Sixteen faculty and campus members at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have been named Morgridge Fellows.
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.
Community-Engaged Scholarship is 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 staff Haley Madden and Cory Sprinkel and guest speakers from campus and community perspectives.
“This year we will be welcoming our largest Morgridge Fellows cohort with 16 folks joining us from across campus! We’re thrilled to be working with such a diverse group of scholars and community engagement professionals,” says Sprinkel. “As we all think about celebrating the university’s 175th, I’m inspired by the possibilities and passions at play amongst our cohort that emphasize the goals and aspirations of the Wisconsin Idea.”
The upcoming year will include sessions focused on developing and sustaining mutually beneficial community-university partnerships for Community-based Learning courses and Research. In addition to receiving support for their classrooms, research and other community-engaged projects, fellows will have the opportunity to build a unique interdisciplinary team of mentors and peers from the UW and broader Madison community.
The following individuals have been named Morgridge Fellows:
Angela Johnson, she/her
Lecturer, Art Department
Angela Johnson is a lecturer for the art department teaching service learning in art and art 100. She is also a professional artist and creativity coach. She earned a master’s in art education and an MFA from UW–Madison with a focus in photography and installation. Areas of artistic expertise include alternative photo processes, bookmaking, box making and community-based art practice. Her work includes themes of nature, balance, and telling stories through individual and collective memories. She often incorporates scientific elements and concepts into her work. Collaborations with other artists and scientists energize her creativity.
Anika M. Rice, she/her
PhD Student, Department of Geography
Anika is a people-environment geographer studying migration, access to land and gender. She works in the rural highlands of Guatemala, in concert with community leaders and migrant accompaniment groups. Using a feminist political ecology lens, Rice is co-designing participatory research on how migration and property are linked to various outcomes at the family level. She centers mobility as a human right in her scholarship and solidarity work. Since 2019, she has also been a co-leader on a participatory action research project with the North American-based Jewish Farmer Network, supporting social movement evaluation and a community-based seedkeeping project. Rice completed her MS in geography in 2021, working with agroecology organizations across Guatemala on access to markets and economic solidarity. In 2023-24, she plans to develop the Community-Engaged Scholarship (CES) aspects of her dissertation, and participate in conversations on campus about international CES approaches, methods and challenges.
Anna Finley, she/her
Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute on Aging
Dr. Anna Finley is a social-affective neuroscientist and NIH funded postdoctoral fellow at the Institute on Aging working on the Affective Neuroscience Project of the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) longitudinal study. Her current research focuses on how a variety of social factors (including stress, loneliness, social isolation, and minoritized group status) impact how the brain and body respond to emotional provocation, and how that in turn influences health and wellbeing. For her future work, Finley aims to start her own lab as a faculty member focused on rural health and well-being, with a particular interest in how social isolation and community support impact emotions and the brain in individuals in rural communities. She hopes to build lasting collaborative relationships with communities to conduct her research, as well as to disseminate findings and develop interventions to improve wellbeing.
Catherine Reiland, she/her
Assistant Vice Provost, Office of the Provost
Across the scope of Catherine Reiland’s portfolio, community engagement is an animating force. Reiland directs the Wisconsin Idea Seminar, an annual five-day journey through Wisconsin that offers faculty and staff the opportunity to learn firsthand about the social and cultural contexts that shape the lives of many of our Wisconsin students, and to see what the Wisconsin Idea looks like when it is rooted in local communities and shaped by local priorities. She also directs the Ira and Ineva Reilly-Baldwin Wisconsin Idea Endowment grant program and plays an active role in Native Nations UW and Our Shared Future. The Wisconsin Idea has informed, inspired and mobilized much of her work on campus, and for over fifteen years she has designed programming that celebrates and supports community-engaged work. Catherine is a UW–Madison alumna with a master’s degree from New York University. Her academic interests include tourist productions, visual cultures, photography, performance studies, museum studies and memory.
Colleen Henegan, she/her
PhD Student, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, Kucharik Agroecology Lab
Colleen Henegan, MS, is an interdisciplinary agroecological researcher. Her dissertation integrates predictive crop modeling, geospatial analyses and community-based participatory modeling to uncover how climate change is impacting agriculture across semi-arid regions of Southern Africa, with a special focus on Zambia. Much of this region is predicted to move past agroecological thresholds for temperature and precipitation in coming decades, increasing the risk of crop failure. Henegan uses interdisciplinary, community-based approaches to help elevate other ways of knowing within academic discourse and to develop tools with local farmers and researchers that are also useful for them. She is also a board member of the Maluwa Foundation, an educational and environmental non-profit working with and for women in Siavonga, Zambia, and has been the teaching assistant for the Community Environmental Scholars Program (CESP) for the past two years. She hopes to continue this work after earning her doctorate, ideally as a faculty member and lab leader.
Courtney Parker West, she/her
PhD Student, Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis | School of Education
Courtney Parker West is a second-year PhD student in educational leadership & policy analysis who has spent the past 15 years working in public education, education non-profit, community and institutional organizing and intersectional anti-racist DEI consulting in rural eastern North Carolina and across the nation. She is interested in the intersection of race, gender & sexuality, religious and/or ideological affiliation and the impact of colonization and white supremacy on how educators of color reflect on and heal from trauma while sustaining themselves in their work as educators, advocates, and leaders in their communities, particularly in light of anti-CRT, anti-LGBTQ legislation. Additionally, Parker West explores lessons learned, cautionary tales, and a sense of yearning in Star Trek as it pertains to racial realism, speculative fiction and the Black radical imagination and what’s possible for — and required in — transforming public education in an inherently oppressive system. Parker West seeks to leverage podcasting and intergenerational storytelling in Community-Based Research and narrative inquiry to expand how we vision and embody liberation and how we build bridges between and among community members and institutional agents pursuing equitable and socially just policy changes. She is an opinionated introvert who loves wine, beautifying spaces and watching Star Trek reruns.
Diane Farsetta, she/her
Outreach Program Manager, Center for Aging Research and Education, School of Nursing
Diane Farsetta, PhD, facilitates collaboration among researchers, clinicians, students, service providers and community members with an interest in older adult health. She helped develop and co-facilitates meetings of the Madison and Rural Boards of Older Adult Advisors, which provide guidance to health researchers. Farsetta helped design and is the community partner liaison for Nursing 511: Community Supports for People with Dementia and co-authored the Dementia Friendly Toolkit for campus and community audiences. She serves as Chair of the Governing Board of the Area Agency on Aging of Dane County and as Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors for the Capitol Lakes Foundation. Farsetta has biology research, teaching, journalism, and nonprofit leadership experience.
Diego Román, he/él
Assistant Professor of Bilingual/Bicultural Education, Department of Curriculum & Instruction | School of Education
Diego Román is an assistant professor of bilingual/bicultural education in the department of curriculum and instruction at UW–Madison. He also holds faculty affiliations to the Chican@ & Latin@ Studies program, Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian Studies program and doctoral program in second language acquisition. His research is located at the intersection of bilingual education, science education and environmental studies. Specifically, he investigates the implicit and explicit ideologies reflected in the design and implementation of bilingual and science education programs particularly on how environmental topics are taught to multilingual students. Dr. Román has researched the language used to teach climate change at the middle school level and is currently examining science, environmental, and bilingual programs (Spanish/English and Kichwa/Spanish) in rural Wisconsin and in the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador.
Ejura Yetunde Salihu, she/her
PhD candidate, Health Services Research in Pharmacy | School of Pharmacy
Ejura Yetunde Salihu is a PhD candidate in the social and administrative sciences division at the UW–Madison’s School of Pharmacy. Her research endeavors revolve around the application of socio-behavioral theories and community-engaged research principles to advance health equity initiatives, specifically the dissemination and implementation of culturally-tailored health promotion programs for marginalized communities. Her dissertation studies the adaptation and dissemination of a culturally adapted falls-prevention program within African American/Black and Latinx communities in Wisconsin. This study holds immense significance in improving the well-being and safety of elders in these communities. Prior to her academic pursuits in the United States, Ejura earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in anatomy from the University of Ilorin, Nigeria and the University of Nigeria, respectively. She also holds a second master’s degree in sociology from Western Illinois University.
Evan Nelson, he/him
Associate Professor (CHS), Doctor of Physical Therapy Program, Department of Family Medicine & Community Health
Evan Nelson, DPT, PhD, a board-certified specialist in orthopaedic physical therapy, is an associate professor (CHS) in the Doctor of Physical Therapy Program & Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the School of Medicine and Public Health. A translational science trained clinical researcher, Nelson’s work aims to provide evidence-based guidance for running-related injuries in youth runners. Nearly all running injury studies include only adult runners, but physical development or contextual reality experienced by youth runners is unique. To this end, Nelson is building a collaboration with a high school track and field team to better understand factors contributing to injury or affecting athletes’ subsequent recovery. His work creates appealing opportunities for students to participate in community-engaged, translational science. During this fellowship, Nelson aims to advance his skills in Community-Engaged Scholarship so that he can better incorporate stakeholder community groups in translational science research projects that implement running medicine discoveries made at UW–Madison.
LaShanda Harbin, she/her
PhD Student, Educational Policy Studies | School of Education
Born and raised on the South side of Chicago, LaShanda is a PhD student in educational policy studies. Since beginning her career in education as a volunteer math tutor when she was 17 years old, she has worked in various educational spaces in New England, Chicago and now Wisconsin over nearly a decade. Her independent research focuses on how to improve school safety for Black queer and trans youth. She is also very committed to mentoring youth and empowering them as they work to address educational and social issues that matter most to them. Working closely with WCER’s Annalee Good and other graduate students, she supports partnerships between WCER, various community partners and middle and high school students across Wisconsin. Across all aspects of her work, LaShanda is committed to uplifting the voices of multiply marginalized youth and community members.
Leah Horowitz, she/her
Associate Professor, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program
As a critical cultural geographer, Dr. Leah Horowitz uses ethnographic methods to examine power dynamics within environmental governance, across a range of scales. At the local scale, she examines “grassroots environmental governance”: community efforts to influence environmental decision-making processes. Simultaneously, her research investigates ideologies, policies, and power relations of élites at national and global scales, to better understand structures conditioning the forms and outcomes of community-based engagements. She has studied indigenous communities’ engagements with mining in New Caledonia, and communities’ engagements with biodiversity conservation in New Caledonia, Malaysia and the U.S. Currently, her research focuses on American Indian communities’ resistance to oil and gas pipelines.
Lindsay Flowers, she/her
Assistant Professor of Oboe and Music Community Engagement | Mead Witter School of Music
Dr. Lindsay Flowers is the assistant professor of Oboe at UW–Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music where she is a member of the Wingra Wind Quintet and guides student-generated community engagement projects. She received a doctor of music degree from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. Her background in athletics distinguishes her pedagogical approach in her emphasis on performance visualization, disciplined commitment, and supportive teamwork. Flowers is an oboist and English hornist with the Madison Symphony Orchestra and Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra.
May Ramírez, they/them/elle
PhD Student, Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis | School of Education
May Ramírez is a doctoral student in educational leadership and policy analysis at UW–Madison. They received their bachelor’s in disability studies and child development at Vanderbilt University and master’s in clinical rehabilitation counseling at UW–Madison. A lot of May’s work focuses on working with BIPOC transition-age youth with intellectual and/or developmental (I/DD) disabilities and their families to support their mental health and career goals. They have experience working with children, teenagers and adults with disabilities in various education and counseling settings.
Morgan L. Henson, he/him
PhD candidate, Department of Sociology
Morgan L. Henson is a PhD candidate in sociology studying social hierarchies within a comparative, transnational context. Currently, Henson researches phenotypic hierarchies in the United States, Germany, and Russia and compares how whiteness manifests in countries with different social, economic and political histories. Over the last two years, Henson has taken his knowledge of whiteness and worked with different community groups around Madison, WI to understand how whiteness manifests in their specific contexts and how these communities can work toward creating more equitable spaces for everyone, including white people. He has received both the Bucky Award for graduate student commitment to engagement and activism and the Honored Instructor Award from UW–Madison for his work with communities both inside and out of the classroom.
Shiqi Shen, she/her
PhD Student, Civil Society and Community Research, School of Human Ecology
Shiqi (施圻) is a community-based learner and scholar deeply influenced by the kinship ties and place-based cultural practices of her upbringing in Suzhou, China. These experiences have ingrained in her the belief that relationships form the foundation of one’s identity. With a strong interest in the intersection between youth purpose and community development, Shen’s research revolves around understanding how urban Indigenous college students in land-grant universities contribute to their elders, communities and lands. Drawing on her background collaborating with Chinese grassroots NGOs dedicated to community-led development and education equity, Shen brings a relational, global and interdisciplinary perspective to her work. As a fellow, she is dedicated to centering indigenous understandings of community well-being and youth development while fostering an inclusive and supportive community of engaged scholars.