Public Engagement

William Krivit, M.D., Ph.D., was a pioneering pediatrician and immunologist at the University of Minnesota. He died in December, 2005 at the age of 80, having left an enduring legacy not just in clinical research but in relations with patients and their families. His colleague and collaborator, Dr. Elsa Shapiro, gave an overview of his career and contributions at a memorial service this January. Here are some excerpts from her presentation:

He was a visionary and leader, a caring physician, a zealous advocate, a humanist, and built bridges between the laboratory and bedside before the term translational research was coined. He was known in Minnesota for his humanism and strong advocacy for his patients (and all children, especially those who were disadvantaged), and internationally for his academic work, his leadership, his innovation, and passionate pursuit of his ideas....

In 1974, Bill together with colleagues, developed the University of Minnesota Blood and Marrow Pediatric Transplant program – one of the first pediatric transplant programs in the country. He later founded the Children’s Cancer Study Group (CCSG, now known as COG). He was also instrumental in the founding of the Ronald McDonald House program. ...

In the field of lysosomal storage and related diseases he made important contributions including...

• the first Hurler disease transplant in the US
  
• the first transplant for MPS VI
  
• the first beneficial metachromatic leukodystrophy (MLD) transplant
  
• the first transplant for globoid cell leukodystrophy
  
• the first beneficial transplant for adrenoleukodystrophy in the US
  
• the first clinical trial funded by NIH to study the value of bone marrow transplant for storage diseases

He loved his patients…he called them ‘my precious angels.’ He was always compassionate with the kids who were sick; he teased them in a loving way… Here is a quote from a parent of a child …..

One of my favorite memories is how Dr. Krivit would "light up" the room every morning. He would come into our darkened room very early in the morning and flip on the brightest light. Darcee hated this and one day decided to get back at him. On this morning when he awakened her by "lighting up" the room, she took careful aim with her shooting ice cream cone and hit him dead center. This upstanding, dignified 70 year old doctor stumbled about the room dying his slow death and finally crumbled to the floor in the corner. My daughter couldn't have been prouder. She soon learned however that Dr. Krivit was like a cat and that he had many more lives yet to live....

Bill encouraged parents to start the MLD Foundation so others affected with MLD would have a support system and wouldn't have to suffer alone. He helped put on the first family conference in 2000 and was a speaker at subsequent conferences. At another family meeting, several of the parents of boys with ALD had T shirts with the numbers 2397 on the backs. Most of the parents knew what those numbers meant, but of the professionals at the meeting, only those from Minnesota knew that 2397 was Bill’s pager number....

Bill was one of the seminal thinkers in this field; a visionary who channeled his gifts of intellect and passion to further the research in inherited metabolic diseases. Some people thought that he was overzealous; but the end result of his intellect and passion was that his ideas shaped the field and provided the impetus for forward movement in the treatment of these diseases. He spent a lifetime working for the benefit of children and the advancement of science. Bill was truly a humanitarian, a teacher, and a scientist whose work will continue to drive the field ahead. We will miss him greatly but his spirit will continue to be felt in those whose lives he touched.

The web site of the MLD Foundation is a model for the involvement and mutual support of the parents of children with devastating diseases. The home page lists the important resources offered by the Foundation:

• Compassion will take you to the MLD Family where you can connect with others.
  
• Awareness is where you will find what is being done to increase knowledge of MLD and how you can help.
  
• Research describes the latest in efforts to treat and cure MLD.
  
• Education leads to MLD-101 which presents a comprehensive, yet very readable, layman's overview of MLD.

The home page also contains a photograph of Bill Krivit, with a link to an appreciation of his contributions to the field and the families that he affected so strongly. He stands as an outstanding exemplar of the engaged practice of scholarship in the medical field, a pioneer in research, in translating that research into clinical practice, and in connecting with patients and their families every step of the way.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 01:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Two days ago I wrote about "Public Engagement for Graduate Students in Science and Engineering". I'd like to follow this up with some reflections about the ethical issues that should be touched upon in teaching grad students about engaged research in the STEM disciplines. Especially important are issues that might arise in working with publics in some kind of partnership.

In the health sciences, ethical concerns about the protection of human subjects are paramount. Not only do regular Institutional Review Board (IRB) concerns have to be satisfied for university researchers, but if work is done in collaboration with a community organization, then those community members who are involved in the research should also have tproper training in human subjects protection and data privacy issues. In addition, there's active debate whether special IRBs, with more than the (usually token) complement of community members, should be appointed to oversee community-based work.

If graduate students take internships with companies, intellectual property (IP) rights are a particular concern. Presumably the IP developed during an internship belongs to the company, but care needs to be taken not to inadvertently transfer IP developed at the university.

The most frequent ethical concerns in scientific research, in addition to human or animal subjects and intellectual property, are fraud, plagiarism, and authorial conflicts.These could become manifest in somewhat different ways in public partnerships, particularly with non-academic community partners who may not know all of the canons of data integrity, who may not appreciate the complexities of citing the work of others, and who may not realize the responsibilities accruing to authorship. (On the other hand, academic researchers may be dismissive of the valid claim of community partners to be coauthors.) Taking the trouble to teach about these concerns could be useful not only for the community partner but also for the academic partner who can learn a lot from the process of teaching.

My colleague in the Philosophy Department, Naomi Scheman, has emphasized the question of community trust in research results: Why should university researchers be trusted when they're researching things of particular importance and sensitivity to a community, and the community is not given the opportunity to learn about, question, and shape the research. These situations could easily arise in environmental toxicology projects, for example, where studies of local accumulations of toxins could raise concerns about viability of scarce housing stock, accusations of irresponsible parenting, etc. One can argue that in such situations, academic researchers have an ethical as well as a practical responsibility to involve community partners deeply in the conceptualization, execution, and analysis of the research.

What are some of the ethical responsibilities that arise when volunteering in a school or museum? One is to be dependable, to show up when scheduled and to be prepared. Another is to know the material well, to be prepared to teach and discuss at a level appropriate to the audience. A third is to develop some teaching skills: how to deal with a disruptive student, how to keep the interest of the group, how to elicit active learning. It's important to be respectful of the time of the people we're trying to help.

The same principles apply when mentoring a younger college student: be dependable and communicate at the appropriate level. In addition, although developing a friendship with a mentee is a good thing, developing too close a personal relationship, especially one with romantic or sexual overtones, is not.

Programs that use the professional expertise of students to help communities, such as civil engineering students working on a water purification project in a needy rural community, of course need to exercise all the responsibility and ethical standards of practicing professionals.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 08:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Going through a stack of material to read, I came across the May 1, 2006 issue of Chemical & Engineering News, with a cover story on "Nanomaterials: Producers join with others for responsible use" (pp. 10-18).

Nanoparticles occur naturally, and have been around for decades in manufactured products and as products of combustion. But the purposeful engineering and large-scale production of well-defined nanomaterials - based on discoveries in academic laboratories - is just beginning. Concerns are arising about whether these very small particles will infiltrate and injure lung and other tissue, especially once they are out of relatively controlled laboratory or manufacturing facilities and into the general environment.

Although there are as yet no well-documented cases of problems arising, this is viewed as the "chance of a lifetime" to investigate the environmental health and safety (EHS) and ethical, legal, or societal issues (ELSI) before a major new technology takes off. Research and education on EHS and ELSI are about 7% of the total budget of the National Nanotechnology Initiative.

This situation is a striking example of how academic researchers can find themselves working together with industrial scientists and engineers, government regulators, environmentalists, and consumer advocates to address a technology that holds much promise for good, but also raises important public safety concerns. It also should bring together - within academia - chemists and materials scientists, physiologists, environmental scientists, lawyers, and ethicists to engage in a broad interdisciplinary fashion with an important public issue. The teaching as well as research opportunities are obvious.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 09:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

At the University of Minnesota we are thinking about ways to incorporate discipline-specific public engagement examples into the training in the ethical conduct of research that we provide to all graduate students. In the science, math, and engineering areas, this blog has already discussed some case studies (March 7 and 16, April 3 and 4, June 21).

Because science and technology (and the mathematics that undergird them) so permeate modern society, it is not hard to generate examples worthy of discussion. There are some obvious examples of how science and society have interacted in very public ways, such as the Manhattan Project that led to the atomic bomb, and the Asilomar Conference that led to a self-imposed moratorium on recombinant DNA research until the dangers could be better assessed. From earlier days one has the attempts to reliably determine longitude (engagingly recounted in Dava Sobel's book of that name) so as to make the oceans safe for trading voyages, and Michael Faraday's work on electricity and magnetism. (I've seen two versions of what occurred when Prime Minister Gladstone visited Faraday's lab and asked what use his research might be. In one version, Faraday is reported to have replied "What use is a baby?" In the other version, "Someday you'll be able to tax it.")

These are all major things that have had profound influences on society. I think that they should be mentioned and explored, but that we should focus on examples of more immediate local significance, in which STEM grad students might participate directly. These could include

• Discussing patents and technology licensing by universities
  
• Developing internships and volunteering in science museums
  
• Arranging K-12 school visits to talk about science and engineering
  
• Mentoring younger college students from underrepresented groups
  
• Making contact with local industries through departmental seminars
  
• Developing engineering designs for people in need (e.g., water purification)
  
• Studying toxicology and environmental justice issues
  
• Developing nutritional awareness programs in poor communities
  
• Discussing legal and ethical issues in the biological and health sciences
  
• Discussing the economic and political ramifications of renewable energy sources
  

It's important to consider these and similar examples in the light of the definition of engagement adopted by the CIC Committee on Engagement and the parallel NASULGC/CECEPS:

Engagement is the partnership of university knowledge and resources with those of the public and private sectors to enrich scholarship, research, and creative activity; enhance curriculum, teaching and learning; prepare educated, engaged citizens; strengthen democratic values and civic responsibility; address critical societal issues; and contribute to the public good.

Most science and engineering projects are motivated at least in part by public and private concerns (e.g. when research is sponsored by NIH or private industry), and there is usually little question that they hold the potential to enrich research, enhance curriculum, and address critical societal issues. It's less clear - though a strong case can be made if we take the trouble to articulate the connections - that scientific research could contribute to the preparation of educated, engaged citizens; and that it strengthens democratic values and civic responsibility through its very practice (see Jacob Bronowski's Science and Human Values).

And, of course, definitions of "the public good" are often contentious these days. But such contentions provide rich opportunities to discuss public engagement in the context of the STEM disciplines with our graduate students.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 09:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I spent this morning at a meeting to examine the feasibility of offering math and science through College in the Schools. According to the mission statement distributed at the meeting,

College in the Schools at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, is a concurrent enrollment program serving high school students, teachers, and schools by increasing access to college learning, supporting excellence in teaqching, and strengthening high school-University connections.

College in the Schools (CIS)...

• Gives students firsthand experience with the high academic standards and increased workload typical of college education as well as the personal responsibility required to be successful in college study.
  
• Provides teachers with ongoing, University-based professional development workshops that are directly related to the content, pedagogy, and assessment of the University of Minnesota courses they teach through CIS.
  
• Strengthens curricular, instructional, and professional ties between high schools and the University of Minnesota.

In 2004-05, CIS served 3,385 individual students in more than 5,300 U of M courses. It worked with 165 high school teachers in 65 high schools. Teachers received an average of 21 hours of discipline-specific workshops, all planned and led by U of M faculty and staff. Courses were offered in English language arts, social studies, and world and classical languages.

Strikingly, no courses are offered in math or science. It is clearly possible to do so, as evidenced by the presentations of Profs. Terry McConnell (Math) and Marvin Druger (Biology) from Syracuse University, who talked about "Concurrent Enrollment at Syracuse University: Why we do it. How we do it." The introductory talk, by Alex Cirillo, Vice President for Community Affairs at 3M, made it clear that getting more students interested in the science/math/engineering disciplines is key to our future. One may hope that meetings like the one today will figure out ways to do it.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 08:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday I posted the first half of a list of of the PreK-12 engagement activities of students, faculty, and staff in the College of Liberal Arts (CLA) at the University of Minnesota. Here's the second half.

• The Institute for Global Studies provides a colloquium for middle and high school teachers on teaching Asian film in their classes.
  
• The Hmong Mentor Program provides one-on-one reading with K-12 students during school and assists students with their academic work.
  
• Voices from the Gaps is a website used in classrooms around the world by teachers from junior high school through university to help students research the lives and works of North American Women Artists of Color. In addition, the VG staff works with secondary school teachers in Minnesota to develop curricular activities that both use and contribute to the website
  
• The Classics in the Schools program trains undergraduates to give presentations about classical antiquity to high school students in the Twin Cities.
  
• Faculty have worked on the national effort to develop ANSI classroom acoustics standards for classrooms and have worked on state efforts to include these standards in Minnesota building codes. The standards will improve classroom listening conditions for all students, especially younger students, students learning English, students with hearing loss, and students with other disabilities
  
• The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies provides in-service teacher training, workshops, and curricular materials to middle and high schools
  
• Students and faculty in the Department of Chicano Studies works in partnership with La Escuelita, Webster Open School, Edison Senior High, and Academia Cesar Chavez to help ensure the educational success of Latino youth. The EDUCATE Program places university students in the K-12 school day and after-school programs as tutors and mentors. Faculty and student mentors host K-12 students on visits to the U of M campus to help instill the idea in students that a college education is a realizable goal for them and that a support system exists on campus to ensure their success
  
• The School of Journalism and Mass Communication collaborates with the Asian American Journalism Association to provide intense journalism training for high school students. It partners with the National Scholastic Press Association to teach middle school and high school students and faculty advisers about the preparation, publication and editing of scholastic newspapers, yearbooks and other student media. The program also participates in the Urban Journalism Workshop, sponsored by the D.C. chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists which serves high school students and their parents
  
• School of Music students take part in service learning in FAIR School and in Central High School in St. Paul. Faculty work with PreK-12 music teachers throughout Minnesota. The Marching Band hosts the U of M High School Honor Band each January which culminates in a concert in Ted Mann Concert Hall. Opera faculty provide workshops for high school students and summer music theatre workshops. Jazz faculty stage a Jazz Festival each spring for middle and high school students, and jazz students perform with local high school jazz ensembles. Electronic music faculty provide tours of their music studios for high school students
  
• The CLA Language Center serves K-12 language teachers and their students in a variety of ways. The Center offers courses on language pedagogy and technology and partners with CARLA to offer weekend and summer institutes on using technology in language instruction. The Center supports the College in the Schools program by providing web-based voice tools for Spanish teachers, offering language assessment tools, and providing workshops for College in the Schools teachers during their campus visits. The Center organizes World Languages Day, an annual event that provides hundreds of Minnesota high school juniors and their teachers an opportunity to explore some of the languages and cultures of the world and to experience life at the University of Minnesota. Language Center staff serve administrative and editorial roles in the Minnesota Council on the Teaching of Languages and Cultures, volunteer to judge high school language competitions, and serve on various public school task forces. The Center’s website provides language learning resources for K-12 students and their teachers. The Center’s Tandem Learning Program is initiating a collaboration that will pair native Spanish-speaking high school students learning English with U of M students enrolled in Spanish classes
  
• CLA supports 50 courses a year that have a service-learning component and CLA’s Career and Community Learning Center places about 350 students each semester in service learning and internships that focus on children and youth development, literacy education, early childhood education, or on elementary, middle school or high school education. CLA students assist in alternative, charter, public school, and after-school settings with homework as well as with arts recreation, literacy, college-prep, and leadership development. CCLC maintains ongoing partnerships with 7 alternative and charter schools, 18 after-school and mentoring programs, 6 public school districts and programs, and 17 other community agencies that serve children and youth.
  
• The department of African American & African Studies participates in college day events sponsored by the Somali Student Association and Black Student Union and participates in the Minnesota Humanities Commission’s K-12 Teacher Institute seminars
  
• As part of a Federal Department of Education FIPSE grant, geography faculty have developed a Teachers Guide for K-12 teachers that engage K-12 teachers in nationwide workshops
  
• The Department of German, Scandinavian and Dutch College in the Schools program serves 20 high school teachers and 300 students each year. Students complete the University of Minnesota’s second-year German curriculum in their high school; teachers take part in professional development workshops. The department’s Mears Fellows visit German language classrooms around the metro area. In August 2006 the department will host a workshop for German high school teachers. Pending funding, the department will collaborate in a Minnesota Humanities Commission workshop for K-12 teachers. A member of the GSD faculty directs the Neighborhood Bridges program in cooperation with the Children’s Theatre that brings actor/teachers into Minneapolis and St. Paul elementary school classrooms.
  
• In partnership with Project SUCCESS, the University Theatre serves over 2,000 students and their families annually from ten middle school and high schools in Minneapolis and St. Paul. The theatre also provides matinees of their main stage productions along with theatre tours and talkbacks with cast and artistic staff that serve 1,500 students annually. Over 400 middle and high school students participate in puppetry, improvisation, costume, vocal and movement workshops held each summer on the Minnesota Centennial Showboat. The Summer Theatre Institute for high school students focuses on acting, voice, movement/physical performance styles, puppetry and clowning. U of M theatre students are working with students at Washburn High School and Lyndale Elementary School
  
• The Writing Center sponsors Gopher Writing Camp, a summer program for middle and high school students, as well a summer writing camp for urban middle school teachers, and a summer workshop for K-12 teachers from through Minnesota. The Center hosts the Young Writers Conference each year and provides workshops for students in for several school districts. In partnership with Stillwater School District, the Writing Center designed and offered programs for their desegregation unit

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The College of Liberal Arts (CLA) at the University of Minnesota recently compiled a list of the PreK-12 engagement activities of its students, faculty, and staff. It's a remarkably diverse list, and long enough that I'll divide it in half. I'll post the second half tomorrow.

• CLA leads TEAM-UP (Targeted Early Awareness for Undergraduate Programs) –a partnership between the Minneapolis Public Schools and the University of Minnesota. TEAM-UP is dedicated to inspiring fifth graders from North Star School to pursue academic excellence and higher education through early awareness programs. In partnership with CBS and IT, our faculty, students, and staff make in-class visits to North Star, as well as accompany the fifth graders and their teachers on two campus visits that engage the students in the academic, cultural, and social life of the campus through mini-courses, tours, and other specially tailored learning experiences
  
• The Department of American Indian Studies teaches native languages in joint programs with K-12 institutions, provides students internships to practice teaching native languages in the schools and maintains websites devoted to native languages.
  
• The English as a Second Language Program trains students to teach English as a Second Language in community centers around the Twin Cities area.
  
• English Composition students work with various local organizations, tutoring immigrant and at-risk students.
  
• Specialists in behavior analysis and autism train and supervise interns for frontline behavior therapists for children with autism. Working with different service providers, the Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences places students in family homes each year where they work one-on-one with a young child with autism.
  
• The Minnesota Writing Project works to improve literacy in Minnesota. It helps schools identify their needs and supports them in staff development. K-12 teachers participate in a three-week, intensive summer institute held at the University of Minnesota.
  
• Minnesota History Day, among the largest in the nation, is co-sponsored by the Department of History and the Minnesota Historical Society. It engages middle- and high-school students who conduct research about a historical topic and present their results in writing, on video, or in other formats. Our faculty and students run an undergraduate mentorship program that places mentors in metro area high school classes to work with History Day contestants
  
• The St. Paul Public Schools “Historians in the Schools” program is a 3-year federal grant-funded partnership between the University of Minnesota History Department and the St. Paul Public Schools. It entails a professional development program for St. Paul K-12 public school teachers in which they work with professional historians, learn more American History content, enrich their teaching to meet the new Minnesota State Social Studies Standards and, at the same time, improve the quality of teaching and student achievement
  
• The Center for Austrian Studies sends representatives to international fairs at middle schools to present information about Austria and Central Europe.
  
• The Center for Medieval Studies supports an interactive program that introduces K-12 students to the bound book, a medieval invention, and to the book’s history and uses. The program broadens students’ understanding of the Middle Ages, makes teachers aware of the Center as a portal to resources at the University, and provides University graduate and undergraduate students with an opportunity for work with K-12 students and teachers.
  
• The Asian American Studies Program offers several service-learning courses that include opportunities to work with tutors, non-profit organizations, schools, and other community organizations. Faculty have also established a K-12 curriculum development project
  
• Jane Addams School for Democracy brings college students together with children, youth and adults from new immigrant communities, especially Hmong, Somali, and Latino, at Humboldt High School.
  
• CLA faculty work with preschool and school-age children who learn either Hmong or Spanish as a first language at home and English as a second language.
  
• Public History students work with community partners in the Cedar Riverside neighborhood to develop history-based projects aimed at community development. Some of these projects involve neighborhood youth
  
• Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences partners with community non-profit organizations to work with charter schools that serve children with special needs who live in single-parent families from culturally diverse populations
  
• Faculty collaborate with the BioInvestigators Camp of the Science Museum of Minnesota to provide workshops to introduce middle-school children to archaeological artifacts.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 09:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Mankato (Minnesota) Free Press had an editorial yesterday about a particularly nice example of diverse partners collaborating on a useful piece of research. A parent wrote to the school district, concerned about spraying chemicals on school ground lawns and athletic fields. The district brought "a group of 20 parents and specialists together to oversee the project and secur[ed] a $40,000 grant from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency..." The University of Minnesota Extension Service set up a statistically valid design to test various alternative treatments. Corn gluten and dried distillers' grain will be used on some of the high school and elementary school fields instead of pesticides and traditional fertilizers. The editorial concludes "The Mankato school district and those involved in the project should be commended for doing something to make the school grounds safer for kids while also providing valuable research information about alternative lawn care."

It's not clear whether the kids themselves are involved in the research, for example by helping to monitor treatment effects. But this is a good example of how sophisticated, real-world research can not only serve public purposes, but can also be initiated and carried out through public-specialist-academic partnerships.

Thanks to Cathy Jordan for bringing this story to my attention.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 08:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Today's entry is written by Petra Duecker, who presents a detailed and spirited history and analysis of SCOPE. Her account of the emergence of this important student movement is informative and engaging.

My name is Petra Duecker, and I’m an undergrad student of Political Science, Philosophy, and English. More importantly, I’m a member of the Student Committee on Public Engagement (SCOPE), a Student Organization dedicated to developing a University wide public engagement movement.

SCOPE was born in Political Science Professor Jim Farr’s classroom during the fall semester of 2005. Dr. Farr’s course was called “Democracy and Education,” and its subject was civic engagement. As a component of the course, students were expected to gain hands-on experience by either A: coaching a Public Achievement team (http://www.publicachievement.org/) or B: working with National Director of Public Achievement, Dennis Donovan, in an effort to expand Public Achievement within the University of MN.

The students in “Democracy and Education” were a particularly energetic bunch. Several of us, from sheer enthusiasm, signed on to participate in both options A and B. From various academic and experiential vantage points, we had all learned about the merits of public and civic engagement prior to enrolling in Dr. Farr’s class. What’s more, we’d all come to look on public action and community involvement as avenues for positive change in our University, city, state, nation, and world. And we were ready to work to promote it.

Almost immediately, Dr. Farr’s course requirement blossomed into a full-fledged student led movement. Our group expanded to include student leaders from all facets of the University, and our efforts were no longer confined to Dr. Farr’s class or to the proliferation of PA specifically. We became SCOPE; a group of student leaders committed to promoting a globally engaged culture. SCOPE remains devoted to the pedagogy of PA, but our vision, now, is to use that pedagogy to create space in society for everyone to be active, involved, expressing a voice, and empowered to mold their communities. We plan to start with the University of Minnesota because this is where we happen to be.

We were wisely coached to begin as all experienced community organizers begin - we talked to people. We talked to faculty, administration, staff, all sorts of student groups, student governments and student leaders ... and we were astonished to see: Wow. There are a lot of people who care about the same things we do. Who believe what we believe about civic and public engagement and who are, in each of their individual ways and in their individual sections of the University, working to promote it.

These findings were both an encouragement and a challenge. Though there are many groups with goals similar to our own, they do not always communicate with one another. In many cases, they aren’t even aware of one another.

SCOPE rose to this challenge by creating the Civic Summit on March 30th, 2006. The Summit was designed to be a way for everyone interested in promoting Civic and Public Engagement at the University to meet one another. We hoped that individualized efforts would organically unite into a movement once leaders started talking to one another. Our hope was realized.

At the Summit, leaders from across the University were asked three discussion fostering questions: 1. What do we value as a University community? 2. How are we living those values effectively? 3. How are those values being compromised? The discussion yielded very similar observations from all participants. Despite all the efforts and all the interest in public engagement at the University of Minnesota SCOPE learned of, the broader behavioral trend is one of isolation and disempowerment. Overall, our University’s culture values individuals over community. We see hierarchical, top down approaches to change rather than a focus on democratic, multi-leveled input. As a result, students, faculty, staff, and administrators often choose to be publicly apathetic - an option easier than it's alternative: true education and public expression.

Participants at the Summit agreed - these are cultural trends that we, as citizens of the University community, take fundamental issue with. They’re not what we want our University to look like, and they’re not the values we want to live by. Furthermore, since this is a public, land grant institution, and since we’re as much citizens as students, faculty, and staff at the University, our hope for cultural change is not bred from mere desire. It’s bred from a right to see our education be what we want it to be.

But Summit participants also recognized that no one will emerge from apathy without a clear path and some motivation. So, as a body, we drew from our collective pool of talent to think up avenues for efficient and effective change. Many awesome ideas came out of that discussion; SCOPE is still struggling to sift through all the vibrant, action oriented data we collected in that few hours. Most importantly, the groups and individuals who met at the Summit continue to communicate with one another.

So far, from the discussions at the Summit, SCOPE has extracted five different but interrelated areas to focus our collective energy and take united action. They are meant to be broad platforms for creating broad change; while enacting these initiatives we intend to remain flexible and vocal, ever presenting ourselves as a movement seeking the promotion of civic and public engagement in our University culture as a whole.

Those five action initiatives became the foundation for SCOPE’s Summit follow-up effort: the Capstone Conference. At the conference, students, faculty, and staff reconnected with one another in action-based discussion of the following prospects:

1. Paid student organizers: An effort to recognize the value and power of mobilized students, and to utilize that power by fiscally supporting student mobilization.

2. Future of SCOPE: What does the University Community need from SCOPE? What can SCOPE give? Who is SCOPE?

3. Environmental Justice: Building safe and healthy neighborhoods.

4. Free Spaces: In order to be engaged, University members need to talk to one another. So, in the tradition of Hubert Humphrey’s family drug store, of neighborhood conversations on front porches in America's south ... indeed, of ALL great historic spaces for public communication - SCOPE plans to start making space at the University of Minnesota. As part of that mission, SCOPE is working to initiate a “silicone bracelets for free spaces” campaign this summer. We'll distribute public engagement’s equivalent to “Livestrong” bracelets; wearing a bracelet would identify a person as open to engaging in conversation about public issues. The bracelets will be the U of MN’s mobile front porch.

5. Democratic Student Organizations: If, as a public insititution, the University of Minnesota wishes to produce public actors in a democratic society, these realities must be altered: A. Student organizations are forcibly governed by non-democratically oriented University policy. B. Student leaders don’t have any real systemic power to shape the University community as a whole.

Almost immediately following the Capstone Conference, several members of SCOPE participated in the Spring Engagement Conference hosted by the Student Engagement Initiative Steering Committee. It was a very exciting event. Along with two fellow SCOPErs, I gave a brief talk on the student led Public Engagement effort. As we spoke, I saw our presentation physically enliven the crowd of University citizens present. Faculty, staff, and administrators were genuinely interested in our words…and were perhaps more interested in the Engagement Initiative after listening to us.

Through all our efforts, SCOPE has retained two defining characteristics. First, we do not organize ourselves in a hierarchical structure. We have no President, no Chair; everyone comes to the table with an equal say and an equal vote. We call one another “co-organizers,” and we accomplish tasks according to interest or ability. Second, we work with and in the University’s management structure. We are happy to have worked with administrators and faculty members. Though SCOPE is distinctly student led, we don’t move in opposition to those who shape the culture we seek to modify. We simply desire access to the shaping process.

As SCOPE continues meeting into the summer, working on the five action platforms listed above, we remain cognizant of the call to foster a broadly conceived Public Engagement movement. Our vision, our SCOPE, has not been reduced: we plan to work long and hard for a globally engaged culture. To do this, we must continue expanding. With that necessity, however, comes a difficult toggle between our democratic values and our need for efficiency; how can we bring 60,000 people to the table without some sort of structure? We’ll need continued support from faculty, staff, and administration. We’ll need an office and some funding. We’ll need to go on sacrificing our time and our talents to the effort at large. Most of all, we’ll need to remember: we are part of a community devoted to learning, and SCOPE is a learning process. We are learning to organize. We are learning to build public relationships. More than that, we’re learning that education is about experience, and the SCOPE of our experience is priceless.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 03:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of the most important - and most challenging - aspects of engaging with the public about scholarly work is communicating through professional media, especially television. The following report by Amy Sheldon, Ph.D., Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Minnesota, describes such an experience. Prof. Sheldon is also an Affiliate of the Center for Cognitive Sciences and a member of the Graduate Faculty in Linguistics.

In the spring of 2006, I was contacted by a producer of the BBC television series, Child of Our Time. Our emails led to phone calls and then a visit to London for face-to-face work on a segment of their next show. The following is a narrative of a rather unique experience of public engagement.

Child of Our Time is a popular series in Britain, which started broadcasting in the year of the Millennium. The concept is to follow 22 families with children born in 2000, for the first 21 years of their lives. The show is a vehicle to discuss biological and social influences on children’s lives, and to explore current issues in human development for children and families as these children and families go through life stages and particular events. In England I discovered that it is well known and many follow it regularly, even if they don’t have children.

BBC works with academic specialists, usually from Britain, to develop the conceptual basis for each Child of our Time program. I was contacted by one of the producers, who knew about my work on language and gender in young children's social interactions. I collaborated on just one aspect of their next program..

On May 14th, BBC was bringing a subset of the children with their families to London for an intensive day of filming with multiple film crews, at the BBC Media Center. In a series of transatlantic phone calls, I sketched out the rationale and design for filming the children for the module, based on my research. The results would need to be interpreted, and this led to the idea of my coming over to work on the spot.

It was important to work out some of the filming details, and I was pleased to be able to do so. During filming, I had the help of a personal assistant (a Ph.D. in neuroscience) while I observed on a monitor in an adjoining room, and I coordinated with a child psychiatrist who was in direct contact with the children and film crew. At the end of the afternoon, after 5 pair of children had been filmed, I was filmed with the host of the program, Professor Sir Lord Robert Winston, M.D., discussing some aspects of the children's interactions that were captured on film. Despite the switch in cultural context, interaction turned out as predicted by my research in the U.S., but there were some intriguing twists as well.

I expect to continue the conversation with BBC as they edit the program over the summer.

Although I have been interviewed on radio and television before, it was helpful to have the expertise of the University News Service staff to discuss bridging from the university world to the media world.

This project also gave me the opportunity to renew my observations of local millennium children at the University of Minnesota Child Care Center, the original setting for this research, and at two local kindergartens as well.

I describe this project and the background work in some detail to give an idea of how fascinating it was to be involved in the translation of my research for television, how stimulating it was to coordinate with the talented BBC producers and their staff, in short, how much fun it was to step outside the academic context and work behind the scenes with the BBC. I was impressed with BBC dedication to translating academic research for public consumption in a way that stays true to complex ideas yet creates a show that is entertaining and develops an audience at the same time. I was reminded of the importance of the media as a conduit for education beyond the classroom, adding resources of value.

This collaboration with the BBC is a form of public engagement that we could call "knowledge transfer", the humanities and social science counterpart to "technology transfer". But the transfer goes both ways. Working with the BBC has been a good extension my research process and gives food for thought for teaching as well.

It was a pleasure to contribute to Child of Our Time, a most interesting and worthwhile project. Stay tuned for the next program.

Related bibliography

Sheldon, A. and H. Engstrom. 2005. Two systems of mutual engagement: The co-construction of gendered narrative styles by American preschoolers.. In. J. Coates and J. Thornborrow (Eds.) The Sociolinguistics of Narrative, 171- 192. Studies in Narrative 6. John Benjamins.

Sheldon, A. 1997. Talking Power: Girls, Gender Enculturation and Discourse. In R. Wodak (Ed.). Gender and Discourse, 225-244. London: Sage.

Sheldon, A. and L. Rohleder. 1996. Sharing the same world, telling different stories: Gender differences in co-constructed pretend narratives. In D. I. Slobin, J. Gerhardt, A. Kyratzis, J. Guo. (Eds.) Social Interaction, Social Context, and Language, 613-632. Essays in honor of Susan Ervin-Tripp. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Sheldon, A. 1996. You can be the baby brother but you aren't born yet: Preschool girls' negotiation for power and access in pretend play. In Research on Language and Social Interaction, 29.1, 57-80. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. REPRINTED in Mary Talbot, Karen Atkinson, David Atkinson (Eds.) 2003. Language and Power in the Modern World. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Sheldon, A. 1992. Conflict talk: Sociolinguistic challenges to self-assertion and how young girls meet them. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 38.1, 95-117. 1992 Annual Invitational Issue, "Talk in the Study of Socialization and Development" edited by C. Garvey,

Sheldon, A. 1990. Pickle fights: Gendered talk in preschool disputes. Discourse Processes 13.1, 5-31, special issue on language and gender. REPRINTED In D. Tannen (Ed.) 1993. Gender and Conversational Interaction, 83-109. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 08:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'll be off-line for the next two weeks, returning June 19. Enjoy the approach of summer!

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This morning's StarTribune has an article about West Bank Story, a "grassroots musical" about the history of the West Bank in Minneapolis. This is a remarkable neighborhood bordering the University of Minnesota. According to the story:

The West Bank or Cedar-Riverside neighborhood is the most ethnically diverse zip code in the state of Minnesota and the most densely populated between Chicago and Los Angeles.... On its western border, along Interstate Hwy. 35W, it is defined by the towers of Riverside Plaza. Somalis comprise the majority population, with strong contingents of Oromo, Ethiopian, Eritrean and other East African immigrants, Southeast Asians, Hispanics, Koreans and Middle Easterners.

Moving eastward, the neighborhood turns to business and entertainment along Cedar and Riverside avenues, with the legacy of 1960s and '70s activism in such places as the Hard Times Cafe, North Country Co-op and Freewheel Bike. Many of the radicals who stoked that fire still live in the area, in new co-op housing. The final element is institutional -- the University of Minnesota, Fairview Health Services and Augsburg University, on the eastern edge.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 08:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Few of our faculty combine their professional work, community involvement, and personal lives as thoroughly and successfully as Judith Martin. Martin is Professor of Geography and Chair of the University of Minnesota's Urban Studies Program. She has lived in Minneapolis since she came here as a graduate student in the early 1970s, and has been a member of the Minneapolis Planning Commission since 1991 and its President since 1998, an activity that fits remarkably with her academic work.

Today's Downtown Journal/Skyway News has a good article about how Martin's university and community work connect. Here are some excerpts:

While serving on the commission, Martin has had a unique opportunity to delve into urban development issues she also analyzes as an academic. ...
The Planning Commission, a 10-member citizen’s advisory committee, is charged with long-term planning and works with the City Council on development and zoning issues.

"Being engaged in the public stuff is important for me because it kind of keeps me thinking about the ways in which the world is changing and the students are changing at the same time,” she said during an interview at her office on the university’s West Bank. “Minneapolis and St. Paul, and this region, has become a much more vibrant and interesting region than it was when I first came here for graduate school. You see here really in a microcosm a lot of what are the major issues that are happening in the New Yorks and Chicagos of the world.”

A former planning commissioner said “The thing that I am impressed by is she has a lot of understanding of urban places from all over the world. She tries to bring that perspective to Minneapolis as often as she can, and Minneapolis doesn’t appreciate it as much as they could...She is a champion of urbanism, which means density. Density means eyes on the street.”

Among the issues Martin has been concerned with in Minneapolis, in addition to urban density, are the displacement of industrial activity by residential housing, traffic congestion, and a more people-friendly urban core.

Being an engaged citizen of her city has not kept Judith Martin from equally active and effective involvement with her university community. She has served as Chair of the Faculty Consultative Committee and is about to become Chair of the Senate Committee on Finance.

Judith Martin provides a great example of how the two definitions of "civic" - "of or related to a city", and "of or related to the duties or activities of people in relation to their locale" - can be productively combined.

Posted by Victor Bloomfield at 04:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)