Fifteen 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 Interim Assistant Director of Community-Engaged Scholarship Cory Sprinkel.
“This year we had our largest applicant pool ever,” says Sprinkel. “We’re incredibly pleased to have some many stellar scholars and staff interested in this program.”
The Morgridge Fellows program is a unique opportunity for individuals to learn and explore ways to further weave community engagement into the core functions of the university. The upcoming year will include sessions focused on developing and sustaining mutually beneficial community-university partnerships for Community-based Learning courses and research.
The following individuals have been named Morgridge Fellows:
Amanda Fowler, MFA, MLIS
Doctoral Student, Department of Curriculum and Instruction
Amanda is a doctoral student in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, where she studies language and identity politics through the lens of visual culture and archive studies.
Chell Parkins, MFA, EdD
Inaugural Arnhold Director, Dance Education
Chell Parkins is the inaugural Arnhold director in dance education at UW–Madison, where she wrote the curricula and is implementing a new dance education certificate focused on community-based practices. She is a dance scholar, advocate, educator, choreographer and performer whose research explores the experiences of Latinx communities engaged in culturally responsive-sustaining dance programs. Her documentary, WanderlustDance: Puerto Rico, invites audiences to look at the culture, politics and people of post-Maria Puerto Rico, her mother’s homeland, through interviews set against footage of solo dancing at historical sites across the archipelago.
Felipe Gomez
Assistant Community Engagement Coordinator, Morgridge Institute for Research
Felipe Gomez is a master’s student in the education leadership and policy analysis program, focusing on policy evaluation. He currently serves as an engagement and education coordinator at the Morgridge Institute for Research, where he collaborates with diverse stakeholders to promote educational initiatives and foster community engagement. Before this role, Gomez taught in inner-city Milwaukee, where he discovered his passion for education. His firsthand experience in under-resourced classrooms ignited his desire to influence educational policy and create more equitable learning environments. Gomez aims to leverage his expertise in policy evaluation to develop policies that enhance educational outcomes and address systemic inequities.
George Meindl, PhD
Associate Teaching Professor, Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology
George Meindl is an associate teaching professor in the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology. His research, which is driven by undergraduate students in the courses he teaches, integrates forest ecology, evolution and toxicology. As an educator, his primary goal is to inspire an appreciation for the natural world to help create responsible global citizens that support sustainability.
Hilary Habeck Hunt, MS
Doctoral Candidate, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies
Hilary Habeck Hunt is a PhD candidate in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and the Department of Geography. Her scholarship investigates the practice of collective ownership of U.S. conservation lands. In Madison, she is actively engaged in disability justice and community care work on campus. Before coming to Madison, she worked as the director of Land Protection for a conservation nonprofit in Southwest Michigan, led urban environmental restoration in Portland, Oregon and organized for energy justice in New York City.
L. J. Randolph Jr., EdD
Assistant Professor, World Language Education
L. J. Randolph Jr. is an assistant professor of World Language Education and affiliate faculty in Second Language Acquisition at UW–Madison. Before joining higher education, he spent a decade as a Spanish and ESL teacher at the high school level. His research and teaching focus on various critical issues in language education, including teaching Spanish as a heritage, home or community language; incorporating justice-centered, anti-racist and anti-colonial pedagogies; and centering Blackness and Indigenousness. An advocate for abolitionist, liberationist and transformative language education, he is the 2024 president of ACTFL (originally founded as the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages), the nation’s largest organization for PK-12 and post-secondary language education professionals.
Linnea Hjelm, MS
Doctoral Candidate, Department of Civil Society and Community Studies
Linnea Hjelm is a PhD candidate in the Department of Civil Society and Community Studies in the School of Human Ecology. She is a dedicated partner of a local sexual violence resource center and has collaborated on curriculum development and evaluation projects alongside youth and community leaders. Hjelm’s research explores the benefits of youth leadership in sexual violence prevention and utilizes transformative participatory design to engage young people as experts and evaluators.
Matthew Wolfgram, PhD
Associate Researcher and Principal Investigator, Wisconsin Center for Education Research
Matthew Wolfgram is an anthropologist of education and education researcher at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research. His research employs ethnography, participatory action research and other qualitative research methods to study factors that impact the educational experiences of minoritized college students.
Michael Childers, PhD
Professor, School for Workers
Michael Childers joined the School for Workers after completing his graduate degrees and post-doctorate fellowship at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and brings diverse management and engineering experience from a wide variety of industries. In addition to steward, bargaining, financial officer and leadership courses, Childers’ teaching interests include industrial engineering topics such as production standards and job evaluation systems. He also teaches Labor-Management Relations MHR612 for the Wisconsin School of Business. Current service includes the executive committees of the Teaching Academy and Phi Kappa Phi, United Way Campaign Cabinet and Community Peacemaker in the Dane County Restorative Justice program.
Morgan Shields, PhD
Undergraduate Program Manager, Department of Kinesiology
Morgan Shields is the undergraduate program manager for the Department of Kinesiology where she teaches and advises students. Her research focused on relationships between high volume exercise training, cognition, mood and athlete overtraining. Currently she is working on creating programs to increase physical activity in adolescents. She played volleyball for the Wisconsin Badgers and played professionally in Portugal where she now helps to teach a study abroad class.
Ryan Stowe, PhD
Assistant Professor, Chemistry
Ryan Stowe is an assistant professor of chemistry at UW–Madison. He and his research group study how structures of schooling communicate what and whose knowledge counts. Through this work, it is becoming increasingly apparent that supporting communities in using chemistry knowledge to advance their priorities requires de-settling normative expectations about what science learning is/should be.
Samantha Bosco, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology
Samantha Bosco (she/they) is a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology. Bosco’s mixed-methods research investigates agroforestry (farming with trees) adoption in the upper midwest as a social practice mediated by land manager decision making, farming networks, institutions, and policies. She also currently co-leads an effort to map and support agroforestry demonstration sites across the US with the Savanna Institute. Prior to UW–Madison, Bosco led community-based mixed-methods agroforestry research with the US Forest Service National Agroforestry Center, Cornell Cooperative Extension and at the Skaru:re (Tuscarora) Nation. Outside of research Samantha is a community organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace and performs original queer acousti-punk songs as the solo-artist Blasfemme.
Shamya Karumbaiah, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Psychology and Data Science
Shamya Karumbaiah is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Psychology and Data Science Institute. Karumbaiah studies human-centered AI for teaching and learning with the aim to augment human-human interaction and practices. Her current research focuses on constructing a scientific and critical understanding of equitable and responsible use of AI in classrooms. A computer scientist for over 10 years, she earned a PhD in learning sciences from the University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation empirically investigated sources of biases in AI-based learning systems. Before joining UW–Madison, she was a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University where she studied ways to augment teacher practices in human-AI partnered instruction.
Tony Chambers, PhD
Director for Community Well-Being, Center for Healthy Minds
Tony Chambers is the director for Community Well-Being at the Center for Healthy Minds at UW-Madison. Chambers is also a member of the instructional team for the course, “The Art and Science of Human Flourishing”. He is involved in designing and teaching a Community-based Learning course tentatively entitled, “Human Flourishing in Community Settings”. Through the Badger Talks program, Chambers has worked with communities and organizations throughout the state on the topics of “Belonging and Flourishing”. He has served as a senior administrator and/or faculty member at several higher education institutions. Most recently, Chambers retired as emeritus faculty from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE)/University of Toronto. His research, teaching and writing are in the areas of college student learning, development and well-being, as well as the social purposes of postsecondary education.
Virginia Downing
PhD Candidate, Educational Policy Studies
Virginia Downing is a PhD candidate in educational policy studies in the social sciences concentration at UW-Madison. Downing’s research broadly seeks to ask: How do people, spaces, and policies lead to affirming and equitable schooling experiences for Black youth? Downing utilizes qualitative methodologies, Community-based Research and critical theory to explore Black community engagement, community-school relationships and the role of community-based spaces in education.