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Five faculty members representing all four colleges have been awarded 2025 Community-Based Research Seed Grants from the Office of Community-Engaged Learning. The faculty members and their projects are:

• Kathleen Darcy (CASL), Women in Prison and Family Preservation
• Vitalis Im (CEHHS), Understanding the Mental Health Needs of Formerly Incarcerated People in Michigan
• Jennifer Coon (COB), Raising Voices: Assessing the Impact of Humble Design Detroit via Client Storytelling
• Zheng Song (CECS), Enabling Low-Cost Privacy-Preserving Community Sensing
• Paul Draus (CASL), Putting Grixdale Farms on the Map: A Community Storytelling Project

The purpose of the Community-Based Research Seed Grants (C-BR) is to support community-based research projects that engage in, promote knowledge about, identify best practices for, and enhance understanding by deepening or broadening our understanding of the needs of University of Michigan-Dearborn’s larger community, as well as to promote research that is developed in collaboration with community partner organizations and/or their clients.

The purpose of Community-Based Projects Seed Grants (C-BP) is to promote engagement and learning environments that are developed in collaboration with community partner organizations and/or their clients. Community partners may include business, industry, nonprofit, government, etc. These funds are meant to support projects that meet student learning outcomes as well as community need, but do not fit into the traditional structure of research or coursework.

This photo depicts students at River Raisin archeological battle site in Monroe, Michigan. Funds from the 2022 Seed Grant cycle gave John Chenoweth, awardee, the momentum to secure larger grant funding from the American Battlefield Protection Program for this excavation project. He reflects, "OMI's [OCEL's] grant definitely helped me forge ahead with this project... Knowing that I had OMI's [OCEL's] support, I could keep the project going and be ready to hit the ground running now that the external funding has come in." Congratulations, John!

What is engagement scholarship?

"Scholarship that goes beyond the service duties of a faculty member to those within or outside the University and involves the rigor and application of disciplinary expertise with results that can be shared with and/or evaluated by peers."

(Boyer, 1990 - also referred to as "application scholarship")

What can engaged scholarship look like?

• Community-based, participatory research
• Needs and assets assessments
• Program evaluations

(Michigan State University, 2018)

Why is engagement scholarship important?

• Creates civically engaged faculty and students
• Addresses and solves public problems
• Improves revenue generation - attracts new sources of funding