Sign up to participate in GW's 28th annual MLK Day of Service. Register for MLK Day of Service
As part of the GW celebration of the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community members are invited to participate in a day of service, leadership development, and interfaith dialogue.
Dr. Maranda C. Ward, Nashman Center Affiliate Faculty Member, is kicking off a training series starting January 11th 2023 through GW's Medicine and Health Sciences school. Register for this event
...continue reading "Register Now: Dr. Maranda C. Ward’s Training Series Kicks off in January"
Dr. Sean Cleary, associate professor in the School of Public Health, received the 2022 Transform Mid-Atlantic's Campus-Community Partnership Award. This award honors the partnership between Dr. Cleary, local autistic young adults, and several service providing organizations, including Our Stomping Ground. Years of collaboration have resulted in a popular GW course, PUBH 6232: The Autism Experience from a Public Health Perspective, and Community Based Participatory Research by faculty, students, and community partners. This work engages students in direct service-learning opportunities as well as CBPR and advocacy projects, all while respecting community members with autism as experts on their lived experience and advocates for change.
...continue reading "Nashman Spotlights: Dr. Sean Cleary Receives Transform Mid-Atlantic Award"
Dr. Maranda Ward, assistant professor in the School of Medicine and Health Sciences, has received Transform Mid-Atlantic's JEDI-CCE Award for her work "A Community Informed, Anti-Racist Curriculum in the Health Professions".
...continue reading "Nashman Spotlights: Dr. Maranda Ward Receives Transform Mid-Atlantic Award"
The Honey W. Nashman Center for Civic Engagement and Public Service is pleased to announce that Dr. Erin Wentzell has been awarded the Community Engaged Scholar award for her work in PT 8481: Interprofessional Community Practicum.
The Honey W. Nashman Center for Civic Engagement and Public Service is pleased to announce that Dr. Michelle Kelso has been awarded the Nashman Community Engaged Teaching Award.
The Honey W. Nashman Center for Civic Engagement and Public Service is hiring a graduate assistant for the EngageDC program. Applications due 01/31/2023. Link to application.
...continue reading "Share With Students: Nashman Center Hiring Graduate Assistant for EngageDC"
"Rayaan Ahmed has worked to bring mutual aid to students in Minnesota and Somalia as they are learning to address public service, social issues and other important life skills." Link to Article
Credit to Nick Erickson from GW Today for this article
...continue reading "Nashman Spotlights: GW Serves: Senior Teaches Youths to Prosper Together"
Award: First Place for Nashman Community Engagement in the Arts and Design
Project: Individual Survival
Photographer Sabrina Godin won First Place for the annual Arts and Design prize in spring 2022, an award given to students who engage in advocacy and social justice community relationships. She founded GW's first chapter of the National Press Photographer Association (NPPA) in the spring of 2020. Within the New Media Photojournalism (MA) department, Godin captured the diverse experiences of members from the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, the nation's largest non-profit organization battling sexual violence and bringing survivors to light.
...continue reading "Sabrina Godin takes First Place for Arts and Design Prize"
One, two, three… one, two, three.
Dance was Manuel Cuellar’s first language, and the form of expression became a surrogate for English as he assimilated to the United States when his family moved to Los Angeles from Chihuahua, Mexico. Intimacy, longing, relating, belonging, that’s all most people want. Exposed to dance in Mexico, he carried his forte with him to Los Angeles where he found these ways of being in touch with his surroundings he yearned for. On an otherwise ordinary day walking his younger sister to elementary school, Cuellar’s mother got in touch with a local dance studio. Soon enough, he was volunteering in an after-school program for local youth as a dance instructor, and Los Angeles gradually felt more like a home. “One, two, three… one, two, three” was the first English he felt self-motivated to learn, and he has never forgotten how volunteering helped him find a sense of community and belonging.
Cuellar’s new book on the political implications of dance, Choreographing Mexico: Festive Performances and Dancing Histories of a Nation, was recently celebrated at a book launch hosted by the GW Cisneros Institute, the Mexican Cultural Institute, and the Department of Romance, German, and Slavic Languages and Literatures. The book explores the meaning behind dance; the musical culture of sound and movement; the art that connected people from all backgrounds in post-revolutionary Mexico and across the Mexican diaspora in the United States. As Cuellar stated, when “brown bodies” have been feared, they have turned to dance to express themselves and create communities of their own.
“For me, the main idea is that my research on the impact of Mexican dance in the configuration of a sense of identity and belonging in Mexico and across the Mexican diaspora draws directly from my experience as a dancer, instructor, and choreographer,” Cuellar said in an email. “It focuses on bodily movement because it asks readers to consider other ways of creating knowledge and transmitting it beyond the written word.”
Cuellar continues to participate in the non-profit dance company Corazón Folklórico in D.C. to give back to the community that has so prevalently tapped into his enthusiasm for dance. In fact, following the panel discussion portion of the book launch event, he delighted the crowd by performing with the company. Using his research as reference, Cuellar brings his awareness of embodied expression from dance into the classroom.
Cuellar earned a Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literatures from the University of California, Berkeley and is now an assistant professor of Spanish and Latin American Literatures and Cultures at GW. His purposefully designed GW courses, such as SPAN 4480 “Studies in Latinx Cultural Production” or SPAN 3550 “Queer Latin America,” link his mastery of dance and interest in embodied knowledges with identity, cultural production, and community service.
Given the important role that volunteerism played in his own life, Cuellar encourages his GW students to engage in the local community as well. Students in SPAN 4480, for instance, are given a choice for one of the assignments: either a traditional research paper, or a more hands-on community partnership project with a local group – such as the Latino Student Fund and the Latin American Youth Center – serving the Spanish-speaking community in D.C. At the end of the semester, the students give a class presentation reflecting on their experience, connecting it to course themes.
As many continue to recognize his interdisciplinary research, panelist Bridget Christine Arce at the recent GW book launch event went into depth about Cuellar’s inspirational words that provided meaning beyond what dance looks like on the surface.
“Cuellar reminds us of how movement, rhythm, and sounds are not just performances for the stage, but for the home,” Arce said. “How they create a kinesthetic intimacy for feeling, for kinship and national identity, but most importantly for belonging.”
Award: 1st Place, Nashman Center Prize for Community Engaged Research, 2022
Project: Key Recommendations for Higher Education Institutions to Provide Non-Financial Support to Refugee-Background Students
At the annual GW Research Showcase in spring 2022, research team Olivia Issa, Emmanuelle Dyer Melhado, and Sara Alassaf presented their research, which grounded a larger project, the Welcoming Campus Initiative. This grassroots program advocates for a more inclusive GW community for refugee-background students including a scholarship, mentorship program, and revised admissions practices.
The program was initially developed by No Lost Generation GWU (NLG) members in collaboration with refugee-background students on campus and the Student Voices for Refugees Network. Olivia Issa studied Political Science and Arabic Language at GW and helped lead refugee-advocacy groups before graduating.
This program has expanded through conversations with numerous other universities and organizations across the country, outlining proposals at schools like Georgetown University and George Mason University to start their own Welcoming Campus Initiative. The Welcoming Campus Initiative Committee is planning to continue further programming, including fundraising events and awareness projects geared to make GW an inclusive space for all.
Read more about the initiative here. Read more about the research project here.
“We worked with students internationally, including refugee-background students themselves, to interview practitioners and student recipients of college-access programs for refugees in the US, Mexico, and Canada through Student Voices for Refugees,” Issa said.
The purpose of this study was to both acknowledge the barriers sitting at the forefront for refugee-background students and bring forth recommendations to the higher education institutions to better connect these students to resources. Two categories of non-financial student assistance emerge from their research: revising admissions practices, like accepting Duolingo English tests in addition to TOEFL scores, and developing pre-arrival and on-campus mentorship programs. After realizing GW was a vital component in assuring her goals come to fruition, Issa began the Welcome Campus Initiative project to help make "life-changing education" happen.
Outlined below are some key components from Issa's research:
| Community Partnership | Recommendations for GW and other higher education schools |
| Project by the University Alliance for Refugees and At-Risk Migrants: Student Voices for Refugees | Switching out standardized test requirements for low-cost English proficiency exams that schools are beginning to accept |
| Volunteers created toolkits for refugee-background students through scholarships and mentorship programs | Implementing an alumni mentorship networking program modeled after World University Services Canada |
| Olivia Issa spearheaded practitioner-student interviews with those involved in college-access programs | Adding pre-entrance language programs and volunteer-led English tutoring like Proyecto Habesha and GirlForward |
Award: Second Place for Nashman Center Community Engaged Research
Project: Making Work Work: Improving Employment Outcomes for Autistic Adults
Adam Berman, an autistic man, noticed that available research on autistic adults does not adequately collect the voices of other autistic adults when discussing satisfactory employment outcomes. Berman explored beyond the typical terms of wages and hours worked, which are important factors of employment quality but they do not grasp what satisfactory employment is to autistic adults.
With authentic, purposeful research, he made sure to include the opinions of other autistic adults through a mix of interviews and surveys. He asked questions regarding how the world of work has treated them and how their autism impacted employment outcomes. The results of these interviews suggest that systemic change to the world of employment must be made in order to better include autistic adults.
Read more about the project here.
The findings propose a new framework for how self-determination can positively impact autistic adults' employment prospects. Berman found that autistic people are often unemployed, work fewer hours and earn less money than neurotypical peers with other disabilities. Autistic people also struggle to determine their career paths and are directed by others into undesired careers.
| Questions the study answered: |
| What self-determination capacity variables predict gainful, high-quality employment for autistic students? |
| How do the individual capacities (volitional action, agentic action, and action-control beliefs) of self-determination affect employment outcomes for autistic people? |
| What self-determination skills do autistic people value the most in finding and maintaining high-quality employment? |
| What makes autistic people satisfied with their employment? |
| What do autistic adults say about employment and self-determination that would explain the regression analysis? |
With the help of his research, seven themes of autism and employment were found common amongst autistic adults as well as many areas of silence between the survey and interview results.
On Thursday, October 13th from 4-6pm ET, the Julian Clement Chase Prize Award will be awarded to Izy Carney at the GWU Museum- Textile Museum (701 21st Street NW, Washington DC). RSVP link.
This year's Julian Clement Chase Prize winner is Izy Carney, for her Honor’s History Thesis, "’Dirty Work’ Pay: Environmental Racism and the 1970 Washington, D.C. Sanitation Strike."
Honorable Mention goes to Wyatt Kirschner for his History Senior Thesis, "“45 Hardcore, Ass Bustin’ Radicals” and Three Infiltrators: Students for a Democratic Society at George Washington University and the FBI’s Counterintelligence Efforts Against Them."
The Julian Clement Chase Prize is named in honor of Sgt. Julian Clement Chase, a native of Washington, D.C., who graduated in 2008 from DC’s Wilson High School. While serving with the United States Marine Corps, he was killed in action at the age of 22 in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan. He was set to matriculate as a freshman at GW in the spring of 2013. Born in Washington, Julian knew and relished his city. His family has established this prize in his honor to recognize others who explore D.C. with the intelligence and exuberance that he did.
This ceremony launches this year’s University Writing and Research Conference, hosted by the GWU University Writing Program.
Professor: Phyllis Ryder
Students Reporting: 33
Time Reported: 224
Course Description:
“How do community leaders discover and name the systems that reproduce inequalities? How do they choose the right course of action? How do they mobilize people to respond? How can you contribute to this work?”
Professor Ryder’s UW 1020 course sought to address these questions and challenge students during the Spring 2022 semester. Students reflected on their own values and identity through a combination of writing and service learning, while strengthening their writing skills in the process.
In this service-learning course, students partnered with D.C. community leaders who addressed social inequities in areas such as housing, education, criminal justice, and the environment. In class, students analyzed local sites to learn how to research and write for community action both for academic and public audiences.
Students at GW are required to take a UW 1020, of which there are a variety of niche topics taught within the program. In this class, students examined the very idea of “writing well.” In this course that meant learning that the rules for “good writing” are themselves tools that can include and exclude people from power. By the end of the semester, students were able to build their own toolbox for developing complex, meaningful writing projects for diverse audiences.
For information about Community Engaged Scholarship at GW: https://go.gwu.edu/cesc
| Community Partner | Describe Project |
| Free Minds Book Club | With the Free Minds Book Club, students helped give written feedback to incarcerated youth on poetry and writing projects with other volunteers. Students also attended writing circles where they gave advice and ideas on writing projects via zoom to authors of poems and stories. |
| Latino Student Fund | As part of the LSF tutoring program, students helped reinforce math and English skills for PreK through 12th-grade students. Students met weekly as either a tutor or mentor with an individual student, building close relationships with the student throughout the semester. |
| Little Friends for Peace | Students had the opportunity to partner with LFFP as after school tutors for younger children struggling in school. As trained volunteers, students built close bonds with their students and the LFFP program, developing stronger interpersonal communication skills. Some students also participated in LFFP’s peace circles, learning about peace and conflict resolution through direct service. |
| Miriam’s Kitchen | Students partnered with Miriam’s Kitchen, a nonprofit organization that aims to end chronic homelessness in Washington D.C., to prepare meals for guests and distribute additional resources including toiletries and clothing. |
Quotes from students:
“I participated in a peace circle for high school kids at Holy Family Catholic Church. The theme of this series of circles is building healthy relationships, and this session focused on connecting with others. I really enjoyed getting to meet a lot of the students! It was nice to connect with them and help them connect with each other. I often find that when helping with a peace circle, I get just as much benefit from it as the actual participants!” - A student serving with Little Friends for Peace
“This was my third time attending a Write Night event with Free Minds Book Club, and like both other times, I found this experience to be educational, enjoyable, and meaningful. Listening to the Poet Ambassadors stories is very interesting and gratifying because it shows how meaningful the work being done at these events and by this organization is. I found this time to be especially moving because the Poet Ambassadors shared two poems, "Looking Out My Cell Window" and "Under the Jail," both of which were written by a Free Minds member who recently passed away while incarcerated. The poems were very powerful and hearing them spoken out loud was an impactful experience for me.” - A student serving with Free Minds Book Club
“My student still faces difficulties with opening up and accepting my help, but slowly but surely, I'm sure she will become more and more comfortable to ask for help. I was available for my student during out tutoring sessions for whatever questions she had about homework and what she had been learning in school. This gives my student an extra resource for additional learning in academic subject areas she's having trouble with.” - A student serving with the Latino Student Fund
“During this experience, I helped with the peace classes at Chance Academy. I participated in three different groups with all ages of kids. It was a great experience to work with the kids even though it had to be over zoom. I really enjoyed learning about what a peace circle consists of and getting to be a part of one. It was great to make connections with the kids and make them feel heard!” - A student serving with Little Friends for Peace
Cause Distribution:
