Health + Humanities Community Connections Faculty Grant

Community Partner Story Gorge LLC is based in the Columbia River Gorge and focuses on amplifying worthy stories through video production, still photography and media education. Story Gorge exists to strategically tell impact stories and provide extensive media education to youth and adults in the Columbia River Gorge.

With this grant, we aim to strengthen community connections for L&C students in PSY 360: Psychology of Gender by partnering with Story Gorge. Through this collaboration, Story Gorge will join the class to teach students the art of digital storytelling. Students will learn to craft two types of stories: 1) their own personal story and 2) someone else’s story. First, students will work independently to create a digital story related to gender issues and topics. Then, they will collaborate in small groups to develop a digital story focused on psychology and gender as it appears in the L&C community or the broader Portland area. At the end of the semester, students will showcase their work in a celebratory film festival.

Community Partner Braver Angels is a community engagement organization that helps communities bridge social, cultural, and political divides through a focus on de-polarization. Braver Angels provides multiple resources to facilitate community engagement that bridges difference and polarization, including workshops, trainings, one on one facilitation, and more, all organized by Braver Angels volunteers. Braver Angels is a national organization, with state and regional chapters serving communities across Oregon and specifically in Portland.

Local Braver Angels staff will expand a currently scheduled 1-hour and class-long visit from Braver Angels to a formal de-polarization workshop that will take place during 3 to 4 ENVS 295 class periods, facilitated by Braver Angels staff. Following the workshops, additional funding will be used to cover expenses for Braver Angels staff to attend a currently scheduled environmental engagement event for the course, where students will connect with agriculturalists, ranchers, and environmental managers over nutrient management practices (i.e., pesticide and herbicide use, animal feed and waste management), a policy topic currently being renegotiated in environmental policy for the State of Oregon. If equipped with the proper tools to reduce polarization, the conversations our students help facilitate can contribute to an improvement of water quality outcomes from both production and policy.

Growing Gardens is a local Portland nonprofit focused on community gardening. Programs include Youth Grow, which teaches community gardening to children K-12, and Lettuce Grow, for prisoners at correctional facilities in the Portland metro area.

Growing Gardens has recently organized a data committee to analyze the data they have gathered on their programs and consider how best to improve and develop in the future.

LC Faculty and students are partnering with them in Spring 2025 as a learning-service opportunity for the students in DSCI 240 to assist Growing Gardens with data analyze and the development of future surveys. A major theme will be the ethics of proper data documentation and the risks, including moral hazards, of loss of context in data analysis, as described in Timnit Gebru et al.’s (2021) “Datasheets for datasets.” This is a live topic of debate at the intersection of data science and the humanities and my aim is that students will not only understand the theory but, through their learning-service work, come to see its importance in practice.

The mission of the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization (IRCO) is to welcome, serve, and empower refugees, immigrants, and people across cultures and generations to reach their full potential. Founded in 1976 by refugees for refugees, IRCO has been serving Oregon’s immigrant and refugee communities for nearly 50 years. IRCO serves tens of thousands of clients annually, with over 50 IRCO access sites across the state.

We will take up the Critical Refugee Studies Collective’s question, “What is a story but a life?” by considering both stories of migration and the migration of stories. The plan is to kick off the semester with students volunteering at IRCO’s New Beginnings Market in February as a group, helping newcomer families receive the supplies they need to set up their new homes. Over the course of the semester, students will develop a substantial project of their choosing: either 1) a research project that contributes to the Critical Refugee Studies Collective’s online story maps/refugee archives, 2) a creative, community-oriented project (for example, organizing a film festival, a performance, a dinner, etc.) or 3) a semester-long, structured volunteer opportunity identified and supervised by IRCO.

The Health + Humanities Community Connections Grants provides $4500 of funding to develop a course-based collaborative project with a community partner. Funds are shared between faculty and the community partner.

Faculty Member receives a $2000 grant. This money may be used to compensate for time and effort involved in creating a collaborative partnership, and for materials, equipment, transportation, or other course expenses.

Community Partner receives a $2500 grant. This money may be used to support the community partner’s participation in the project and to alleviate organizational barriers that hinder participation.

Funding will be awarded to up to three faculty and project proposals will be reviewed and grants awarded on a rolling basis throughout the academic year. The Health + Humanities Community Connections Faculty Grant funds must be distributed by May 2025.

The Health + Humanities Community Connections Grant covers the groundwork necessary to develop a community partnership that can be integrated into one’s Connect-Portland course. Expenses in future academic years are not covered by this grant.

Health + Humanities Community Connections Faculty Grant proposals should demonstrate how a new community partner project will:

• Revise a current CAS Connect-Portland course or add this designation to an existing course.
• Focus on health + humanities.
• Develop a community partnership with a project or collaboration at its center.
• Benefit the community partner, Lewis & Clark students, and the local community.
• Create a sustainable collaboration that will continue beyond the grant period into future offerings of the course.

• Deliver a brief overview of the community partner’s contribution to the project.
• Conduct an assessment to gather feedback from both L&C students in the course and the community partner.
• Submit a short (1-2 page) written report of how the funds were used at the conclusion of the project that incorporates qualitative and quantitative assessment data.
• Present the collaboration at a year-end Center for Community and Global Health symposium along with your community partner.