1) Describe the work of your office

The University of Minnesota, Morris Center for Small Towns (CST) is a community outreach program that serves as a point-of-entry to the resources of the University of Minnesota. Small towns, local units of government, k-12 schools, nonprofit organizations, and other University units are able to utilize the Center's resources as they work on rural issues or make contributions to rural society. Their mission is to focus the University's attention and marshal its resources toward assisting Minnesota's small towns with locally identified issues by creating applied learning opportunities for faculty and students. CST provides assistance on community and economic development projects--often involving more research or expertise than small towns can afford or provide for themselves. At the same time, CST works to involve University of Minnesota, Morris faculty and students in the challenges and issues facing rural communities, which provides students with rich opportunities for applied learning.

The Center for Small Towns exists on four main cornerstones to assist small towns in brokering and collaboration; convening activities; community support; and research, information, data analysis, and reporting services for small towns. At the center in this web of methodologies is University of Minnesota, Morris students. While CST does have a large range of goals, one of the unique things about the organization is that there is not specific programming, but rather the ability to adapt services to the current needs of rural communities. CST would not be able to offer its unique and expansive range of initiatives and projects without the hard work and dedication of the students that work in the office. Students take the forefront in connecting small towns with resources, bringing members of communities and organizations together, building and working on community centered projects, as well as creating, analyzing and organizing complex sets of data for communities.

CST doesn't only focus on specific projects, but aims to broaden its reach, interact, and connect with more communities throughout the state, through the Small Town Harvesting initiative. CST sends two staffers out on the road regularly to meet with and hear from individuals and organizations within small towns all over the state. The goal is to be on the road once or twice a month, and to record and detail the visits to paint a better picture of rural communities in Minnesota, as well as better understand where the Center's place as an outreach center is in that system.

2) What is a current engagement project your unit is working?

The Center for Small Towns has a multitude of diverse and ambitious projects being actively worked on and waiting on deck to be put into progress when resources are available. Because of CST's four main methodologies it's hard to look at just one project that the unit is working on because everything CST does is collaboration, and falls under different aspects of the Center's cornerstones. Currently there are four different projects that all together exemplify the broad range of CST's skill set and talents.

Currently CST is working to collect and analyze data for Lac qui Parle (LqP) County's "Computer Commuter" initiative which focuses on bringing comprehensive technology education to the county as a whole, and making that information accessible. The LqP Computer Commuter consists of a small reconstituted bus now filled with active mobile technology workstations. Community members board the vehicle and then can receive one on one training and attention from staff members on the bus. Two CST students are currently gathering statistical and qualitative information on the success and reach of the initiative, and plan to present a report and summary of what they've found out regarding the initiative.

The Center for Small Towns is also actively working with community support in the Starbuck community just outside of Morris. One student employee, also a native of Starbuck, is working to help update the local Chamber of Commerce's website with local businesses. He is also serving businesses directly by providing other internet services as well, including setting up their facebook, and making them searchable on Google Maps. By directly interacting with communities and their needs CST hopes to help improve the commerce and availability of businesses in the area.

In the area of brokering and collaboration CST is working in conjunction with the 4-Township area and the University's own faculty at the Data Services Center. CST worked closely with both student and faculty in creating a survey about the economic profile for the 4-Township area which exists just below the Boundary Waters in Northern Minnesota. After the release of the survey Engin Sungur, a Statistics Professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris, and also a key contact at the Data Services Center, will be working closely with CST to draw up both a statistical analysis as well as report on the findings.

Currently CST is engaged in creating and running a summit intended to convene rural leaders, the rural development industry, and artists all together at the University of Minnesota, Morris on June 5 and 6. The Rural Arts and Culture Summit is a joint venture between the Center for Small Towns and Springboard for the Arts and will engage rural minded individuals from throughout Minnesota and its surrounding states to stimulate new ideas for small towns to continue to not only survive, but thrive. The Summit has a specific focus on uniting rural economic developers with rural artists to create change that can work with and encompass every aspect of rural communities.

3) What neighborhoods/communities/counties/etc. is this project partnering with?

The Center for Small towns reaches a large and diverse number of communities throughout Minnesota, but also beyond state borders when engaging in projects like the Rural Arts and Culture Summit. The Center has reached communities extending up by the boundary waters, as well as communities practically on the Center's doorstep. The communities CST works with are many, and diverse. The only requirement for a community to work with the Center is that its population is at or below 5,000 residents.

4) What impact is this project having/expect to have?

The Center for Small Towns hopes to create a positive impact on both the Morris campus community as well as the overall well-being of rural communities throughout the state. By reaching out to as many communities as possible (in the Small Town Harvest for example) the Center hopes that it can continue to diversify and broaden its outreach to communities throughout the state. The Center for Small Towns also offers opportunities for University students to learn and explore their talents as well as work closely and develop a relationship with small towns. The impact of the Center for Small Towns extends beyond any individual project, but instead seeks to positively impact both the campus community members as well as the members of small towns.

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For the March edition of our Engaging U spotlight we meet Merrie Benasutti, Associate Director of the Center for Integrative Leadership and Coordinator of Cedar Humphrey Action for Neighborhood Collaborative Engagement (CHANCE). CHANCE was selected by the Office for Public Engagement as the University of Minnesota representative for the 2013 MacJannet Prize for Global Citizenship.

1) Describe the work of your office.
Cedar Humphrey Action for Neighborhood Collaborative Engagement (CHANCE) is a student initiative of the Center for Integrative Leadership. CHANCE was created by students and remains a student-led initiative. The main goal of CHANCE is to strengthen the interdependent relationship between Cedar-Riverside residents and business owners and the University of Minnesota. This is accomplished through civic engagement programming that builds the capacity of all of us, as neighbors, to advance a shared vision. The Cedar-Riverside neighborhood has long been home to both immigrant and counter-culture communities. The vibrant multi-cultural neighborhood that is healthy and capable is clouded by a perceived lack of safety and the struggles of new immigrants. This neighborhood is directly adjacent to the University of Minnesota's West Bank.

2) What is a current engagement project your unit is working on?
CHANCE is a student-led, collaborative initiative involving a year-long, graduate public affairs course created by the students, a neighborhood business fellows program, and a cross-cultural learning series. CHANCE has achieved many accomplishments; including addressing community safety issues leading to a new neighborhood safety center that has coincided with a decrease in reported crime. Additionally, CHANCE successfully promotes neighborhood businesses through the neighborhood business fellows program. We have shared case studies of local businesses, completed a Regional Entrepreneur Perception Analysis for the West Bank Business Association, and is currently working on a neighborhood ambassador program. Ten CHANCE student members have received individual student or community leadership awards for their individual achievements through CHANCE. Overall, the success of CHANCE is defined by meaningful learning experiences for students and increased community capacity.

3) What neighborhoods/communities/counties/etc. is this project partnering with?
The CHANCE initiative partners with the Cedar Riverside Neighborhood and associations within the neighborhood including the West Bank Community Coalition (WBCC), the Cedar Riverside Neighborhood Revitalization Program (CRNRP), and the West Bank Business Association (WBBA).

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In the upcoming editions of Engaging U, we will feature University of Minnesota engagement units and centers. If you have suggestions for upcoming profiles, please contact Amber Cameron (acameron@umn.edu).

For this edition of our Engaging U spotlight we meet Laurie McGinnis, Director for the Center for Transportation Studies (CTS). In the interview below, McGinnis provides highlights of her center's engagement work on a project of regional significance.

Describe the work of your office:

The Center for Transportation Studies was created in 1987 to address the need for closer cooperation between University faculty and state and federal departments of transportation, and to strengthen the University's role in transportation research and education. Our mission is to be a catalyst for transportation innovation through research, education, and outreach.

CTS uses a broad participatory structure to engage practitioners, stakeholders, policymakers, private industry, and communities with University faculty, staff, and students on the transportation issues of today and tomorrow. Our partners view us as an objective convener around transportation topics with the ability to facilitate discussions that lead to solutions.

What is a current engagement project your unit is working?

Ed Goetz, director of the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs, and I are co-leading the University of Minnesota's evaluation team as part of the metropolitan area's "Corridors of Opportunity" initiative (www.corridorsofopportunity.org). It is an initiative to promote sustainable, vibrant, and healthy communities in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region, using the region's emerging transitway system as a development focus. Funded by a Sustainable Communities Regional Planning Grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Integration Initiative funds from Living Cities (a collaboration of 22 of the nation's largest foundations and financial institutions) the Corridors of Opportunity initiative runs from 2011 to 2013.

The evaluation will address both the systems-change dimensions of the Corridors of Opportunity initiative as well as the tangible impacts on quantitative indicators documenting changes in the region.

The objectives are to:
--Evaluate the impact of the Corridors of Opportunity initiative;
--Provide data or outcome reporting required by HUD;
--Coordinate data, data collection, measures and indicators of activity related to Corridors of Opportunity and its projects, leveraging other data collection efforts; and
--Provide the Corridors of Opportunity Policy Board ongoing formative evaluation to inform the evolution of the Corridors of Opportunity initiative.

What impact is this project having/expect to have?

The vision of the initiative is that transit way corridors will guide our region's growth, vitality and competitiveness. Development along transit ways will create distinctive places and strengthen local assets while increasing ridership and expanding access to jobs, affordable housing and essential services for residents of all incomes and backgrounds.

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A "day on, not a day off." That's the spark for the UMN Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Service Volunteer Pledge Drive. Inspired by the national MLK Day of Service, this pilot project on the Twin Cities campus aims to promote service opportunities for faculty, staff, and students while advancing the University's mission of public engagement for the common good.

Through a voluntary "Take the Pledge" web page, the project will also provide a snapshot of the community volunteer hours U faculty, staff, and students contribute each year.

Pledge any amount of volunteer community service hours through March 31 and complete pledged hours by Friday, May 17.

Take the pledge today!

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It's the New Year and with it comes a whole new batch of proposal and paper opportunities!

- Call for Proposals: Special Issue of Mobilization (Deadline: January 11, 2013)
Mobilization, the leading scholarly journal in social movement studies plans a special issue on innovative research in contentious politics to be published in December 2013.

- Call for Proposals: A Journal of Imagining America (Deadline: January 15 - February 15, 2013)
The theme of this new journal is "Linked Fates & Futures: Communities and Campuses as Equitable Partners". We invite proposals that reflect critically on the shared predicaments of democratically-oriented cultural work in higher education.

- Call for Manuscripts - Journal of Public Scholarship in Higher Education (Deadline: February 1, 2013)
The Journal of Public Scholarship in Higher Education showcases the new disciplinary knowledge and pedagogical practice generated when faculty engage with communities.

- Call for Abstracts: National Environmental Justice Conference & Training Program (Deadline: February 1, 2013)
Leaders from various sectors will engaged in 3 days of free exchange of new ideas and new approaches to environmental justice.

- Community College National Center for Community Engagement Annual Conference (Deadline: February 8, 2013)
The Community College National Center for Community Engagement is happy to announce it's now accepting pre-conference and workshop proposals for its 22nd Annual International Conference to be held on May 22-24, 2013

- 2013 Upper Midwest Civic Engagement Summit: Call for Session Proposals (Deadline: February 11, 2013)
Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin Campus Compact invite proposals for the Upper Midwest Civic Engagement Summit, which will take place May 29-30, 2013 at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa. Each session proposal should relate to the Summit's theme: Weaving Deep Connections Across Institutions and Communities.

- Call for Papers: Teaching Democratic Thinking (Deadline: February 15, 2013)
Proposal abstracts are sought for a special 2014 issue of Partnerships: A Journal of Service-learning and vic Engagement.

- Call for Manuscript Proposals: Special Issue of Feminist Teacher on Feminist Campus-Community Partnerships (Deadline: February 15, 2013)
We seek contributions that provide project-specific attempts to connect with--or interrupt--community engagement work as a way to generate meaning in the lives of students, faculty, administrators and community partners.

- RIEJS Call for Papers: Education for Citizenship: Challenges and Perspectives from a Social Justice Approach (Deadline: February 15, 2013)
The International Journal of Education for Social Justice (RIEJS) publishes three types of contributions: articles, text reviews, and published-contribution reviews.

- Imagine America Call for Proposals: Communities & Campuses as Equitable Partners (Deadline: February 15, 2013)
Imagine America invites submissions to the first issue of Public rooted in the 2012 Imagining America conference. The e-journal of Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life, Public promotes public and engaged forms of scholarship and practice across arts, humanities, and design.

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As a member of the Talloires Network, the University of Minnesota is invited to submit up to 2 nominations to be considered for the MacJannet Prize for Global Citizenship. The MacJannet Prize was established in order to: recognize and encourage exceptional student community engagement and community service, financially support the ongoing work of university-based civic initiatives, elevate innovate civic engagement program models , strengthen public support for the global civic engagement movement in higher education, and to elevate the civic engagement of universities around the world.

The Office for Public Engagement is conducting an internal application process to determine the nominations that will represent the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities in the award process. We would like to invite university units who want to be considered to submit applications by January 18, 2013. Nomination guidelines and forms are available at the Talloires Network website. Please submit a complete nomination form to public@umn.edu. U of M - Twin Cities finalists will advance to the international competition. Please notify our office of your intent to apply as soon as possible by sending an e-mail to public@umn.edu.

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In this Engaging-U engagement spotlight we meet Laura Bloomberg and Leah Lundquist, Executive Director and Program Manager of the Center for Integrative Leadership. In the interview below, Bloomberg and Lundquist provide highlights of their office's engagement work in the surrounding communities.

Describe the work of your office:

The Center for Integrative Leadership (CIL) is dedicated to examining and advancing a vision for leadership that fosters collective action across boundaries to advance the common good and address grand challenges. We engage in collaborative teaching, community engagement, and research initiatives with schools and centers across the University and partners external to the University.

We define a global grand challenge as a problem that has significant consequences for the well-being of whole societies, yet is difficult to fully understand or address because it is so multi-faceted and ever changing. Grand challenges are highly complex and beyond the resources or knowledge of a single discipline, organization, or sector to resolve. They do not lend themselves to simple or technical solutions. When individual sectors or institutions attempt to solve a grand challenge alone it often precipitates unanticipated and unwanted consequences because they morph and adapt. Grand challenges need to be addressed from all sides. You may have heard these referred to as "wicked problems" or "social messes."

What is the current engagement project your unit is working on?

One of the approaches we find helpful to fostering collective action across boundaries is a powerful suite of facilitative practices and practical frameworks called The Art of Hosting Conversations that Matter. Over the course of two summers, we've trained over 120 staff and faculty from 21 colleges and departments across the University in these practices.

CIL is also embedding a hosting approach into our own engagement efforts. Most recently, we co-hosted a community conversation on the impact of sex trafficking and trading on urban communities with the Urban Research and Outreach-Engagement Center and the Northside Women's Space - a safe place for sexually-exploited girls and women in North Minneapolis. Through the generous help of 15 individuals from both the University and the broader region trained in The Art of Hosting, we hosted a conversation for a diverse cross-section of over 100 community members from both North Minneapolis and across the Metro Area.

What neighborhoods or communities is this project partnering with?

While CIL continues to be committed to building leadership capacity across Minnesota through involvement with InCommons - a statewide effort to inspire and support community-powered problem solving, we also are highly engaged right here in our own neighborhood through CHANCE and the Neighborhood Business Fellows - initiatives that strengthen the interdependent relationship between Cedar-Riverside residents and business owners and students at both the Humphrey School of Public Affairs and the Carlson School of Management.

What impact is this having/expected to have?

By creating the opportunity for individuals to experience a different way to talk about and address cross-boundary issues such as sex trafficking, we hope to inspire students, faculty, and staff across the U to not only continue to address grand challenges but to do so more inclusively and more effectively.

In regard to sex trafficking, our engagement has brought together individuals from a diversity of personal and professional walks of life - law enforcement, concerned community members, graduate students, policymakers, and documentary filmmakers, to just name a few - to hear different voices and design innovative and integrated solutions. Over the next few years, we look forward to continuing to foster integrative leadership in areas such as regional economic and social vitality, healthy development and educational achievement, global food safety and food security, and post-secondary education's role in society.

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Here's a list of updated proposal and paper opportunities for the months of December & January. Find one that fits your engagement work! Deadlines are in parentheses.

1) Fall 2013 EPA Greater Research Opportunities Fellowships (December 5)

2) Collaborative Research Grants (December 6)

3) 2013 Pace Conference: Call for Proposals (December 10)

4) Community Impact Grants Program (December 12)

5) Environmental Justice Small Grants Program (January 7)

6) Kauffman Foundation: Junior Faculty Fellowships in Entrepreneurial Research (January 15)

7) Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change: Mellon Scholar Fellowship (January 25)

8) J.W. McConnell Family Foundation: Community Service Learning Awards (January 31)

9) MacJannet Prize for Global Citizenship (February 8)

10) Resilient Communities Project 2013-2014: Request for Proposals (February 15)

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For our second faculty spotlight we meet Will Craig, the Associate Director for the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA). Craig gives us a summary of his office's work, specifically what makes it unique and what outcomes CURA expects to see.

Describe the work of your office

CURA is an All-University Center working to connect University faculty and students with the community for the benefit of both. We do this primarily by supporting applied University research projects and providing technical assistance to community organizations. Last year we supported 71 research projects involving faculty and graduate students from 12 different colleges and over 30 different departments and units. In addition, CURA supported over 100 technical assistance projects, like community organizing or mapping. In total, we helped the University engage with 164 community organizations in the Twin Cities and across the state. For details, see our recent Annual Report.

What is unique about CURA's work?

That's tough, because it's hard to choose. Our faculty-supported projects cover a broad range of urban-related topics. But I'm going to focus on our Community Based Research projects, because they are unique. Each semester we issue a Request for Proposal (RFP) to community organizations, asking them to outline a research project that could help them achieve their mission. Proposals are reviewed by an advisory committee composed of people from academia and the community. Winners are awarded 10hrs/week of a graduate student for a full semester - 195 hours. Here's the catch: the student can come from anywhere in the University - or from any coordinate campus (not all are graduate students). CURA works with the community organization to develop a job description, which is posted on the University website. Students apply directly to the community and they pick the student that best suits their needs. CURA requires a work plan and regular updates, but the student works for the community organization. We also pay the student and publish the final report so other community organizations can benefit from it.

What kinds of outcomes do you expect?

CURA hopes that our community partners get a report that helps them advance their mission. One part of the RFP asks how they will utilize the results. Typically, the project helps them frame an issue or take action on an issue they already understand. In the process we want them to grow their social capital. Some examples:

• An early project in the Elliot Park and Loring Park neighborhoods of Minneapolis identified restorative justice as a way to combat nuisance crimes, a project that eventually convinced the courts to adopt this approach.
• A student from Theater Arts helped the community theater in Big Fork create an old-time drop for their stage, an effort that engaged over 50 members of the community, including many young people.
• A Landscape Architecture student recently worked with a non-profit CSA( Community Supported Agriculture) group to develop design approaches for "pocket farms" now being developed on vacant lots in the McKinley neighborhood of North Minneapolis.

CURA expects most students working on these projects grow intellectually and professionally. We want them to have a chance to apply what they've learned in the classroom and to expand their skills. Results from a recent self-study of recent graduates show that we are meeting these goals. Two-thirds of the students contacted said the project complemented their coursework and 95% said the research experience expanded their skills. Many individuals extolled their community-engaged experience, saying it was a highlight of their professional development.

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1) Asset-Based Approaches to Campus-Community Partnerships - Deadline: November 15

2) Community University Expo 2013: Engaging Shared Worlds - Deadline: November 15

3) Relational and Social Network Perspectives in Community Psychology - Deadline: November 15

4) Significance of Community to Individual and Family Well-Being: Family & Consumer Sciences Research Journal - Deadline: November 15

5) Gulf South Summit Request for Proposals - Deadline: November 19

6) Pathways to Achieving Civic Engagement (PACE) Conference - Deadline: December 10

7) IMPACT Conference - Deadline: December 10

8) Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning - Deadline: December 20

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For our introductory faculty spotlight, we meet Andrea Leinberger-Jabari: the coordinator of the Clinical Translational Science Institute (CTSI). Leinberger-Jabari gives us a summary of her office's work and an overview of some engagement work they do in the surrounding communities.

Describe the work of your office.

The Office of Community Engagement for Health is housed within the Clinical and Translational Science Institute at the UMN Twin Cities campus. The goal of the OCEH is to create and maintain an infrastructure to support community engagement in health related research. We believe that if communities are engaged throughout the research process (inception through implementation and dissemination), then the results of that research will be more meaningful and usable by communities. We work with both community-based organizations and faculty to create more avenues for such engagement to occur.

What is a current engagement project your unit is working?

A current project I am working on that I am most excited about is a new project we are calling the "Community Research Institute." The goal of the CRI is to bring community organizational representatives to campus for a 6-week workshop series designed to provide them with opportunities to enhance their research skills, network with other organizations and faculty interested in community-based research, and direct one-on-one technical assistance from faculty willing to coach them on a research project. The Office of Community Engagement for Health is joining forces with the Center for Health Equity and the Program in Health Disparities Research to offer this workshop series to community organizations. This is the first year we are embarking on this and we have selected 11 organizations to participate. The community response to this opportunity has been overwhelming and we already have a "wait list" for the next cycle!

What neighborhoods/communities/counties/etc. is this project partnering with?

There is an extremely diverse group of organizations participating in the Community Research Institute. We are working with community-based non-profits from Minneapolis and St. Paul, new immigrant organizations, rural county public health and small private clinics. We are really excited to see what networking occurs amongst these groups.

What impact is this project having/expect to have?

We hope that the organizations that participate in this workshop series will gain additional skills in conducting health related research and will actually begin to formulate a research project they have defined so that they can then apply for research grants. The OCEH annually issues a call for proposals for community-engaged research and pairs community organizations with academic partners and so I can see the potential for these organizations to be in a place where they may be interested in applying for these or similar funds.

Thanks for a great first spotlight on engaging faculty, Andrea!

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On May 16, 2012 the Hennepin-University Partnership (H-UP), at the University's Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA), hosted a networking "Mixer" to provide a forum for Hennepin County and University of Minnesota Staff and Faculty to get to know one another and create new collaborations. Seventy-six Hennepin County and University faculty and staff participated at this event, held at the Coffman Memorial Union on campus.

Ed Goetz, Director of CURA, commented "this was an exciting event that demonstrated the continuing energy and strong commitment of both sides to find new ways to work together on solving some of the more complex problems that face our community."
As a follow-up to this event, the H-UP invited proposals for a $20,000 Hennepin-University Collaborative Grant (HUCG).The purpose of this HUCG grant was to encourage University faculty and Hennepin County staff to partner on projects that involve an issue or topic of significance to both entities.

The H-UP just announced that the project entitled "The Risk of Family Homelessness over the Recession: The Role of Earnings History" was selected by the H-UP Management Team as the recipient of the 2012 Hennepin-University Collaborative Grant. Lisa Thornquist, Program Analysis Supervisor, Housing and Homelessness Initiatives and the Office to End Homelessness and Maria Hanratty, Associate Professor, Humphrey School of Public Affairs, submitted a joint application proposing to assess the impact of the recent recession on shelter entry of families on food support in Hennepin County. They will also develop predictors of shelter entry to better target homeless prevention services for low-income families.

Three other grant applications were also received and show potential for collaborations that could generate value for both Hennepin County and the University.

Hennepin County Commissioner Jan Callison reflected "these proposals illustrate the broad range of issues that Hennepin County tackles day in and day out. The potential for collaborations with the University to gain insights and generate new ideas is boundless."

For more information on H-UP, please visit the Hennepin-University Partnership website

This article was written by Brittany Kellerman (kelle410@umn.edu)

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The Global Health & Innovation Conference 2013 is currently accepting abstracts for presentation at their 10th Annual Conference. It is the world's largest global health and social entrepreneurship conference. This must-attend, thought-leading conference annually convenes 2,200 leaders, changemakers, students, and professionals from all fields of global health, international development, and social entrepreneurship. The conference will be taking place April 13-14, 2013 at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

The first abstract deadline is August 31, 2012. For further details and registration visit: http://www.uniteforsight.org/conference/.

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The second national Black Environmental thought and practice conference invites scholars, activists, farmers, artists, gardeners, environmentalists and outdoor enthusiasts across the African diaspora to engage in translocal and transnational dialogues about environmental justice. The conference aims to provide a space where participants can bridge theory and practice while creating ethically responsible collaborative partnerships.

The conference will take place at the Hubert H. Humphrey Center on the University of Minnesota campus on September 21-23, 2012. Registration is required and can be found here, along with additional information and details about the conference.

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Save the date for Healthy Foods, Healthy Lives (HFHL) Institute's 4th annual research symposium, titled Minnesota Leaders in Food and Health. This year's two-day symposium and food summit, annually co-hosted by HFHL and the University's Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, will present and showcase award-winning research led by renowned University food and health experts.

This symposium will take place October 1st and 2nd at TCF Bank Stadium (Minneapolis) and the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum (Chaska) respectively. If you are a health professional, a researcher, a representative of the food or health care insurance industry, a school administrator, a parent or simply a citizen interested in and concerned about your food system and your community's health, you are invited to attend this program. Please join us and learn about the impact and contributions that 'homegrown' research is having on educating and improving the lives of not only Minnesotans but people all over the world.

This event may offer Continuing Education Units (CEUs) for interested professionals.

Please look for more details and registration information in the coming weeks or visit: http://www.hfhl.umn.edu/.

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