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CHER has recently presented findings from Hartford community engagement with national audiences through three events. During summer 2023, the CHER team presented at the Campus Compact Awards where they also accepted the Richard Guarasci Award for Institutional Transformation on behalf of Trinity College. The Liberal Arts Action Lab team presented their work at a Duke University national symposium on project based learning. Most recently, the CHER team joined with two recent alumnae to present a paper about including the voices of students of color in community learning at the International Association for Service Learning and Community Engagement.

Welcome back, CHER programs overview, and more

Happy Summer and congratulations to recent graduates! This newsletter provides updates on CHER’s work in spring semester 2023 and announces some upcoming changes that aim to advance our mission of strengthening mutually beneficial partnerships between Trinity and Hartford. In July, CHER will begin a structural and leadership transition. Over time, we’ll move from being led by one rotating faculty director to two directors advised by a Faculty Lead. We are also restructuring elements of two CHER programs, the Liberal Arts Action Lab and Trinfo Cafe.

Inviting Schoolchildren to Campus with OMA, CHER announcement, and more

This past spring semester, the Liberal Arts Action Lab welcomed twenty-four students to three project teams. The upbeat new energy from the fall semester continued as Trinity College and Capital Community College students participated in an Action Research Methods in Hartford course (LAAL 200) and a Hartford Research Project (LAAL 201) each semester. This semester Dr. Ozlem Atalay taught Action Research Methods in Hartford and led one of the three Hartford research project teams. Dr. Laura Minor led the other two project teams. Each team worked with a community partner who posed a pressing question about the city.

Students in Professor Jack Dougherty’s “Data Visualization for All” (EDUC 206) course have been working on visualizing Hartford “crash” and “trash” data this semester. In collaboration with the City of Hartford’s planning division and the Center for Leadership and Justice, students worked on projects such as “Analyzing The Impact of Hartford's Traffic Calming Installations” and “Where Does Hartford Waste Go?”.

The Trin-HMTCA Tutors program was launched in fall 2022 as an afterschool program with 15 Hartford Magnet Trinity College Academy (HMTCA) mentees and 15 Trinity metors. This spring, the program has grown to include 30 HMTCA mentees with the help of a Hartford Public Schools Equity and Innovation Grant.

Now in its fifth year, the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) clinic at Trinfo is expanding free tax preparation services this tax season. The clinic has increased student participation, hours, and the total number of returns filed each year since opening in 2018. Under the leadership of Serena Laws, Senior Lecturer in Political Science and the site’s director, the clinic offers free tax preparation services to English and Spanish-speaking clients who make less than $60,000 per year.

In the fall of 2022, I had the opportunity to participate in the Inclusive Museum Project at the Liberal Arts Action Lab. Our team consisted of three Trinity College students and three Capital Community College students. We collaborated on a research project aimed at expanding the audience of the Connecticut Historical Society (CHS) over the course of a semester. Our community partners, Ilene Frank and Andrea Rapacz, of CHS, posed critical questions for us to investigate: Why do 18-28 year olds in the Hartford area choose to visit the museum? How can the museum attract more diverse visitors? CHS hoped to use the findings from our research to reshape curation of exhibitions, presentation of programs, and marketing activities to broaden museum attendance. 

During the summer of 2021, with the support of a Mellon Inclusive Pedagogy grant from the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), the Center for Hartford Engagement and Research (CHER) examined the experiences of students of color in community engagement programs at Trinity. As one response to the findings, CHER recently announced the Community Learning Faculty Toolkit, a compilation that includes resources on anti-racist community learning and Hartford history.