Each academic year, a handful of exceptional University of Rochester undergraduate students receive the Certificate of Achievement in Community-Engaged Learning signifying the completion of CCE’s credit-bearing, curriculum-based, Community-Engaged Learning program. Before these students receive their hard-earned certificates and cross the program’s finish line, they must complete a Capstone project conducting work in the Rochester community with a nonprofit organization and then reflect upon this community work. This year, nine dedicated students (more students than ever before) presented their progress on their Capstone projects at the annual University of Rochester Undergraduate Research Expo (URE) Poster Presentation on April 11th. This blog post will showcase all nine of these students and their unique projects. Some students will continue these projects with their partners throughout the summer.
Earl Bumagat
Community Organization: TRANSFORM Research Center at Mt. Hope Family Center
Project Title: “Disseminating Information with TRANSFORM”
Community Advisor: Dr. Catherine Cerulli
Faculty Advisor: Stephanie Ashenfelder
“I worked with Transform Translational research…. and what they do is …conduct research into…prevention and intervention methods for child abuse and maltreatment…Throughout the semester I have worked on editing their unused footage and clips into shorter videos and clips that could be used for more accessible, more learnable, and more engaging content. We want to use these clips, post it across their social media platforms, and… tie it in with their social media monthly initiatives and campaigns that they go into…A lot of it will be for a backlog but it’ll be content that’ll be useful for the future.” – Earl Bumagat
Audrey Chung
Community Organization: GiGi’s Playhouse Rochester
Project Title: “Strength in Motion: Enhancing Motor Skills & Independence in Children with Down Syndrome”
Community Advisor: Haley Everett
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Stephen Sulkes MD
“So I’ve been working with GiGi’s Playhouse, a nonprofit down the road that works with people with Down syndrome…I’ve been working with the kids’ fitness and cooking programs, and testing their motor skills [with] different exercises and food preparation. The fitness mainly works on… flexibility, endurance and motor skills.….. People with Down syndrome have low muscle tone…..which means they need constant activity and movement to sustain their muscle … We’re basically testing their motor development and how we can introduce these habits at a young age so that they learn how to maintain a good lifestyle.” – Audrey Chung
Johari Hemphill
Community Organization: Archive of Black History & Culture (ARHC) under the Central Library of Rochester and Monroe County’s Local History & Genealogy Division
Project Title: “The ‘Divine 9’ and First Archive Collections Project”
Community Advisor: Antoine Mcdonald
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Molly Ball
“My work was getting some archives training and helping them [ARHC] process some of their first four collections, one of them being the Bobby Johnson collection, who was a local poet and activist. [These archives] have been digitized or you can go access them at the local library … Additionally, we’re working on finishing the Charles Price collection… Another part of my work was reaching out to some collections that we identify as being essential to the archive, one of them being the National Panhellenic Council, otherwise known as the Divine Nine. [The Divine Nine] is a group of nine historically Black Greek letter organizations: five fraternities and four sororities, that all have chapters here established in the greater Rochester area that have been around as early as the [1940s.] So a large part of my work was reaching out to them, creating an email template….. identifying an assessment of what materials they have, what we need and what we want, and then creating a timeline of how we’re gonna gather materials and then process them and make them accessible to the public.” – Johari Hemphill
Sab Lin
Community Organization: Girls Rock! Rochester
Project Title: “Visions and Paradoxes of a Feminist Nonprofit and Social Movement”
Community Advisor: Amanda Ashley
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Kristin Doughty
“I did my work on Girls Rock Rochester, which is a local nonprofit organization that is also a social movement with over 100 camps across the US and internationally…I first started volunteering there 2 or 3 years ago and since then it’s expanded into a much bigger project….[For my Capstone, I decided] to put on a community event for trans visibility which I hosted about a week and a half ago and the point of it was just to create a safe space for trans youth and… just come together, grab a snack, have some community….” – Sab Lin
Aliza Lopez
Community Organization: Kids Thrive 585
Project Title: “The Nexus of DEI & Health Literacy: Democratizing Cultural Health Resources and Workshops for Diverse Youth in Rochester”
Community Advisor: Dr. Megan Lasaponara MD
Faculty Advisor: Dr. April Luehmann
“So for [my project,] the question was how can we promote cultural health in RCSD.… because …standardized exam results…, as well as…health literacy rates in the Rochester City School District are pretty low, especially for marginalized populations such as Latino and Black students. I wanted to try to find…a way that we can better appeal to them and make content and material that’s more engaging and make sure that it really applies to them, so that they can… increase their health literacy rate and increase their health outcomes…So the first thing that I tried to make was a resource navigator. I put together a list of resources [that] I could classify… into two different categories. One of them was virtual resources, so…databases of different phone providers that serve marginalized demographics, such as, for example, databases that serve the Latino population. [The second category] is in-person resources, so Rochester has quite a few community-based clinics such as those for BIPOC or LGBTQ populations…all of these platforms and resources would be listed on the organization [Kids Thrive 585]’s website…The second part [of my project, is the] lessons and workshops that would be done at schools. I want to create a written report of recommendations and potential frameworks that the school districts, as well as community colleges, can use if they’re trying to revise their curriculum or if they’re trying to make more health-related activities for students.” – Aliza Lopez
Jiola Paco
Community Partner: Arnett House
Project Title: “Increasing Job Readiness in Unhoused LGBTQ+ and Trafficked Youth”
Community Advisor: Kelly Sciarratta
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Stefanie K. Dunning.
“My project is increasing job readiness in unhoused LGBTQ+ and trafficked youth. LGBTQ+ youth are at a 120% higher risk of homelessness. There are also many unmet needs within this community, 17% and 18% of these needs are emotional stability and support, and employment, respectively. So I decided to work on the employment aspect because I am a student interviewer for the University of Rochester and I want to use my skills where I can, so I created this ‘getting rid of job application stress’ workshop…and then, at the end, we’re doing a thrifting trip with CCE funding in order to get them job appropriate attire and then we’re going to do a fashion show when we get those items. We also do self-confidence workshops…this just helps them visualize the end goal in order for them to take the steps to move towards it.” – Jiola Paco
Suzanna Rainbolt
Community Partner: Rochester Sexual & Reproductive Justice Taskforce (Roc SRJ)
Project Title: “Let’s Talk About Sex: Focusing on Community-Based Information System to Rethink Sexual Health Information”
Community Advisor: Jilian Quigley
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Rachel O’Donnell
Paige Schneider
Community Partner: Rochester Ecology Partners
Project Title: “Youth Environmental Health Education in Rochester”
Community Advisor: Christopher Widmaier
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Sandra H. Jee, MD, MPH
Zihan Wang
Community Partner: Brightstar Community
Project Title: “The Impact of Street-Level Outreach on Local Economic Communities: Exploring Economic Stability Through Grassroots Engagement”
Community Advisor: Sue Kirby
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Kristin Doughty
These students have gone above and beyond by applying their education to community work outside of the classroom and putting what they’ve learned during their time at U of R into meaningful action. We can’t wait to see what these students go on to do and we’re confident that they’ll continue to succeed and thrive, as they’ve already made sustainable positive social change and left their mark on the Rochester community.
If you’re a student interested in pursuing the Community-Engaged Learning Certificate or a faculty member interested in receiving a Community-Engaged Learning Course Operating or Course Development Grant, feel free to email cel@ur.rochester.edu with questions or go to the CEL page of CCE’s website to learn more.
written by Lily Bencivenga, CCE Administrative Coordinator