of a new addiction treatment program, UCAN’s other initiatives work to instill lasting change by including medical examiners, emergency responders, local law enforcement, and a new K-9 unit that aims to identify substances for a drug-free environment. In a coordinated effort with community members, UCAN aims to see the implementation of a co-occuring disorder facility as well as other initiatives to be replicated across the state, country, and around the world.
Architecture of Dwelling: Considering Design, Social Relations, and Policy in Single and Multi-Family Housing
Michaela Nam | Community-Engaged
Supportive housing is a cost-effective combination of affordable housing with services that helps people live more stable, productive lives. Having such housing options are vital especially in cities undergoing rapid re-development because rising property values displace low-income households from their homes and sources of income. New Hope Housing is a non-profit organization that aims to provide such housing to individuals and families. A case study by the Urban Land Institute offers a comprehensive analysis on one of New Hope Housing’s apartments, highlighting the unique structure of their development model and operating timeline. Building on an integrated approach between a debt-free development model and single room occupancy (SRO) design, this research project looks for solutions to how SROs can re-define housing and positively impact the neighborhoods surrounding low-income housing.
Better Air Quality Outcomes in Southwest Detroit
Alexis Barritt | Community-Engaged
Southwest Detroit Environmental Vision (SDEV) works to fulfill the needs of the community by empowering its residents to engage and by providing a connection to important resources. SDEV works with industrial corporations, businesses, and residents to address environmental pressures and concerns, specifically air pollution. Residents of Southwest Detroit live in the middle of industry and are exposed to bad air quality that leads to asthma, lead poisoning, strokes, heart attacks, and more. Even more significantly, these high impact areas correlate to more COVID fatalities as a result of these pre-existing conditions. SDEV recognizes that these high impact areas are primarily urban areas of color and that environmental and racial justice go hand in hand. To combat this issue, SDEV is working to propose a revised truck route to reduce truck traffic on residential streets and to increase enforcement of Detroit’s Anti-Idling Ordinance. SDEV has compiled a list of community members willing to host cameras and air-quality monitors at their residences collecting data relating to pollution levels. This data will be used in the proposal to revise the truck routes in order to better protect the health and wellbeing of the community. SDEV also fosters civic engagement and advocates for environmental policy. This is done by organizing residents to talk to their representatives who vote on the policies that affect them. Through these efforts, SDEV is able to engage the community and make deep and impactful changes that lessen environmental pressures. SDEV works to ensure that the residents come first and their concerns are being heard and met.
Better Air Quality Outcomes in Southwest Detroit
Jacquelyn Zamora | Community-Engaged
Southwest Detroit Environmental Vision (SDEV) works to fulfill the needs of the community by empowering its residents to engage and by providing a connection to important resources. SDEV works with industrial corporations, businesses, and residents to address environmental pressures and concerns, specifically air pollution. Residents of Southwest Detroit live in the middle of industry and are exposed to bad air quality that leads to asthma, lead poisoning, strokes, heart attacks, and more. Even more significantly, these high impact areas correlate to more COVID fatalities as a result of these pre-existing conditions. SDEV recognizes that these high impact areas are primarily urban areas of color and that environmental and racial justice go hand in hand. To combat this issue, SDEV is working to propose a revised truck route to reduce truck traffic on residential streets and to increase enforcement of Detroit’s Anti-Idling Ordinance. SDEV has compiled a list of community members willing to host cameras and air-quality monitors at their residences collecting data relating to pollution levels. This data will be used in the proposal to revise the truck routes in order to better protect the health and wellbeing of the community. SDEV also fosters civic engagement and advocates for environmental policy. This is done by organizing residents to talk to their representatives who vote on the policies that affect them. Through these efforts, SDEV is able to engage the community and make deep and impactful changes that lessen environmental pressures. SDEV works to ensure that the residents come first and their concerns are being heard and met.
Building the Kindergarten Pipeline: DPSCD’s Approach to Enhancing the Transition from Early Childhood to Kindergarten
Megan Shohfi | Community-Engaged
Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD) aims to educate and empower every student, in every community, every day, to build a stronger Detroit. DPSCD understands the immense benefits of Kindergarten for the academic and personal development of Detroit students. As the primary entry point for most families into the District, it is critical that DPSCD maintain a healthy Kindergarten enrollment. However, in fall 2020, DPSCD saw a decline in Kindergarten enrollment like many cities and districts across the country. To combat this trend, the District has developed a series of new programs and resources that support parents in navigating the transition between pre-K and Kindergarten. This includes webinars, school-led open houses, and video-based resources for families. The District is engaging early childhood centers and educators, as well as drawing on best practices, to build strong community connections and create resources that prepare students to thrive in Kindergarten.
Civic Resilience and Neighborhood Resilience Projects and Hubs
Elizabeth Daberko | Community-Engaged
As the climate crisis accelerates, emergency and civil services increasingly are overstretched. Resilience-based programming provides relief by empowering individual citizens, neighborhood organizations, and local institutions to share the planning and preparation on behalf of their communities. Settlements become more resilient to the impacts of climate change when they develop the capacity of neighborhoods to endure, quickly recover from, and renew after extreme events. To aid these processes, we developed “A Pattern Language for Neighborhood Resilience” as a starting point. This book contains a number of guides – or patterns – on how to invest in skills, small-scale infrastructure, relationships, and supplies that increase a neighborhood’s resilience. The book is currently in draft form and soon will be pre-tested before being released. As a living document, it will undoubtedly be modified and expanded throughout its adoption.
Contemporary Performance in Puerto Rico: Javier Cardona and Mickey Negrón
Luisa Sanchez | Community-Engaged
The intention of this research is to contextualize contemporary performance in Puerto Rico. I will analyze the ways in which it addresses social issues. The two artists I focus on are Javier Cardona and Mickey Negrón, and their respective performances “Taxonomía of a Spicy Espécimen” (2020) and “PonerMickeytarme: Ritual de pluma y purificación” (2015). One of them, Javier Cardona, is an Afro-Puerto Rican dancer and performer that focuses on race and his experiences as a black man in the LGBT community. The other, Mickey Negrón, is also a Puerto Rican performer that addresses social and political issues surrounding gender identity and expression through street performance, especially as they relate to religion and education.
Continuous evaluation of instruction
Karen Rubinsztain | Community-Engaged
The project uses mobile-eye tracking in classrooms to analyze teachers responses to misbehaviors in the classroom and find the most effective way of responding to a misbehavior. To measure this response, we have collected 52 different videos of 26 classrooms in which an expert teacher and a student teacher take turns teaching in. Each class period has various videos, an eye tracking video as well as a few stationary cameras focused on the students. The class periods last from 35 to 45 minutes long and feature 1st to 11th grade classrooms with around 20 or 30 students in them. The groups of students reflected different socioeconomic backgrounds. The mobile eye-tracking device tracks the teachers gaze, recording whether the teacher notices a student misbehaving. Trained coders watch each video and code each misbehavior and the teacher’s response. The point of the project is to code each misbehavior in the classroom and record whether the teacher sees it and how they respond. Preliminary results show that teachers are unaware of a majority of misbehaviors in their classrooms, that teachers respond fairly to misbehavior with regards to student gender, and that teachers are unresponsive to most of the misbehaviors they see. Although data originally suggested that teachers’ responses to boys and girls differ, further research shows that this is because boys and girls misbehave differently. This study allows educational psychologists to understand how and when teachers respond to misbehaviors in the classroom and allow them to evaluate any disparities in the education system.
COVID-19 and the Community
Vanya Bhardwaj | Community-Engaged
The goal of this research project has been to collect stories about the health experiences of people living in Washtenaw County, Michigan during the time of COVID-19. We used document analysis, semi-structured interviews, structured observations, and statistical analysis to understand how people in Washtenaw discuss the health, social and economic problems stemming from the pandemic as well as the ways in which they attempt to confront and solve these problems. We are using this data to advise policy decisions in Washtenaw County.
COVID-19 hidden stories of mental health
Julia Hagopian | Community-Engaged
The upsurge of the COVID-19 global pandemic has brought forth many studies concerning how marginalized communities have been disproportionately affected by the virus: partly due to discriminatory practices embedded within the United States healthcare system, increased proportions of those working essential jobs, and increased probabilities of suffering from preexisting conditions, among other factors. However, there is very little qualitative research regarding the first-hand experiences of these individuals, particularly those within the Hispanic community, nor is there research accessible to Spanish-speaking individuals. Thus, our study entitled “COVID-19 Hidden Stories” searches to collect and empower the experiences of Hispanic individuals who have been affected by the pandemic through virtual interviews in a way that has not yet been amplified by the media or made accessible for the community’s use. Utilizing a trauma-informed journalistic approach, interviews were conducted through phone calls with Hispanic individuals who had contracted COVID-19 within West Michigan, South East Michigan, and Chicago, Illinois communities. The interviews were transcribed and compiled into an audio podcast format, all in Spanish, with English subtitles including necessary context and analysis for individual accounts. Ultimately, analysis of the interviews indicated that difficulties in obtaining access to testing and care, financial burdens, and mistrust of the healthcare system in general were the primary obstacles faced by the Hispanic community during their battles with COVID-19. As a result of these obstacles, our interviewees demonstrated several accounts of mental distress, allowing us to focus on the ways their mental health has been impacted by the pandemic. Ultimately, this journalistic research aims to create solidarity during a time of isolation and highlight noteworthy changes in mental health as experienced by the Hispanic community. The research also highlights the intersectionality that exists between modern-day immigration policies and discriminatory health-care practices against Hispanic persons.
Creating a Culture of Health at Hope Family Health Center
Favour Kerobo | Community-Engaged
Authority Health recently received funding to develop and implement a Child & Adolescent Health Center at Hope Academy Charter school on Detroit’s west side. In light of this development, there was a need to establish a school wellness plan, recommending types of physical activity and nutritional services that would benefit students in the Nardin Park area. This project aimed to assess community resources, the physical environment around Hope Academy, and current nutrition and physical activity habits in order to create that physical activity and nutritional programming, integrating other community resources and providing benefit to students’ health and wellness. The methodology behind this endeavor was to conduct an environmental scan for community resources in the Nardin Park area, meet virtually on a weekly basis with parents at the school, and to gather data about physical activity and nutritional patterns from the children via surveys distributed to their parents. Survey results will be analyzed to compare student habits to suggested physical activity and nutritional guidelines by accredited national health organizations. The results will then be used to develop programming that aims to promote physical activity and nutritional improvements in line with established guidelines, that includes the integration of community resources, discovered through the environmental scan, for provision of programming.
Creating a Hybrid Education Program: Best of Both Worlds
Ritika Shetty | Community-Engaged
Due to COVID, educational programs have had to quickly change to an online format and many were unprepared for the drastic change. During this past year many of us have personally experienced the pros and cons of online learning, and nobody knows what the future will be like. My project for 826michigan was to find, through data collected from participants, what the strengths and weaknesses have been for both the online and in person versions of their programs in order to create a hybrid version for the future.
Data Gathering Data Analysis Toward Better Air Quality Outcomes in SW Detroit
Manar Zoulfikar | Community-Engaged
In support of the ongoing initiatives by community advocates to cut diesel emissions in Southwest Detroit, this research aims to gauge the effects on air quality that commercial vehicles have in residential areas when using their streets as routes. SW Detroit has some of the highest levels of PM and toxic pollutants measured in Detroit, with Detroit having the worst air quality conditions in Michigan. This study accesses the ambient air quality in residential areas that have a high frequency of commercial trucks traveling their streets. We want to know how each passing truck contributes to the air pollution on the street it is using.
Data Gathering Data Analysis Toward Better Air Quality Outcomes in SW Detroit
Sarah Chung | Community-Engaged
In 2019, a resident of southwest Detroit called SDEV to ask for help with air pollution that was getting into her house. The problem was so bad that she had to change furnace filters monthly, which were completely caked with black soot. SDEV visited the resident’s home to learn more and received a furnace filter from the resident. My project involved launching a survey of residents to see how many are experiencing similar indoor air quality concerns and quantifying the information to present at SDEV’s annual member’s meeting and to the City of Detroit’s Council meeting. Using a google form, the survey was created with feedback from University of Michigan Public Health experts and other professional resources. With the internet, phone, and physical canvassing efforts, data was collected from 48 residents. We have found a majority of residents surveyed do experience some kind of air quality problems inside the house (grime, soot collecting on the walls, furnace filter color black, etc.) persisting for at least over a year. SDEV intends to use this data to push for real change and bring more resources to address the problem in people’s homes. By making the data accessible to the public, government decision-makers, and others who can bring resources, SDEV will work with community members and others to address the problem of indoor air quality. We have and will continue to connect with community members to bring awareness to the resources that can mitigate the impact of pollution at home. This work aligns with the recommendations of the community-based participatory research initiative Community Action to Promote Healthy Environments (CAPHE) facilitated by University of Michigan with SDEV and other local partners.
Detroit Contractor Ecosystem
Venkata Dakshesh Daruri | Community-Engaged
Bridging Neighborhoods (BN) was formed to support the optional relocation or retrofitting of houses for the residents of the Del Ray neighborhood due to the construction of an international bridge between Canada and the United States. To conduct activities, BN relies upon attracting local contractors and subcontractors to the program so the residents can opt into the relocation or retrofitting process with confidence. My role is to research contractor programs and outreach strategies in thirty cities nationwide and assist in reaching out to contractors and subcontractors in Detroit. These tasks were achieved through internet research and calling 150+ potential contractors for the 2021 Construction Conference. The purpose of this research is to highlight contractor programs or outreach strategies that the City of Detroit can implement in the future, and the outreach calls have increased the number of contractor connections BN possesses.
Documenting Criminalization and Confinement
Rita Sayegh | Community-Engaged
Documenting Criminalization and Confinement (DCC) is a sub-focus of the Carceral State Project, which is a University of Michigan research initiative. DCC is a multifaceted humanistic study of the historical and contemporary processes of criminalization, policing, incarceration, immigrant detention, and other forms of carceral control in the United States. The agenda of this project targets the policies and approaches that have advanced incarceration, especially in insecure communities. We are collaborating with a number of academic researchers, including faculty, staff, graduate students, and undergraduates from the organization to manage and create comprehensive research strategies. We have successfully constructed multiple intricate metadata spreadsheets that document prison education and arts, policing and social justice, and confronting conditions of confinement, as well as examined a continuous collection of personal written testimonies about the experiences of incarcerated individuals.
Food Security and Inactivity During COVID-19: Perspectives from the MOTION Coalition.
Vinayak Swaroop | Community-Engaged
This presentation will focus on hearing the voices of various stakeholders in the MOTION coalition about Food Security in Detroit. Stakeholders include Dr. William Dietz, Director of Sumner M. Redstone Global Center for Prevention and Wellness, Chef Kevin Frank, Detroit Public Schools Community Assistant Director of Food and Nutrition, and Mrs. Lonias Gillmore, Senior Public Health Consultant at the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services(MDHHS). Topics will include how COVID has impacted food security; legislation proposals/changes that have been made through the 2020-2021 calendar year; and what changes need to be made moving forward to have a more food-secure community in Detroit.
Geographic Differences in Faculty Attitudes on the Inclusion of Content on Oppression in Social Work Curriculum
Jordan Hunter | Community-Engaged
Faculty in graduate schools of social work have a critical role in shaping the future of social work through their role in training and teaching new social workers. This study aims to examine how, if at all, the American geographical regions in which social work educators teach affects their views on the importance of including content on racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia/cissexism, ageism and classism. Using several one-way ANOVAs, this study investigates whether a faculty’s geographical location contributes to a difference in how strongly they believe content on a specific type of oppression should be included in the curriculum they teach. Findings revealed that faculty attitudes on what content of oppression to include were not homogenous throughout the country. Further investigation showed that there is not one topic that any social work educator would deem not important to include in their teaching. Given that MSW students believe that the social work profession calls for them to challenge all forms of oppression (Goode et. al, 2020), it is critical that their instructors educate them on these systems. Faculty attitudes on the importance of including content on oppression in their curriculum can impact not only what they teach, but how prepared future social workers feel to do what the profession calls for them to do. Therefore, it’s important to analyze potential factors that would shape how important social work educators feel it is to include content on different forms of oppression.
Global Workers’ Rights
Jennifer Kim | Community-Engaged
The Global Compact for Migration (GCM) Certificate Programme, a course jointly organized by the Global Research Forum on Diaspora and Transnationalism and other civil society organizations, is one of several virtual legal training programs aimed at building global capacity to implement the recently-enacted UN Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration. In order to study how understandings of the GCM’s new international norms on migration management are being produced interactively through these training programs, we conducted a digital ethnography which approached this online training program as our point of entry. Team-based ethnographic research included participant observation in weekly webinars, in online assignments, and in other learning activities administered through the Certificate Programme’s Google Classroom platform. As part of this research, we also examined the course organization and structure, the profiles of participants and speakers, and the substantive curricular content of the course, including theories and techniques for understanding, supporting, and protecting migrant diasporas. Themes and concepts that have emerged from our research are the variety and motivations of participants and lecturers (people in high positions of authority in governments and in international organizations, as well as community organizers); the comparison and evaluation of best practices and of stumbling blocks in existing policies and in places without policies; the importance of international engagement and cooperation; the roles and relationships of the migrant diaspora, the home country, and the destination country; and the challenges of virtual learning.
Global Workers’ Rights
Mara Pusic | Community-Engaged
The Global Compact for Migration (GCM) Certificate Programme, a course jointly organized by the Global Research Forum on Diaspora and Transnationalism and other civil society organizations, is one of several virtual legal training programs aimed at building global capacity to implement the recently-enacted UN Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration. In order to study how understandings of the GCM’s new international norms on migration management are being produced interactively through these training programs, we conducted a digital ethnography which approached this online training program as our point of entry. Team-based ethnographic research included participant observation in weekly webinars, in online assignments, and in other learning activities administered through the Certificate Programme’s Google Classroom platform. As part of this research, we also examined the course organization and structure, the profiles of participants and speakers, and the substantive curricular content of the course, including theories and techniques for understanding, supporting, and protecting migrant diasporas. Themes and concepts that have emerged from our research are the variety and motivations of participants and lecturers (people in high positions of authority in governments and in international organizations, as well as community organizers); the comparison and evaluation of best practices and of stumbling blocks in existing policies and in places without policies; the importance of international engagement and cooperation; the roles and relationships of the migrant diaspora, the home country, and the destination country; and the challenges of virtual learning.
HOPE Village Storytelling
Rachel Kim | Community-Engaged
HOPE Village Revitalization (HVR) is a non-profit community-development corporation with a long history of success serving the HOPE Village neighborhood in Detroit. Using a community-driven approach to mitigate disparities in wealth, privilege and educational opportunities within the neighborhood, HVR is dedicated to being part of the collective working toward equitable and sustainable development in Detroit and to being known as a model of excellence, integrity, and community decision making. This past year, I worked closely with my mentor to develop informational material highlighting the La Salle Eco-Demonstration Home, the organization’s LEED-certified sustainable-living model based on the philosophy that energy efficiency, renewable energy, and sustainable living should be available to everyone regardless of income. Toward this end, I created both written and visual resources that describe and explain various features and sustainable, forward-thinking innovations of the home, as well as covering sustainable goals of the organization achieved with the rehabilitation of the house. By doing research on various eco-friendly efforts currently in progress in Detroit as well as other parts of the world, and particularly seeing the development and work done within the HOPE Village community, I was greatly informed and inspired by the work that is being done in the area of sustainability. I am grateful to my mentor and HOPE Village for this amazing opportunity to be part of the collective effort toward their mission and to experience firsthand the inner-workings of a nonprofit organization.
How white employers perceive same-race referrals: The role of perceived in-group favoritism
Brooke Van Horne | Community-Engaged
Racial inequality and discrimination are still pervasive in the U.S. labor market. Prior research finds that employers discriminate against black and Latino jobseekers without referrals, but we know less about how race affects how employers evaluate jobseekers’ same-race referrals. Many jobseekers find employment through referrals and existing networks, both of which are typically the same race as the applicant. To address this gap in literature, we conducted a survey experiment where we tested the differences in how employers evaluate the same-race referrals of White, Black, Hispanic and Asian job applicants. The analyzed data come from an empirical experiment conducted in the United States. White individuals (n = 635) with hiring and/or supervisory experience in their workplace were recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk to participate in a survey experiment. Respondents were assigned a random racial group (Black, White, Hispanic, Asian) and were asked whether individuals of these racial groups prefer to refer individuals of their same race, or the best qualified job applicants. Respondents were then asked to explain their choice in their own words and their responses were coded into a fairly small number of categories. We found that while approximately half of the sample stated that black and Hispanic employees prefer to refer applicants of their same race than the “best qualified” applicants, and approximately 1/3 reported the same for Asian employees, only 16% stated that whites prefer to refer white applicants rather than the best-qualified applicants. We also analyze the open-ended responses to examine mechanisms underlying these racial differences.
Lessons on Community Building from The Dream Storytelling Project
Inez Mendez | Community-Engaged
The Dream Storytelling Project is an oral history initiative with the purpose of educating the wider public about Detroit’s African American Muslim and African Muslim community-building and revitalization efforts. I served as a transcriber for several oral history interviews. In this capacity, I worked to make the content of each individual’s interview clear for the wider public. As I carried out my work, I learned about the mosque as a venue for community-building, acting as a gathering place for people to meet throughout the week. I also observed the importance of language and shared rhetoric, noticing the prevalence of Arabic terms and phrases. Additionally, I noted the importance of community building efforts via the devotion of individuals’ time and skillsets, applying them to the different needs of the population in order to ensure the safety and wellbeing of all. Once finalized, the transcripts are then shared via an interactive multimedia website and permanent public archive. This allows for The Storytelling Project to provide educational materials about African American Muslim and African Muslim history and leadership in Detroit, thereby building knowledge about under-represented and under-served populations.
Main Street Transformation Project
Jamey Carpenter | Community-Engaged
Vanguard Community Development services the North End of in three major areas: economic development, housing development, and community engagement and planning. To assist in economic development within the North End community, Vanguard applied for a Main Designation. Vanguard successfully received the designation from Michigan Economic Development Corporation in March 2020. This designation provides technical support to businesses within the North End community. Along with the technical support, there is also a strategic transformation plan which will be implemented over the next five years. The outreach to the community regarding this strategic planning process began in January 2021. We began contacting community and municipal stakeholders to seek input to create the vision for the plan. These stakeholders attended meetings hosted by Michigan and National Main , in which Vanguard is the host organization for the program. Through constant communication and engagement, we formed relationships with the community members and municipal entities in to engage their involvement in the planning process.
Main Street Transformation Project
Natalia Nowicka | Community-Engaged
Vanguard Community Development services the North End of Detroit in three major areas: economic development, housing development, and community engagement and planning. To assist in economic development within the North End community, Vanguard applied for a Main Street Designation. Vanguard successfully received the designation from Michigan Economic Development Corporation in March 2020. This designation provides technical support to businesses within the North End community. Along with the technical support, there is also a strategic transformation plan which will be implemented over the next five years. The outreach to the community regarding this strategic planning process began in January 2021. We began contacting community and municipal stakeholders to seek input to create the vision for the plan. These stakeholders attended meetings hosted by Michigan and National Main Street, in which Vanguard is the host organization for the program. Through constant communication and engagement, we formed relationships with the community members and municipal entities in order to engage their involvement in the planning process.
News Media and the Impact of Historical Stereotypes on Black Female Political Figures
Shelbie Taylor | Community-Engaged
Historically, Black women in the U.S. have been largely disadvantaged in part due to the role of their dual race-gender identity. Whether on magazines, television shows, or music videos, controlling images and discourse have been used to preserve hegemonic power through stereotypes. There are three central stereotypes, rooted in America’s systemic, prejudice systems, that American modern media have created to spur perceptions of Black women; the “mammy”, “jezebel”, and “sapphire”. In our project, we set out to answer the following research question: Do black women experience more negativity in news segments than their white female counterparts?. We expect the aforementioned historical tropes to shape and impact how Black women are discussed within modern day news. In order to answer the proposed research question, we conduct a manual sentiment content analysis of roughly 1700 television news transcripts extracted from ABC, NBC, FOX, and MSNBC from the past three years. Currently, nearly 77% of all Americans receive their news by watching television. Based on the recurrent perpetuation of the aforementioned stereotypes across modern-day media, examining the role of these stereotypes in news is an important step in mitigation and intervention. Knowing that stereotypes exist and are perpetuated in the media, our research project uses this framework to examine the frequency and impacts of these historical stereotypes on discussions surrounding Black female political figures in news.
Online Homophobic and Racial Discrimination and Cardiovascular Health among Young Sexual Minority Men: Preliminary Evidence
Megha Rajan | Community-Engaged
Background Much research documents the deleterious impact of discrimination on health outcomes of minority populations. In particular, emerging evidence suggests that experiences of discrimination can lead to physiological dysregulation which, in turn, can lead to poor cardiovascular health outcomes among racial/ethnic minorities. However, experiences in online environments (e.g., Twitter, Facebook) have been underexplored in the research literature despite the fact that they are pervasive among young adults. In particular, young sexual minorities may experience discrimination online due to their racial/ethnic identity and/or sexual minority identity. This, in turn, may impact processes of mental and physiological health among this population. The current study seeks to bridge the gap in the literature by exploring the association between experiences of homophobic and racial discrimination online and cardiovascular health among a sample of young sexual minority men (YSMM).
Online Resources for Start-Up Cooperatives
Moriah Ma | Community-Engaged
A co-op is an entity designed to meet the common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations of its members. They are jointly owned and operated by their members who also benefit from the returns. In Detroit, the Detroit Community Wealth Fund has worked toward educating people who are interested in starting a co-op and providing them loans. In the past, it has been difficult for this organization to successfully have students come out of education programs and start a working co-op. Because of the pandemic’s limitations on face to face interaction, it has become difficult to hold these sessions in person, so one of the objectives of this study is to create a concise and informative educational guide that is easily accessible online. In this context, easy to follow worksheets and content that addresses each aspect of a co-op will be the best tools to teach the program. To see if this hypothesis that engaging materials will work best in the packet, I reviewed past curriculum materials and in-depth resources that cover all aspects of successful co-ops. The results showed that these materials would fill in any gaps of understanding and give the students a chance to practice engaging with the ideas. The final product showed that materials that focused on confusing topics such as business feasibility and marketing by using examples and templates are beneficial.
Optimizing a Daily Mindfulness Intervention to Reduce Stress from Discrimination among Sexual and Gender Minorities of Color
Zainab Mustafa | Community-Engaged
There is emerging evidence to suggest that mindfulness interventions reduce the impact of stress for people who identify with both a sexual and racial minority and thus increase wellbeing. However, there is little research that has been done to pinpoint what combination of mindfulness interventions most effectively reduce the impact of stress. This study seeks to determine what combination of the intervention components of mindfulness of purpose, connection and awareness are most efficient and effective at reducing the impact of stress from discrimination in sexual racial minorities and promoting wellbeing. While the study has only just begun, I predict that the intervention that incorporates awareness, purpose and connection will be the most effective at reducing stress in sexual and racial minorities.
Parent Support for Selective Admissions Applications
Caroline Carr | Community-Engaged
For my research I worked in Parent Support for Selective Admissions Applications, assisting my mentor in various projects such as market research, application translation, and writing admission and denial letters. The central objective of my work was to create a more equitable admissions process that would be accessible to all regardless of socioeconomic status or other identifiers.
Political Beliefs and Bias in Social Network Formation
Emma Dimilia | Community-Engaged
This project investigates how social networks change during divisive political discussion. In a behavioral experiment, we place student participants in a random communication network with up to 20 others. Participants discuss campus social issues over the course of several rounds. At each round, participants are exposed to differing opinions of their connections and make decisions to “rewire” their network, or to add, drop, or request new social connections to communicate with in the next round. We measure how individuals make these network decisions at both the individual and group level. We also experimentally manipulate a social cue that reveals the closeness of another person in relation to the participant. Experimental sessions are conducted remotely and anonymously, simulating interaction as it might occur on social media. Our data help understand the biases that lead people to form echo chambers, which may contribute to downstream consequences of biased information sharing, misinformation spread, and misbeliefs about public opinion.
Political Bias in Social Network Formation
Neha Sure | Community-Engaged
This project investigates how social networks form. Through behavioral experiments, students observe how political and social beliefs influence social network formation and the downstream consequences of selecting into a biased information-sharing environment. This might include general political reasoning, misinformation spread, and ingroup bias. Students work closely with the research mentor and project manager to learn about research design in the social sciences and gain valuable experience collecting data from human participants. Student responsibilities have included reviewing background literature, entering and maintaining data, and conducting internet searches. Students are also trained in analyzing the data for presentation. Experimental sessions are conducted remotely, and students help plan, schedule, and organize sessions.
Reporting the Lakes
Grace Dempsey | Community-Engaged
Great Lakes Now is a news source and division of Detroit Public Television. It covers issues that affect the Great Lakes and the 40 million people that live within the watershed. GLN produces a monthly show in addition to articles covering topics like water quality, public policy, environmental justice, economic development, and resource conservation. We focused specifically on drinking water quality and infrastructure in the Great Lakes region, tracking water advisories in Indigenous communities and water infrastructure projects in cities from Detroit to Cleveland. Stories like these support GLN aims by increasing public knowledge of the lakes and furthering interest in protecting them.
Revitalizing Northeast Detroit through data base research
Anna Haase | Community-Engaged
Northeastern Detroit has long been a historical focal point in Michigan. It has a rich history that stretches back over a century, however, for much of its history it’s been utilized in an industrial manner. While this industry has brought its benefits to the area, these were not without consequences. These consequences are more apparent now than ever with the struggles of truck traffic, environmental concerns, and industrial encroachment. The goal of our research was to tackle some of these concerns and promote the true needs of the diverse community. Whether through land use hearings or research on the property and zoning use of an area, our community engaged research covered all arrays of public policy advocacy.
Revitalizing Northeast Detroit through data base research
Riley McKenna | Community-Engaged
Northeastern Detroit has long been a historical focal point in Michigan. It has a rich history that stretches back over a century, however, for much of its history it’s been utilized in an industrial manner. While this industry has brought its benefits to the area, these were not without consequences. These consequences are more apparent now than ever with the struggles of truck traffic, environmental concerns, and industrial encroachment. The goal of our research was to tackle some of these concerns and promote the true needs of the diverse community. Whether through land use hearings or research on the property and zoning use of an area, our community engaged research covered all arrays of public policy advocacy.
Scoping review on the impact of type 2 diabetes self management programs in Asian-Americans
Celeste Kettaneh | Community-Engaged
Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is among the top reasons for deaths in Asian-Americans (AA). Although AA consists of people from more than 20 countries, existing T2D research often masks the differences. According to the Office of Minority Health (2019), about 11.5% of AA adults have T2D, compared to 8% of White Americans. The data also suggests that the rate of T2D in AA adults increased from 8.7% in 2017 to 11.5% in 2018. As Asian-Americans face challenges in healthcare, including linguistic, cultural, and literacy barriers, it is essential to research existing diabetes self-management programs (DSMPs), as many studies aggregate Asian Americans as a monolith group and disregard Asian-American subgroups’ heterogeneity. A scoping review is vital to establish foundational knowledge for DSMPs focused on AA. This scoping review defines DSMPs as managing an individual’s condition through self-care, problem-solving & decision making, resource utilization, and symptom, family, medical, or emotional management. We searched six different databases for relevant articles with no date range. The initial citation lists from all databases by keyword search yielded 2581 results. After screening for titles and abstracts, 311 articles were included in the full-text screening. Articles were excluded if they were non-primary research studies, did not focus on T2D or AA adults, and did not include DSMPs. After screening the full-text articles, 31 articles were included in the final analysis. DistillerSR was used to screen and extract data, including method, intervention duration, participant setting and demographics, theoretical framework, number and details of DSMP intervention groups, and results. We hypothesized that there is a higher need to focus on minority subgroup research. There is a need to tailor DSMPs to address the barriers that AA face in healthcare so that distinct cultural, linguistic, ethnic needs and preferences are met. Improved understanding of existing research may enhance future development of DSMPs for Asian-Americans and its subgroups.
Seeing Heritage Algorithms in Fiber Art
Lara Niemchick | Community-Engaged
Underrepresentation in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) is evident among underrepresented communities, particularly racial minorities, women, and lower-class individuals. Middle and High School students’ level of exposure to STEM arguably determines their pursuit of a STEM major or career, but many students in lower-class and racial minority groups have very low levels of exposure to STEM. CSDT.org was created to show the existing heritage algorithms embedded in culturally-situated artifacts and processes to increase the motivation among underrepresented students toward STEM majors and careers. With the Seeing Heritage Algorithms workshop conducted using CSDT.org, students are taught about the background of culturally-situated traditions like AfroFuturism, shown examples of visual programming language to generate these cultural patterns, given a chance to simulate their own patterns using the same software, and finally given materials to make their own physical art representing their simulated design. This workshop (to be conducted April 5th-9th) is expected to increase students’ knowledge of computing with a pre/post survey.
Southwest Detroit Community Court Program
Mira Bader | Community-Engaged
The Southwest Detroit Community Justice Center (SWDCJC) works to increase the safety and fairness of the area they serve by increasing public trust in the justice system, reducing crime, and meeting the needs of the people. They achieve this by offering restorative alternatives to traditional justice system processes like fines and incarceration. Rather, SWDCJC offers programs that educate and provide opportunities for community service. Through the community court program, SWDCJC has decreased incarceration and money owed for misdemeanor crimes, overall increasing the wellbeing in the zip codes served. They are looking to expand their impact by adding programs dedicated to stopping human trafficking as well.
Southwest Detroit Community Court Program: The Clean Slate Bill
Hasana Lester | Community-Engaged
On October 12th, 2020, Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed a series of bills into law, the most significant and popular of these being the “Clean Slate Bill”. “For too long, criminal charges have created barriers to employment, barriers to housing and others for hundreds of thousands of Michiganders. These bipartisan bills are going to be a game-changer,” Whitmer said. This bill will affect hundreds of thousands of Michigan residents who have criminal records and traffic violations with the first aspects of the bill going into effect on April 10th, 2021. The Southwest Detroit Community Justice Center (SWDCJC) is passionate about criminal justice reform and fair access to the justice system. The nonprofit’s mission statement states, “The mission of the Southwest Detroit Community Justice Center is to increase public trust in the justice system, assist in the reduction of crime, improve the quality of life and meet the needs of the community.” SWDCJC’s focus is four zip code areas in Detroit and the organization’s CEO and my research mentor LaNeice Jones has been committed to promoting education and criminal reform for over a year. The organization has hosted several events to help prevent offenses and reform those who already have offenses. Specifically, this research project was made to find best practices to spread the word about the Clean Slate Bill to help expunge the records of thousands of individuals. We are increasing awareness of this bill by synthesizing information to distribute to the community, collecting statistics for grant writing, and hosting an “Ask the Judge” event to educate the greater community about the ins and outs of this bill. Our ultimate goal is to help people expunge their records so they can have a greater opportunity to apply to better jobs and participate in services that are restricted to people with criminal records. Increasing access to job opportunities by expunging records will help fuel diversity of thought and region to many different career paths, and give people a second chance who desperately deserve one.
Studying the Impact of Mentor Feedback on Preservice Teacher Satisfaction
Samantha Lang | Community-Engaged
Feedback has been pointed out as a prerequisite for professional growth for experts and novices alike. In the education field, researchers have argued that preservice teachers, or student teachers, need high quality feedback to become exemplary teachers for their future students. One of the goals of the Mentors Matter initiative was to study what constitutes quality feedback during clinical placements from mentor teachers and university supervisors. In our project, we coded 4,010 comments to 394 student teachers for the content and quality that student teachers received as part of their clinical assessments. In our presentation, we will discuss how comments on Teacher Attributes (TA), Connections across Observations (CaO), Data Driven Feedback (DDF), and Actionable Recommendation (AR) relate to student teachers’ satisfaction with their clinical placements. Our results can help establish a guideline for having mentor teachers and university supervisors to provide high quality feedback to student teachers to train and prepare stronger teachers.
The Dream of Detroit’s Storytelling Project
Meghana Srinivasa | Community-Engaged
Dream of Detroit’s Storytelling project is aimed at educating the public about African-American Muslim and African Muslim communities in Detroit through oral history interviews. I helped transcribe a set of these interviews to prepare them for the project’s multi-media website and permanent public archive. These interviews, carried out by a team of young people from within community, center around how members of these populations participate in community building, leadership, and the revitalization of Detroit. Through my work in the project, I deepened my understanding of how community members view the importance of Islamic education, neighborhood revitalization, and social justice. I learned about the diversity of individuals and experiences within these communities. I will benefit from this broadened perspective in both my personal and educational life. The transcriptions of these interviews and the project as a whole will increase understanding, appreciation, and respect for the history, diversity, and impact of African American Muslim and African Muslim communities in Detroit.
The effect of a decedent’s mental health status on protests following police killings
Katherine Burgin | Community-Engaged
In 2015, 1,146 Americans were killed by the police, and some of these killings were followed by protests. It is important to investigate why some killings led to protests while others did not. The existence of a protest could be due to numerous factors, such as location, the age of the decedent, the existence of cell phone footage, etc. Specifically, this research investigates whether people are more likely to protest a police killing if the decedent had mental health issues. In order to answer this question, we gather data on each police killing in 2015 using Google search, local newspapers, and social media. This data included whether the decedent had a history of mental health disorders, whether they were behaving erratically at the time of their death, and whether there were any protests following their death. Then, a random sample of 701 of the deaths was taken to investigate whether the decedent’s mental health affected the existence of a protest. We will use the R statistical software and t-tests to determine whether a decedent’s mental health status affects the existence of protests. We expect that there will be more protests if a decedent has mental health issues. These results will reveal more information about protests following police killings in the United States, an important topic because protests have the potential to alter the aftermath of a killing and lead to a heightened awareness of social issues.
The Hall Family and Their Impact on Astronomy
Nicholas Wilford | Community-Engaged
The Detroit Observatory is planning for a reopening in the Fall of 2021. In preparation for the new building additions and exhibits we are gathering information on influential astronomers associated with the University of Michigan. Two such astronomers are Asaph Hall and Asaph Hall Junior, both of whom spent time working at the Detroit Observatory during their lengthy astronomy-based careers. Their important work and life stories have also been documented to the public through updated Wikipedia articles.
The Resilience Project: Earthquake threats to Mid-west and Northeastern regions of U.S.
Archita Agrawal | Community-Engaged
Whereas the number of earthquakes per year remain steady, modern society faces increasing threats to life, infrastructure and economic activity. In order for communities to improve their resilience against inevitable earthquakes, information is needed on how they will affect their regions and how they can build resilience against a largely unstoppable natural disaster. Using public data, this undergraduate research study investigates the earthquake patterns and threats to both Midwest and the broader northeastern regions of the U.S, with a focus on the societal impacts of earthquakes in these regions. Earthquake data over a 45 year period establish that the number as well as magnitude of earthquakes in this region is quite small, compared to regions of the western US. The data reveals that the average annual injury and the earthquake damage costs for this region are relatively low. It is expected that, with this information, people can reliably predict earth occurrences and decide whether their regions need to build a costly earthquake resilient infrastructure, which may exceed the regional damage of natural events.
To Make the Slave Anew
Sabrina Martell | Community-Engaged
To Make the Slave Anew: Art, History, and the Politics of Authenticity is a book that aims to discern how our modern understanding of slavery and the life of the slave came to be. It explores the memory of slavery and racism in the United States through the lens of music, visual studies, literature, ethnography and folklore. Each chapter achieves this by studying various figures, events, and pieces of work that impacted the cultural conception of slavery by including pictures of art and excerpts from literature, scholarly work, journals, etc. Through the exploration of various methods of cultural memory, To Make the Slave Anew argues that our contemporary perceptions of slavery are based on more recent””largely late nineteenth and early twentieth century””myths regarding the life of the slave and slavery in the South. With recent questions on the memory and relics of racism and slavery in the United States gaining more attention, To Make the Slave Anew offers a way of understanding how society comes to remember such concepts, and how those memories can shift with time.
Trends in the Market Status of Cannabis by US Population
Ava Kucera | Community-Engaged
In 1996, California became the first state to legalize the medical use of cannabis. In the roughly 25 years since then, nearly 35 states have passed legislation to make medical cannabis legal. A similar state-level trend for the legalization of recreational marijuana started in 2012. The population eligible for medical marijuana use has been growing, as has the population affected by the legalization of recreational cannabis. In order to determine how quickly these markets are changing and to help pinpoint years that may have been particularly influential, data was gathered that tracks adult population by state and year. This data was assembled in 2 separate groups; one where states have legalized medical marijuana, and another where states have legalized recreational marijuana (often in addition to medical). The trends observed demonstrate that the population prohibited from any type of marijuana use – recreational or medical – has been decreasing, as the populations for medical use and recreational use have been increasing fairly steadily, with large population jumps corresponding to new states’ legalization, in 2014 and 2016 in particular. By 2016, more of the US population lived in states where cannabis was legal for medical use than where it was prohibited.
Understanding the Cost Decisions of International Arbitration
Rei Kubota | Community-Engaged
Using Google Earth to assess neighborhood features in the built environment: Inter-Rater Reliability results
Cameron Slavkin | Community-Engaged
Relevance: The built environment plays a significant role in contributing to health outcomes. The Environment and Policy Lab (EPL) is researching the association between the built environment and health outcomes in a cost-effective, accessible way by using Google Earth to assess neighborhood features. However, there are challenges in assessing certain neighborhood features. This study assessed the inter-rater reliability of several features of the built environment.
War & Military Occupations Data Set
Peter Tam | Community-Engaged
The decision to occupy an opposing territory following a military conflict requires a consideration of the costs, aims, and compliance for an occupying power. Throughout history, these factors ultimately determine the success of an occupation. Our research examined notable military conflicts from a period between 1815 to 2003 to understand this relation. To determine the effectiveness of these occupations, we developed a coding system that firstly examines the aims of a state including reparations or regime change. These goals allow us to then determine the compliance costs for an occupying elite and therefore, the success of achieving occupation goals. The results of our research will contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between occupier aims and the likelihood of failure in accomplishing postwar goals.
Women’s Wave: Participation and Success by Candidates in Congressional Elections, 2014 to 2020
Yasmine Elkharssa | Community-Engaged
Despite the plethora of analysis on individual candidates of all political affiliations in national elections, it is unknown which identities are most salient in determining the successes or failures of congressional candidates. This study has examined the success of women in elections. We investigated whether female candidates present themselves as activists, which we defined as taking part in protests, volunteering for a cause, or founding a group to solve an issue. This study recovers biographical, financial, and experiential information on every documented Congressional candidate in the election years 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020. An analysis of these candidates reveals characteristics of importance when predicting the outcome of an election: 1) affiliation with the main political parties; 2) campaign expenditures; and 3) experience as an activist. The results expressed by this study highlighted attributes to pay attention to in future election years when predicting wins for female candidates.
