Grantee Stories

Outdoor Recreation Offers a Path to Community Resilience

Arielle Wiedenbeck — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 12:54:33 +0000

Outdoor Recreation Offers a Path to Community Resilience Arielle Wiedenbeck Wed, 04/30/2025 - 06:54

Arielle Wiedenbeck

CU Boulder’s Rural Technical Assistance program helps rural Colorado towns use their natural assets to strengthen local economies, deepen partnerships and define their own futures.

In small towns across Colorado, where economic challenges and limited resources often run deep, a new kind of planning is taking root — one that blends grassroots visioning with technical support, and centers outdoor recreation as a tool for long-term resilience.

The Colorado Rural Technical Assistance Program, or RTAP, was informed by a growing interest in outdoor recreation as a driver for rural economic development — an interest reflected in national-level programming, such as the Recreation Economy for Rural Communities (RERC) planning assistance initiative. More than 100 communities applied for the RERC pilot program in 2019, with many Colorado communities among them. While several were strong candidates, the program aimed to achieve a broad geographic distribution with only a limited number of spots available. As a result, many Colorado applicants were not selected despite the strength of their proposals.

This information was shared with the Colorado Outdoor Recreation Industry Office (OREC) and Natalie Ooi, a teaching associate professor in the Masters of the Environment Graduate Program (MENV), who saw an opportunity to create a Colorado-specific initiative that could support more communities across the state. In partnership with Matt Nuñez, senior program manager at the OREC, RTAP began to take shape. Using RERC as a model, they designed an accelerated timeline that enables MENV graduate students to co-create, facilitate and execute a community action plan with a community-driven process in a one-semester course.

“It kind of came together sort of perfectly,” Ooi said.

Although the course lasts one semester for students, for Ooi and her partners, it’s a yearlong endeavor. From July to December, they work closely with the selected communities to lay groundwork before students begin. This includes building relationships, forming a steering committee and completing a self-assessment.

“Communities need time to decide if this program is right for them. This isn’t a marketing plan; it’s not a trails development plan,” Ooi said. “At a broad level, we’re really focused on what outdoor recreation means to the community and what they would like to see in terms of tying together outdoor recreation and economic development. We want to give every community the attention they need.”

Emily Glass, a graduate student in her final year of the MENV program, said she joined the 2025 RTAP cohort after many recommendations from peers.

“I have always been intrigued by how durable outdoor recreation can be in the midst of the complex social and environmental issues we find ourselves facing,” Glass said. “I believe that a love of being in nature can be a universal human experience, and the joy from that helps bridge our own divides.”

Community members from Lake City, CO, attend RTAP's two-day community visioning workshop in 2024. Photo credit: Natalie Ooi

In Colorado, outdoor recreation is a powerful tool for economic development, Ooi explained. Outdoor recreation assets and amenities encourage people to spend time and money in these communities — but it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. According to Glass, this makes outdoor recreation “a great moldable option for rural communities to build resilience around.”

In the workshops, which were held in mid-March, topics such as community-identity, sustainable development and responsible recreation, environmental concerns and infrastructure capacity often underpinned the conversations about outdoor recreation development. Sometimes, the focus was on better aligning economic development and tourism initiatives to avoid duplicative efforts.

“In Leadville, one of their biggest challenges was that it’s a really dedicated bunch of people. But … it’s the same group of 20 to 30 people who do everything,” Ooi said. “Some of our focus was on how do we better coordinate [everyone] to come together and identify who is doing what?”

In La Junta, RTAP helped connect community organizations with regional partners working toward similar goals, like the broader Regional Partnerships Initiative from Colorado Parks and Wildlife. In Rangely and Dinosaur, RTAP facilitated a joint effort to organize a clean-up day and strengthen the towns’ relationships with the Bureau of Land Management.

“Part of the work we did was bringing key stakeholders from across the two communities into the same room … and realize, ‘Hey, we have common aims and interests and previous misunderstandings,’” Ooi said. “It’s helped to establish kind of this precedent of ‘we work together out here, even if we’re in different counties.’”

Now in its third year, Ooi said she is blown away by how communities have shown up to the workshops.

“We’ve had the best attendance at our community workshops than we’ve had historically,” Ooi said. She credits the rise in attendees to improvements in RTAP’s process and more engaged community contacts.

Despite strong engagement, Ooi said gaining community trust remains an ongoing challenge — one RTAP is uniquely positioned to meet.

“The key point of difference [for RTAP] is this plan is entirely community-driven,” Ooi said. “The graduate student team and our partners, we’re just facilitators. We’re not here to say, ‘this needs to go in the plan.’ Nothing should be in there that the community or someone in the community isn’t passionate about.”

Although not every community member attends the meetings, Ooi said the steering committees are composed to provide a “broader and more representative cross-section" than what is typical in community planning.

One of the most frequent questions RTAP gets is about funding. While RTAP currently doesn’t have the capacity to provide funds to implement the community action plans, the team hopes to work with OREC to establish seed funding in the future. For now, representatives from Great Outdoors Colorado, Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s Regional Partnership Initiative and other state agencies attend workshops to help guide long-term funding strategies. In addition, the community action plans developed by students include tools and tips for finding funding and resources, setting priorities, measuring impact and identifying timelines. Colorado State University Extension has recently partnered with RTAP to provide implementation support for the following 12-24 months.

Despite the challenges, community feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.

“It has brought communities together. It has gotten them to understand what meaningful stakeholder engagement can look like, and it’s helped them go for other grants in areas they otherwise wouldn’t have,” Ooi said.

Like the communities they serve, RTAP has had a lasting impact on students.

“The RTAP project directed my career after school,” said Conner Borkowski, former MENV student who worked with Leadville in 2023. Borkowski now works as the program and special projects coordinator with the Pikes Peak Outdoor Recreation Alliance.

Glass shared that working with the Beulah community shaped her understanding of what impactful community-engaged scholarship looks like.

“When designed meaningfully, community-engaged work is an opportunity to weave together different perspectives, ideas and expertise that otherwise may not have come together … the backbone of community-engaged work is collaboration.”

The Colorado Rural Technical Assistance Program is funded in part by the Office for Public and Community-Engaged Scholarship. Applications for the 2025–26 cohort open Summer 2025.

CU Boulder’s Rural Technical Assistance program helps rural Colorado towns use their natural assets to strengthen local economies, deepen partnerships and define their own futures.

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MENV graduate students Abigale Purvis, Emily Palanjian, Jessica Hertzberg and Sarah McLaurin help facilitate the Keystone Workshop, March 12-13, 2025. Photo Credit: Natalie Ooi

Announcing the Spring 2025 Tier 1 and 2 Grantees

Arielle Wiedenbeck — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 19:32:03 +0000

Announcing the Spring 2025 Tier 1 and 2 Grantees Arielle Wiedenbeck Tue, 03/18/2025 - 13:32

Arielle Wiedenbeck

From an AI literacy platform to a community short film, 13 total projects received over $50,000 in funding. See the full list of grantees below.

Tier 2 (formerly Community Impact Grants)
Spring 2025 Recipients

Colorado Climate Seal & Resilient Futures Teacher Workshop
Tory Nau, Program Manager for the We Are Water Project
CIRES Center for Education, Engagement, and Evaluation (CEEE)

Community-Driven LGBTQ+ Creative Technology Workshops
Shaz Zamore, Assistant Teaching Professor
The ATLAS Institute

Co-designing Compassion & Dignity Professional Learning for PK-12 Educators
Ashley Potvin, Research Associate
Renée Crown Wellness Institute

Toward Community-Informed Science Teaching & :earning
Erin Marie Furtak, Professor
School of Education

Building a Tangible Platform for AI Literacy
Krithik Ranjan, PhD Student
The ATLAS Institute

Cognitive Health and Aging: A Multi-generational, Community-based Study
Analicia Howard, Predoctoral Trainee
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience

Mentoring Indigenous Students in Wolf Conservation Research
Alma Rose Sanchez, PhD Student
Department of Environmental Studies

Building Community Capacity to Reduce Heat & Smoke Risks
Valentina Serrano Salomon, PhD Student
Department of Sociology

Tier 1 (formerly Micro Grants)
Spring 2025 Recipients

Cherry Yogurt: An integrated community short film
Francesca Hiatt, Undergraduate Student
Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts

Community Roundtable on Indigenous Reparations and Restoration
Christina Stanton, Clinical Associate Professor
School of Law

Evaluating water lead risks in transitional housing communities
Riley Mulhern, Assistant Professor
Department of Environmental Studies, Institute for Arctic & Alpine Research (INSTAAR)

Public Art Event at National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)
Hanna Shell, Professor
Department of Art & Art History

Rendered Embodiment of Social Interaction (RESI)
Cass Bliss, Undergraduate Student
Creative Technology & Design

From an AI literacy platform to a community short film, 13 total projects received over $50,000 in funding.

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Words of Hope: Revitalizing the Zapotec Language

Arielle Wiedenbeck — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 19:40:53 +0000

Words of Hope: Revitalizing the Zapotec Language Arielle Wiedenbeck Tue, 02/25/2025 - 12:40

Elaina Caywood

There are currently 7,164 languages worldwide; however, this number is decreasing each year. According to Ethnologue, a research center for language intelligence, about 44% of languages are endangered, and more than 90% of current languages will be extinct by 2050.

But, there is an effort to fight against language extinction. One of these efforts is based at the �� (CU Boulder).

With a grant from the Office for Public and Community-Engaged Scholarship (PACES), Associate Teaching Professor Rai Farrelly and Assistant Professor Ambrocio Gutiérrez Lorenzo are working together with community members and CU Boulder students to support and sustain efforts to revitalize the use of the variety of Zapotec within Teotitlán del Valle, Mexico.

Designed for elementary students, this poster illustrates the Zapotec translation for the English word “blue” in the center, surrounded by other Zapotec translations for places and things that are also blue, such as the sky and a butterfly. The places and things were selected based on what students would recognize in their communities.

Beginning with her graduate studies in Utah, Farrelly was involved in efforts to revitalize Shoshone and Goshute through developing materials and training teachers. Farrelly realized not only the importance of language documentation and revitalizations, but also the difficulties involved with such an endeavor. For example, due to the oral tradition of most Indigenous languages, there is often a lack of a written form—and therefore, a lack of written teaching materials. “The pedagogy piece is important,” said Farrelly. “You have to document the language, write the grammar, write the dictionary. And, without a way to teach it and materials through which to deliver it, it’s kind of just a place for linguists to learn about the language.”

Farrelly and Gutiérrez Lorenzo, a Zapotec speaker and community member, are colleagues in the Department of Linguistics at CU Boulder. They joined forces to develop a Global Seminar based in Teotitlán del Valle, where CU Boulder students had a chance to not only learn the variety of Zapotec in the community, but also assist teachers of Zapotec in assembling and creating materials.

Isabelle Altman is one of the master’s students at CU Boulder who attended the 2024 Global Seminar, gaining not only valuable insight into language revitalization in practice but also the importance of collaboration on such a project. “I consider myself to be a documentary and revitalization linguist,” said Altman. “However, I didn’t realize the importance of language learning, pedagogy and curriculum design in a revitalization endeavor. I got to collaborate with students with a variety of specialties, including Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), linguistics and documentation. I believe that this collaboration between different areas allowed this project to be especially strong and effective in our creation of materials and connection with the community around us.”

As a prior research collaborator with Gutiérrez Lorenzo, Altman joined the Global Seminar to expand upon her academic career but found she appreciated the community-engaged approach of the project, stating that not only is it “unique” but also “extremely valuable.” Altman reflected, “By connecting and collaborating with the community in question, decisions can be made that involve everyone, but more importantly the community and its speakers. At the end of the day, the language belongs to its speakers.”

This Global Seminar provided Farrelly with another rich opportunity for community-engaged scholarship, an approach she has long appreciated. “The most important thing about community-engaged scholarship is that it’s driven by the community,” Farrelly explained. “A lot of academics come in with an idea of what they want to do, plow into communities and make decisions, then say ‘Thanks!’ and leave. PACES puts a lot of emphasis on mutual exchange, mutual benefit.”

Language Revitalization, especially the approach taken by Farrelly and Gutiérrez Lorenzo, relies heavily on input from the Teotitlán del Valle community. The community determines its needs and goals, guiding the direction of the project while collaborating with CU Boulder students to create much-needed materials and strategies for teaching the language. The students, in turn, gain valuable skills and a new level of empathy and understanding of Mexico that “feeds into their awareness and understanding of what’s happening right now” in the U.S.

“With the PACES grant, what we’re able to do is hire two graduate students in linguistics to build this online Zapotec resources hub where we’re having three entrance points: one for linguists or people interested in the language, one for the teachers of the language and one for students,” said Farrelly. “So, it’s going to be this really cool repository of materials and language, hopefully audio files and just different resources for Zapotec.”

The online hub has been a great source of collaborative work, both between CU Boulder students from different disciplines and community members within Teotitlán del Valle. Angelica, a collaborator within the Teotitlán community, uses the PACES stipend to continue teaching the Teotitlán variety of Zapotec year-round using the resources within the online hub.

Along with creating colorful posters and books to teach Zapotec, Farrelly, Gutiérrez Lorenzo and their team hope to expand their Zapotec Learning Hub and generate some excitement about the language. On a larger scale, she hopes that the team will create “some model or mechanism that really works with Zapotec” and can encourage other linguists and communities to apply what she has learned for revitalizing other endangered languages around the world.

But why does it matter if some languages are lost?

“Language is such a big part of our identity,” said Farrelly. “What’s encoded in all of those languages is a lot of information—about nature, animals, cures, the history of the world—that will all get lost if we lose the language. We lose the essence of a lot of cultures, of ways of being.”

This summer, Farrelly and Gutiérrez Lorenzo will again lead their Language Revitalization Global Seminar to Teotitlán del Valle, where they will continue to develop materials and teaching approaches to revitalize this specific variety of Zapotec within the community. For more information, visit the Global Seminar page.

As many languages face endangerment or extinction in the coming years, Associate Teaching Professor Rai Farrelly and Assistant Professor Ambrocio Gutiérrez Lorenzo are working together with community members and CU Boulder students to support and sustain efforts to revitalize the use of the Zapotec languages within Teotitlán del Valle, Mexico.

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Photo Credit: Rai Farrelly

Applications Now Open for Public and Community-Engaged Scholarship Grants, Tiers 1-4

Arielle Wiedenbeck — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 19:13:32 +0000

Applications Now Open for Public and Community-Engaged Scholarship Grants, Tiers 1-4 Arielle Wiedenbeck Mon, 01/13/2025 - 12:13

Gretchen Minekime

Applications open on Mon., Jan. 13 for Public and Community-Engaged Scholarship (PACES) Grants, Tiers 1-4.

PACES funds public and community-engaged scholarship that connects CU Boulder research, teaching and creative work with partners in Colorado communities and beyond.

Tier 1 grants are for public outreach events and partnership development and will be awarded on a rolling basis until funds have been expended this semester. Faculty, staff and all students are eligible to apply.

Tier 2 grants are for seeding or extending public and community-engaged scholarship. Faculty, staff and graduate students are eligible to apply. Applications will be due Sun., Feb. 16.

Tier 3 and 4 grants are for faculty-led public and community-engaged scholarship and support individual or group projects. Applications will be due Fri., April 18.

See our website for more information and application deadlines.

PACES funds public and community-engaged scholarship that connects CU Boulder research, teaching and creative work with partners in Colorado communities and beyond.

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In the hands of these actors, theatre builds bridges

Arielle Wiedenbeck — Wed, 01 Jan 2025 18:00:00 +0000

In the hands of these actors, theatre builds bridges Arielle Wiedenbeck Wed, 01/01/2025 - 11:00 Sue Postema Scheeres

The conversation about learning and disabilities began amicably enough.

However, it soon became clear that the two strangers held radically different views about the topic, creating an uncomfortable situation.

While this may not seem like typical material for a theatre scene, the CU Boulder Playback Ensemble is using real-life experiences like this one to help local communities navigate difficult, even divisive issues related to social, economic and environmental change.

Known as “playback theatre,” it is improv with a purpose. Audience members contribute true stories and see them “played back” by actors who retell the story in ways that encourage understanding across difference. The ensemble of faculty, staff and students will be taking their show on the road to Paonia from January 8 to 11.

“Our goal is to hold the space, honoring the teller of the story and honoring our shared experiences,” said Jim Walker, a Norlin Scholars Program faculty member, who helped start the campus group this year. “We hope this can help build community in public spaces, to identify the things that we all care about.”

CU Boulder Playback Ensemble rehearses for workshops in Paonia that will be held from January 8 to 11. (Photo by Sue Postema Scheeres, CU Boulder)

Actively listening to break down barriers

Playback theatre is like a cross between a town hall meeting and an improvisational performance, said Ondine Geary, theatre and dance outreach coordinator at CU Boulder and the principal founder of the group.

To introduce and begin a performance or workshop, the actors describe how they are feeling and interpret those feelings through movements. Then audience members are invited to volunteer their own stories and an actor from the ensemble (“the conductor”) asks questions about the audience’s experiences. The actors retell the story through words and movement in a way that focuses on the emotions and tensions of the experience, and the audience member is asked to describe what they noticed about the story.

“We try to playback a person’s experience without judgment or without offering solutions,” Geary said. “Our job is to listen actively and with empathy and to give back what was given.”

Playback theatre started in 1975 and has been practiced in more than 30 countries to break down barriers and move toward reconciliation, frequently in traumatic situations. In Afghanistan, for example, victims of violence have been trained to share their stories as a way to redress the legacies of human rights abuses. In Memphis, a local playback theatre company helped to repair trust between the community and police.

Businesses also have used the techniques to develop management and communications skills and for diversity awareness. Studies have shown that playback theatre can improve relationships, relieve stress, facilitate reconciliation and more, Geary said.

Taking their show on the road

The ensemble will pilot their community outreach project in Paonia from Jan. 8 to 11, leading playback theatre workshops in schools and the community. Susie Lowe, executive director of the North Fork Valley Creative Coalition and the Paonia Creative District, invited the theatre group to Paonia to help facilitate conversations about current economic and social changes.

“Paonia is a town in transition, and as we address issues around economic development, resilience, diversity and change, we have noticed a splintering within the community,” Lowe said of the small rural town nestled in an agricultural valley on the Western Slope. “Our desire is to bridge the gap between the differing perspectives within our town.”

The coalition is fostering economic growth through the arts as part of the Colorado Creative Industries statewide program, and is partnering with CU Boulder theatre and dance faculty on different projects, including an annual graduate dance residency that performs and leads dance programs each May.

“Through the playback theatre workshops, which are designed to give everyone a voice to share their stories and opinions, we hope to build understanding, empathy, trust and respect,” Lowe said. “True community building can only be achieved by dismantling the differences that divide our society.”

The ensemble received program support and funding for the Paonia workshops from the CU Boulder Department of Theatre & Dance and the Office for Outreach and Engagement, securing a Community Impact Grant and also a CU Boulder Outreach Award. The ensemble plans to lead additional workshops in Paonia in 2021, and hopes to expand to other communities.

Finding shared humanity in hard places

Elise Collins, a graduate student in theatre and business, decided to join the ensemble after participating in a workshop with Geary.

“I had done improv before, so I was really drawn to this art form and how it values the power of stories,” Collins said. “Theatre is the purest form of empathy, because you have to listen and understand how someone thinks, recognizing the humanity of everyone else in the room.”

Depending on the scenario, the actors may choose to use symbols to reenact the story in a way that’s different than originally presented by the audience member. For example, when acting out the learning and disability conversation, the actors decided to tell the story as a conflict over the proper way to wear a scarf.

“The scarves really became a metaphor for the disagreement, not to minimize it but to help anchor the playback in universal experience,” Geary said. “We may not get people to change their views, but our goal is to help people recognize shared values.”

While the group acts out stories, Nelson Walker provides a soundtrack for the playback, improvising music on the cello to match the conversational tone.

“The role of the musician is to be a conduit between the audience and the actors, knowing when to yield and when to step forward,” said Walker, a music composition major who became interested in playback theatre through his dad, Jim. “Sometimes, if the actors are all saying things at once and the scene is reaching a peak, I have to make sure I don’t overwhelm them by playing too loudly.”

Jim Walker explained that while playback theatre derives from drama therapy, the goal is to generate collective conversations by providing opportunities for participants to connect their stories to others while also finding new insights into their own.

“Our work is not therapy, although it may have therapeutic benefits,” Walker said. “We do our best to be responsible with people’s stories and honor their experience.”

Interested in attending one of the workshops? Discover dates and times at the North Fork Valley Creative Coalition website.

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Community-Engaged Scholarship: A Pillar of the School of Education

Arielle Wiedenbeck — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 19:26:38 +0000

Community-Engaged Scholarship: A Pillar of the School of Education Arielle Wiedenbeck Thu, 11/14/2024 - 12:26

Alexandra Wilson

On the afternoon of Oct. 4, CU Boulder’s School of Education’s building dedication and open house brought together over 300 people to honor the school’s research, student work, donor support and community impact. Alumni, donors and K-12 partners joined university faculty, staff and students to celebrate the achievements and future goals of the school with an afternoon of dedications, building tours, activities and a showcase displaying the school’s community-engaged research.

“In an applied field like education, we can’t build knowledge in the abstract or in an isolated ivory tower,” said Joseph Polman, associate dean for research at the School of Education. “We need to be working with and in communities and sites where powerful educational practices and policies are being developed, tested and refined, to serve the needs of actual people.”

Faculty and students present their projects at the community engagement showcase in the new Ofelia Miramontes and Leonard Baca Education Building, Oct. 4, 2024.

Patrick Campbell Photography

The school’s devotion to supporting its students, and its commitment to advancing public understanding of education, shone through at the open house poster session where faculty members and graduate students showed their community-engaged research. The showcase highlighted how community-engaged scholarship not only enriches the educational experience of CU Boulder students but also bridges the gap between the university’s academic research and community education needs.

“Throughout history and even to the present day, far too much research based out of universities has been extractive, and only of benefit to the academic researchers. To work toward a more just and humane world, university-based scholars must seek to build equitable partnerships with stakeholders that serve the needs of communities, not the needs of researchers,” said Polman.

The faculty and students’ commitment to social justice is evident throughout their research, which strongly reflects the school’s values in promoting and facilitating equal opportunity for all students throughout the country. Their research explores and confronts a range of systematic issues present in the education system, such as language barriers within classrooms, ethnic and racial discrimination within school systems, economic disparities leading to a lesser quality of education, and the rights of LGBTQ+ students.

The research of faculty members and graduate students continues to lead to an array of impressive project outcomes, including a documentary by A Queer Endeavor, CU Boulder’s nationally recognized center for gender and sexual diversity in education. Created in partnership with Denver Public Schools, Reclaiming the Narrative focuses on LGBTQ+ students’ intersectional experiences within schools, giving queer students a platform upon which to share their experiences and thus promote social change. You can discover more about their work.

Undergraduate members of Puksta Scholars, a scholarship program focused on civic engagement and facilitating positive change on campus and within external communities, presented their community-engaged project that tackles systematic barriers in education. Through a partnership with the Longmont Latino Chamber of Commerce, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) K-12 students, along with their guardians, are invited to participate in workshops that provide the necessary tools to assist them in their journey to college. Puksta Scholars intend to provide a ‘first-generation scholar guide’ to help high school students reach their potential and fulfill their dreams of a high-quality college education. Visit their website for more details on this project and the continuing work of the Puksta Scholars.

The School of Education and University Hill Elementary School presented the outcome of their five-year-old weekly after-school mentoring program. The Cultural Mentoring Program joins together Education and Ethnic Studies majors with 5^th graders belonging to the Latinx community. The program strengthens cultural identity among underrepresented students and fosters relationships between CU Boulder and University Hill students.

These projects are just a few examples of the School of Education’s collective humanitarian approach towards community engagement. Through striving to build equitable partnerships that prioritize the needs of the community, and with the help of funding from the Office for Public and Community-Engaged Scholarship, the School of Education continues to raise awareness and inspire change on a national level.

“The School of Education has a shared commitment to democracy, diversity, equity and justice. To live this out, we absolutely need to be doing community-engaged scholarship,” said Polman.

CU Boulder’s School of Education’s building dedication and open house brought together over 300 people to honor the school’s research, student work, donor support and community impact.

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Children’s Book Festival to feature culturally diverse, award-winning authors and illustrators on Nov. 9

Arielle Wiedenbeck — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 18:00:00 +0000

Children’s Book Festival to feature culturally diverse, award-winning authors and illustrators on Nov. 9 Arielle Wiedenbeck Tue, 11/05/2024 - 11:00

The �� School of Education, in collaboration with the Boulder Book Store, is thrilled to announce the 6th Annual Children’s Book Festival, taking place on Saturday, Nov. 9. For the first time, the event will be hosted off campus, at the Boulder Public Library to make it more accessible to the community.

The free event runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and it welcomes teachers, children, families, librarians and “all who enjoy children’s literature.” Attendees can engage in author talks, a panel discussion for educators, exhibit tables, book sales and signings and various activities for children.

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Children’s Book Festival to feature culturally diverse, award-winning authors and illustrators on Nov. 9

Arielle Wiedenbeck — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 18:31:54 +0000

Children’s Book Festival to feature culturally diverse, award-winning authors and illustrators on Nov. 9 Arielle Wiedenbeck Thu, 10/24/2024 - 12:31

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Hannah Brenkert-Smith Part of Team Receiving the 2024 Governor’s Pathfinding Partnerships Award

Arielle Wiedenbeck — Fri, 18 Oct 2024 21:06:25 +0000

Hannah Brenkert-Smith Part of Team Receiving the 2024 Governor’s Pathfinding Partnerships Award Arielle Wiedenbeck Fri, 10/18/2024 - 15:06

Gretchen Minekime

Associate Research Professor Hannah Brenkert-Smith, Institute of Behavioral Science, is a member of the Wildfire Research (WiRē) Team that will receive the Pathfinding Partnerships Award through the 2024 Governor’s Awards for High Impact Research on Nov. 20.

The award honors research that engages four or more distinct research entities in Colorado whose results leverage the resources and strengths among partnering organizations—and demonstrate the power of collaboration. Brenkert-Smith received a Public and Community-Engaged Scholarship Grant to support WiRē’s work in Chaffee and Lake Counties.

WiRē collaborates with local wildfire education practitioners to develop evidence-based community wildfire education programs at the invitation of local communities. Social science and community-engagement practices make it possible to tailor information for communities.

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Jota Samper Receives Award for Excellence in Engaged Scholarship

Arielle Wiedenbeck — Fri, 18 Oct 2024 21:01:06 +0000

Jota Samper Receives Award for Excellence in Engaged Scholarship Arielle Wiedenbeck Fri, 10/18/2024 - 15:01

Gretchen Minekime

Associate Professor Jota Samper, Program in Environmental Design, is the 2024 recipient of the Excellence in Faculty Community Engagement Award from the Engagement Scholarship Consortium (ESC). This national award is one of the most prestigious of its kind.

Samper’s research concentrates on sustainable urban growth, focusing on the intersection between urban informality and violent conflict. CU Boulder’s Office for Public and Community-Engaged Scholarship nominated Samper for 15 years of connecting his scholarship and study abroad programs (at CU Boulder, Duke University, Emerson College and MIT) with multiple unplanned settlements near Medellin, Colombia. Violence prompted Medellin residents to flee and set up informal dwellings outside the city limits.

Settlements in the region face issues such as landslides and access to potable water, healthcare, public spaces and education. Samper’s Colombian Displaced Communities: Planning and Urban Design Seminar students collaborate with residents to create community development plans and infrastructure designs and help build physical interventions. Communities decide which ideas make it to the building phase. Examples include a rain collection system, paving roads, reconditioning a community kitchen that serves more than 200 youth, and building sewers and potable water lines.

The seventh to win the faculty award nationally and the first from CU Boulder, Samper joined other Awards for Excellence in Engaged Scholarship recipients in Portland, Oregon, on Oct. 10 at the annual ESC conference.

The grant selection committee for public and community-engaged scholarship has funded Samper’s work eight times since 2018.

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Jota Samper receives his award

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Grantee Stories

Outdoor Recreation Offers a Path to Community Resilience

CU Boulder’s Rural Technical Assistance program helps rural Colorado towns use their natural assets to strengthen local economies, deepen partnerships and define their own futures.

Off

Announcing the Spring 2025 Tier 1 and 2 Grantees

Tier 2 (formerly Community Impact Grants)
Spring 2025 Recipients

Tier 1 (formerly Micro Grants)
Spring 2025 Recipients

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Words of Hope: Revitalizing the Zapotec Language

Related Articles

Applications Now Open for Public and Community-Engaged Scholarship Grants, Tiers 1-4

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In the hands of these actors, theatre builds bridges

Actively listening to break down barriers

Taking their show on the road

Finding shared humanity in hard places

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Community-Engaged Scholarship: A Pillar of the School of Education

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Children’s Book Festival to feature culturally diverse, award-winning authors and illustrators on Nov. 9

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Children’s Book Festival to feature culturally diverse, award-winning authors and illustrators on Nov. 9

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Hannah Brenkert-Smith Part of Team Receiving the 2024 Governor’s Pathfinding Partnerships Award

Related Articles

Jota Samper Receives Award for Excellence in Engaged Scholarship

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Grantee Stories

Outdoor Recreation Offers a Path to Community Resilience

CU Boulder’s Rural Technical Assistance program helps rural Colorado towns use their natural assets to strengthen local economies, deepen partnerships and define their own futures.

Off

Announcing the Spring 2025 Tier 1 and 2 Grantees

Tier 2 (formerly Community Impact Grants)Spring 2025 Recipients

Tier 1 (formerly Micro Grants)Spring 2025 Recipients

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Words of Hope: Revitalizing the Zapotec Language

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Applications Now Open for Public and Community-Engaged Scholarship Grants, Tiers 1-4

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In the hands of these actors, theatre builds bridges

Actively listening to break down barriers

Taking their show on the road

Finding shared humanity in hard places

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Community-Engaged Scholarship: A Pillar of the School of Education

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Children’s Book Festival to feature culturally diverse, award-winning authors and illustrators on Nov. 9

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Children’s Book Festival to feature culturally diverse, award-winning authors and illustrators on Nov. 9

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Hannah Brenkert-Smith Part of Team Receiving the 2024 Governor’s Pathfinding Partnerships Award

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Jota Samper Receives Award for Excellence in Engaged Scholarship

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Tier 2 (formerly Community Impact Grants)
Spring 2025 Recipients

Tier 1 (formerly Micro Grants)
Spring 2025 Recipients