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Three new podcasts for the summer-check them out and share with your students!

Addressing health through grant-making and program development

J.R. Jamison sat down with Bob Atkins, Director of the New Jersey Health Initiatives of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. They chat about Bob’s journey from registered nurse to co-founder of a youth-development nonprofit to faculty member at Rutgers-Camden, and how these experiences have influenced Bob’s work as a grant-maker throughout the state of New Jersey. They also make a stop off in Pop Culture Corner to talk books, podcasts, and the importance of seeing yourself reflected in the world.

Listen to Episode 17

Radical Hospitality

Emily Shields and Sinda Nichols, Associate Director of Minnesota Campus Compact, are joined by Katie Clark, Director of Augsburg Central Health Commons at Augsburg University, for an engaging conversation about providing community-ownership over healthcare and what it means to view healthcare from a lens of social justice and radical hospitality.

Listen to Episode 16

Brian Gogan, assistant professor in rhetoric and writing studies in the Department of English at Western Michigan University, Azuri Gonzalez, Director of the Center for Civic Engagement at the University of Texas at El Paso, and Mark Wilson, Director of Civic Learning Initiatives and the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities in the College of Liberal Arts at Auburn University, to talk about dialogue, Civic Action Planning, and highlights from the national conference.

Listen to Episode 15

The Nashman Center's GW Upstart program is sponsoring a workshop series for students interested in social innovation and entrepreneurship.  Please forward this information to students, particularly if their work in your course results in ideas for action.

Workshops are aimed at preparing students to successfully apply for funding from: Projects for Peace, Eco-Equity Challenge, Campaigning for Change, the Public Service Grant Commission, and other opportunities.

Many thanks to Dolores Perillan for forwarding this plenary presentation from a recent American Association of Teacher of Spanish and Portuguese event. The messages here, that students must learn not only content, but also a greater understanding of their role as advocates and political actors for positive change, are relevant to higher education broadly as well as to the intended audience of language educators.

GW Teach and GW Noyce are managing a new Fall internship program at the Smithsonian Science Education Center. This program builds from their successful summer internship program, encourage your students to apply (deadline September 25, 2017).

http://ssec.si.edu/gwteach-internship-program

New annual research on Volunteering and Civic Life in America was released by the National Conference on Citizenship and the Corporation for National and Community Service.

The report has several key findings. Most noteworthy, Americans aged 35-44 have the highest volunteering rate at 31.3%. Older generations have the highest average number of volunteer hours at about 92 hours. Other elements of this demographic population were evaluated including the nature in which they enjoy dinner (68.5% have dinner with family or friends frequently) and other involvement beyond volunteering (36.3% are involved in civic, recreational or religious organizations).

With a new election coming up just next year, understanding American's civic involvement is exceedingly important. The full report can be reviewed here: https://www.nationalservice.gov/vcla

Please forward to interested undergraduate or graduate students:

The GWupstart Workshop Series is for students in any discipline who want to learn the skills to transform their desire to make a difference into a real project or venture. The series will meet weekly for one-and-a-half hour sessions, three weeks in a row. (The program will repeat each month of the Fall semester).

The skills learned will prepare students to apply for one or more of the six opportunities available through the GWupstart Social Innovation Lab.

For more information:

go.gwu.edu/upstart, or http://serve.gwu.edu/gwupstart-workshop-series