Society & Culture

The Rochester Center for Community Leadership was created in 2005 to put University student community engagement programs under one umbrella. In 12 years, it’s become a pretty big umbrella.

Wilson Day enables first-year students to learn about the Rochester community during orientation, as they help out at nearly 100 local agencies, including schools, churches, nursing homes, museums, and more.

The Mt. Hope Family Center sits on a two-way street. Its researchers and clinicians have provided evidence-based services to at-risk families, while training the next generation of clinicians and research scientists.

When we think of research, many of us picture test tubes in a laboratory or manuscripts in a library. But some research projects—especially in the fields of health, education, and the social sciences—involve people as they go about their daily lives. How, then, can the University conduct community-engaged projects that are effective, evidence-based, and sustainable? Rochester students, researchers, and community members explored this question as part of the fifth annual Community Engagement Symposium.

What’s the function of a monument? Who should be honored with one—and who gets to decide? Richard Leventhal, a professor of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, will explore these questions in the second annual James Conlon Memorial Lecture.

Over the next three years, 18 professors from the eastern European nation will have had the chance to take classes, meet business leaders, and return home to incorporate what they’ve learned into their own programs.

As new technologies take form, they often change habits and practices in ways few could have predicted at the time. At this week's Light and Sound Interactive conference, Darren Mueller will examine vinyl's impact on creating and consuming music.


“Greater awareness of the Japanese-American internment can help the nation avoid repeating the conditions that led to violating the rights of so many innocent people,” says Joanne Bernardi, a University expert on Japanese culture.

When people disagree, and all involved in the discussion believe that theirs is the reasonable position, what’s to be done? That’s a question that underlies a lecture series in September by philosopher Richard Feldman.

There isn’t much Judith Smetana doesn’t know about parenting teenagers. Her latest study in a nearly 40-year career as a professor of psychology, looks at the effect of using guilt as a parenting tool.

Mt. Hope Family Center held a graduation ceremony for 20 young mothers who successfully completed the program, which is celebrating its tenth year of providing early intervention services to mothers under 21.

Why does racism play a part in motivating some students to go on to college, while it seems to deter others? Winston Scott '19 is spending his summer preparing a study into how children react when they begin to perceive racism.