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The EIC’s mission stresses the value of sustainability through community engagement and education. To continue this mission, we propose building and managing a native seed library and a seed growing system at the EIC that will be available to the community. This initiative will connect the EIC with other seed libraries, but will also extend beyond seed storage. The EIC will collect and manage seeds and support local gardeners using a growing system to offer EIC’s Community Organic Garden group, schools, and local garden clubs with much needed native plants for rain gardens and for growing produce.

"As the Director of both the Center for Arab American Studies and the new Arabic Major and the Arabic Translation Certificate, I plan to engage our students with the Arab American National Museum, as a unique potential partner in Dearborn. In conversation with Diana Abouali, the Museum director, we discussed the presence of archival material in Arabic at the Museum that needs to be sorted, labeled, and translated. The project I am proposing is to facilitate the engagement of our students to obtain the experience of exposure to the Museum and its wealth of cultural archives."

The Ypsi Farmers and Gardeners Oral History Project is a community-driven digital humanities archive at the Ypsilanti District Library that highlights the wisdom and legacies of Black, Indigenous, and people of color and/or working-class food growers in Ypsilanti. Increasing gentrification in Ypsilanti and the progression of climate change have led to community concerns about the future of the city’s BIPOC and working class residents, and in particular, their ability to continue employing the practice of growing their own food as a method of community connection, empowerment, and climate resilience. Taking inspiration from historian A.P. Marshall’s African American Oral History Archive, this project sheds light on these issues and provides the people who have been the most directly impacted by these changes a chance to tell their own stories in their own words. 

Professors Sally Howell (ÂÜÀòÉç-Dearborn) and Andrew Shryock (ÂÜÀòÉç-Ann Arbor) and several ÂÜÀòÉç-Dearborn undergraduate students will partner with the Dearborn Historical Museum and the Arab American National Museum to explore the history of the Arab American community in the city of Dearborn between 1965-1985 making use of Dearborn city records. Their findings will be shared with the public via digital archives and digital storytelling housed on the websites of the two Museums and the Center for Arab American Studies. This is a pilot project intended to enhance research and collaboration between the campuses and the two community institutions. 

Speeding in residential areas is a pervasive issue that compromises the safety and quality of life in communities. In Dearborn, the challenge of addressing speeding is compounded by financial and legal constraints that limit the deployment of traditional surveillance and speed detection technologies. To tackle this issue innovatively, we propose the development of a crowdsourced speeding detection system. This system will utilize the widespread availability of smartphones and the affordability of laser distance measurers to empower residents to actively participate in monitoring and reporting speeding incidents.

"We will conduct research with and for Detroit residents about the effects of government surveillance technologies, and their visions for community safety. We will draw from community dialogues, interviews with organizers, and neighborhood-level data to translate the insights of residents into community education materials and policy and budget recommendations that seek community control over the use of surveillance, and investment in pro-social resources and conflict resolution strategies. This is a collaborative project composed of community organizations, researchers, and residents who share common concerns about the expanding use of surveillance technologies in the nation’s largest majority-Black city. The consumer protections we are concerned with include violations of privacy and civil rights posed by surveillance technologies, which disproportionately impact Black communities while having ‘no effect’ on increasing public safety according to the National Institute of Justice. "