The Community University Partnership Awards (CUPA) is a perfect manifestation of the Wisconsin Idea.
This honor provides funding to groups who have demonstrated exemplary collaborations between community groups and university partners. Recognition of these achievements shows the priority of fostering social connections with those outside the university in order to address crucial public issues with the assistance of multiple stakeholders.
Awardees were chosen based on their commitment to addressing needs identified by the community itself, as well sustaining a continued relationship with these communities throughout the project’s process. These awards, organized and funded by Community Relations and the South Madison Partnership, epitomize what these campus units have built their missions on.
The award ceremony took place this year for the first time at the Wisconsin Idea Conference, highlighting the purpose of education outside campus bounds and the power it has to create more resilient and equitable communities across the state. We applaud the co-facilitation of joint projects, and hope these awards shine a light on the immense, forward-looking impact they can have.
2023-24 CUPA Recipients
1. A Community-Engaged Approached to Cardiovascular Disease
The UW–Madison Division of Cardiovascular Medicine worked with the Native American Center for Health Professions (NACHP) to establish a preventative cardiology outreach clinic with the Forest County Potowatomi tribe. This type of intervention is needed due to the disproportionately high rates of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) seen in American Indians/Alaska Natives (more than 33% before age 65); this is nearly 2.5 times the rate seen in non-Hispanic Whites.
To enact this project with the community in mind, they organized two advisory boards, one composed of Tribal Elders and the other of clinical staff and providers. With their input, an addition to this project was born: a lifestyle medicine program taught by elders, focused around a different food and health-related topic each season of the year. This idea was important to them because it included the whole community, the holistic view of health, and the traditional foodways of the tribe. Funding from this award will predominantly go towards compensating the advisory board members for their time and expertise. Combining Western science and ancestral tribal knowledge perfectly represents the very essence of the Wisconsin Idea.
2. Broadening the Impact, Reach, and Sustainbility of Restorative Justice
For the past fifteen years, the First Congregational UCC Prison Ministry Project Leadership Team have led a restorative justice program in Wisconsin prisons. The goal of this program is to connect victim-survivors and incarcerated individuals to talk through reducing future harm and repairing that of the past. Restorative justice is an alternative to punishment-centered incarceration, hoping to bring rehabilitation and understanding to the forefront.
The funding from this award will go towards a recent effort that combines this team with the emerging research done by the Cultivating Justice CoLaboratory at the UW–Madison Center for Healthy Minds. They intend to conduct surveys and interviews from participants in the restorative justice program, as to assess its effectiveness and impact on all involved. To engage the wider community in these research goals, an advisory board made up of former UW–Madison and Nehemiah incarcerated individuals. They will consult the research team on how best to interpret the data collected and the best ways in which to disseminate the results to the community. Overall, this collaboration is advancing social justice goals through interaction between those most impacted by the issues at hand; their dedication to community-centrism and empathy-led programming shines through.
3. Where do the Babies Go?
The community-led research project based in the Department of Pediatrics at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health examines how decisions are made about caregivers for infants delivered to incarcerated mothers in Wisconsin. The research question itself was formed by conversations between formerly incarcerated mothers, social service workers and academic partners at a prison birth justice retreat.
The funding from this award will go towards training and paying those most impacted by this research (formerly incarcerated mothers who gave birth during their incarceration period and caregivers who have cared for an infant of an incarcerated mother) to conduct interviews themselves. Their participation will ensure that interviewees feel comfortable with who they are conversing with, as well as centering people with experience of the topic. The results of this research will be shared with the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, practitioners, and policy makers, in an effort to address the lack of reproductive justice (especially for Black women) in prisons.
The Community University Partnership Awards are an important reminder that our university should be recognizing and prioritizing community-centered wellbeing in the state. Our vast resources and knowledge faculty are a tool best utilized when working within the broader public sphere. The CUPA recipients this year are inspiring examples of how UW–Madison has the ability to advance social justice work in Wisconsin, all while making sure the voices of communities are heard and put into practice.