CBR Graduate Fellows Practice Engaged Public Scholarship Across Five Academic Disciplines
CBR Graduate fellows: Top L-R: Erin Kaplan, Brian Lightfoot. Bottom L-R: Wayne Martin Freeman, Shae Frydenlund and Aaron Lamplugh.
"We were thrilled this year to have our biggest pool of graduate student applicants, representing 10 departments across campus. The current group of Fellows proposed exciting projects that reflected long-term relationships with communities across Colorado. Their proposals articulated research projects with clear benefits to their partner organizations and with exciting implications for scholarship in their disciplines," explains CU Engage Faculty Director Ben Kirshner.
The CBR Fellows will work together as a cohort to learn methods of research that contribute to their individual doctoral research projects. Each CBR project will strive to advance CU Engage's key values of community-engaged research: equity, inclusion, public impact, democracy and the enactment of reciprocal relationships with various community partners.
Whereas emerging scholars are often forced to make a choice – to either engage in the community or do peer-reviewed research – this fellowship is designed to enable future scholars to build strong academic careers while working on public issues in partnership with community groups. "The purpose is to train a generation of scholars in the practices and principles of Community-Based Research," says Kirshner.
The 2017-18 CBR Fellows and their projects are as follows:
| CBR Graduate Fellow | CBR Project | Academic Discipline |
| Wayne Martin Freeman | Park Jams: Community and Youth organizing in multicultural spaces | Ethnic Studies |
| Shae Frydenlund | Geographies of Work and Housing in Denver’s Muslim Refugee Community | Geography |
| Erin Kaplan | Colorado Prison Arts Collective: Theatre Workshop & Community Arts-Integration Programming | Theatre |
| Aaron Lamplugh | VOC Exposure Interventions in Denver Area Nail Salons | Mechanical Engineering |
| Brian Lightfoot | Enhancing and Evaluating the Impact of Emancipatory Curriculum and Pedagogy for the Pathways2Teaching Program in Colorado | Education |