Ten faculty and instructors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been named “Morgridge Fellows” in a new professional development program of the Morgridge Center for Public Service.
The fellows were selected through a juried process to participate in the year-long learning community designed to further institutionalize and support community-engaged scholarship, defined as: teaching, research, and scholarly activities that are performed in equitable, mutually beneficial collaboration with communities to fulfill campus and community objectives. The program is led by Morgridge Center academic staff and guest speakers from campus and community perspectives.
The upcoming year will include sessions focused on developing and sustaining community-based learning courses or research. In addition to receiving support for their classrooms, fellows will have the opportunity to build a unique interdisciplinary team of mentors and peers from the teaching and learning community.
The following instructors have been named Morgridge Fellows:
Andy Garbacz, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology. Andy’s research focuses on developing and testing family-centered and family-school partnership interventions to promote children’s social behavioral competencies and reduce the risk of later problem behavior. His work emphasizes aligning and integrating family-school-community engagement in a three-tier prevention framework. He frequently collaborates with schools, community agencies, and organizations to improve practical implications of research for children, families, and schools.
Marcus Cederström is the Community Curator of Nordic-American Folklore in the Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic. He holds a Ph.D. in Scandinavian Studies from UW-Madison. As a public folklorist, his research focuses on Scandinavian immigration to the United States, identity formation, North American indigenous communities, and questions about sustainability.
Chris Barcelos is an Assistant Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Their work uses ethnography, discourse analysis, and visual methods to investigate how community health practices and discourses both reveal and reproduce inequality. Barcelos’s research projects share a practical emphasis on research for and by marginalized people that contributes to effective policies and programs.
Julia Garrett is a doctoral candidate in the Composition and Rhetoric Program of the English Department, studying literacy, migration, and the language experiences of immigrant and refugee women. Her research has been informed by the knowledge and generosity of many immigrant women in the community, as well as educators and advocates at Madison Public Library, the Urban League, Centro Hispano, and others. Under the guidance of Professor Kate Vieira, she is piloting a literacy program at Goodman Library, recently awarded a Baldwin Seed Project grant, that cultivates the conversational and digital literacies of immigrant women.
Lara B. Gerassi, Ph.D., LCSW, is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work. Her community-based research focuses on increasing the safety and security for individuals at risk of trafficking or who have been trafficked. She is the lead author on a book entitled Sex Trafficking & Commercial Sexual Exploitation: Prevention, Advocacy, and Trauma-Informed Practice and has authored multiple peer-reviewed publications and contributions on gender-based violence and sexual risk behavior. Her direct practice work with survivors of violence and experiences have served as an essential foundation to her research agenda.
Claire Luby, Ph.D., is a Faculty Associate in the Department of Horticulture. Her community-based research focuses on improving seed sovereignty for a variety of communities, including supporting the work of several Native American tribes in Wisconsin. She is also developing a service-learning component to the introductory horticulture course. In addition to her teaching and research, she has applied her community-engaged scholarship to the development of three organizations: The Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI), The Student Organic Seed Symposium, and the Society of Organic Seed Professionals.
Jenna M. Loyd is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is a feminist geographer focusing on race, migration, and health. She is the co-author of Boats, Borders, and Bases: Race, the Cold War, and the Rise of Migration Detention the United States (2018, University of California Press), author of Health Rights Are Civil Rights: Peace and Justice Activism in Los Angeles, 1963-1978 (2014, University of Minnesota Press), and co-editor of Beyond Walls and Cages: Prisons, Borders, and Global Crisis (2012, University of Georgia Press).
Michael Maguire is a Faculty Associate in the School of Human Ecology (SoHe). He teaches in SoHe’s Bachelor of Science degree program, Community & Nonprofit Leadership. Teaching is Michael’s passion – along with the good work associated with engaging college students – mentoring, supporting alumni, and contributing to a number of campus initiatives. A native New Englander, Michael comes from a family of educators – he’s proud to continue that tradition with UW-Madison students.
Parvathy Pillai, MD, MPH, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Population Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. She serves as the Associate Director of the Preventive Medicine Residency Program. She also supports public health education for medical students by serving as the Faculty Director of the Path of Distinction in Public Health Program and the public health curriculum thread director. She has a particular interest in education efforts surrounding applied public health practice and community engagement.
Eva Marie Vivian, Professor in the School of Pharmacy, is also pursuing her doctorate in SoHE’s Civil Society and Community Research program. She received her Doctor of Pharmacy degree from the University of Illinois College of Pharmacy and a Master of Science in Population Health from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. Eva has been referred to as “the researcher with a servant’s heart” because of her service to underserved communities in Madison, WI. She seeks to work with underserved communities to help build their capacity to improve their health and well-being and reduce health disparities.