Category: Nashman Spotlights

This month, we interviewed Dr. Baker about her most recent research on the efficacy of service-learning in language learning.

Click here to link to the research article.

Bianca Trinidad a scholar at the Nashman Center, spoke with Dr. Lottie Baker, one of our Nashman Affiliated Faculty, about her Community-Engaged Scholarship. You can learn more about Nashman Affiliates here https://www.gwnashmancenter.org/new-page-3/.

Dr. Baker works at the Graduate School of Education and Human Development, in the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy. She works with students who want to be language teachers. Some of her students want to become ESL (English is a Second Language) teachers while others aim to be world language teachers, like Spanish, French, or Chinese teachers here in the U.S. and abroad.

Dr. Baker notes that there is a commitment to community-engaged teaching within the teacher-education program at GSEHD. Students complete a community-engaged teacher experience in the summer, where they partner with a community organization, to work with youth outside of school. “It’s a great opportunity for us, as a university to contribute to the community that they live in here in DC and so, there’s a lot of great work being done in different areas here in DC. So, it’s exciting that we have that opportunity to do that.”

Another piece of my work is what this new article is about. Dolores Perillán, in the Spanish program, does an incredible job in coordinating and facilitating a community-based service learning program. I learned about this program from her and because of my personal interest in Spanish, and realized how impactful it was. She places undergraduate students in community organizations around the DC area, including facilitating placements in bilingual/dual-language schools, which I thought was innovative. I’ve seen and read work about community engagement in language settings, and I haven’t seen a lot of having students go to dual-language schools. I saw this as an opportunity to explore how that was working. So, that was where this research idea was born.

We asked Dr. Baker what inspired her to be involved in this kind of research.

I am a Spanish learner myself, and I always love opportunities to practice. When I started this position in GW a few years ago, I came to a few events that Dolores hosted, and I was so excited to hear Spanish and use Spanish because of my interest in language learning. I feel pretty strongly that part of the role of a university is to contribute to the community that we are in. I live in DC and through my own involvement with community organizations I see there is a lot of great work being done to support immigrant populations. Working as a faculty member at GW allows me to make connections and to contribute to that great work that is being done with those communities.

For the article I looked at a few things. Professor Perillán collects, reads and gives feedback to blogs that students write. So, I read some of these blogs . Then I also followed 4 students, which meant that I interviewed them several times and visited them in their placement schools. The topic of the interviews was about how this experience of working in dual-language schools improved their Spanish language acquisition and what their perspectives were. I was happy to see that they were really thoughtful about how these experiences contributed to their language learning. They were able to articulate how being in that classroom really helped hone their skills and use particular strategies for learning languages. So, we always hear people say “Immersion is the best way to learn languages”, but what does that actually mean?  It’s somewhat of a myth, because you can’t just go to another country and think that simply by being there you’ll pick up the language automatically. You need to try to use the language and reflect on it if you really want to learn a language. So, it was nice to talk to students who really got this concept. The service learning experience enabled them really to use Spanish and be reflective about it – what’s helpful for immersion settings to work. It was good to see that they could really dig in to that process of when they were in a school, what they did. For instance, they could articulate how particular interactions helped them learn and practice these strategies of listening in the target language or responding to someone else in the target language and being able to hold all that information all at once. I found it interesting how thoughtful these students were about their experiences in language learning.

Dolores Perillan is the one who does a lot of the hands-on coordinating; it’s amazing how much work she does. My research question going into it was to understand how students perceive this experience of working in a dual-language school and how they perceived it in their language acquisition and language-learning process.  I read some of their blog entries in Spanish for the program, analyzed those, and focused on 4 specific students. I interviewed them a couple of times, and then, I visited them when they were in the classrooms to see what their experiences were. So, what I found was great because these interviews really showed how these experiences in the school really helped them hone particular skills, and they were also - maybe it was the fact that I was interviewing them - but they were able to reflect on what it means to learn a language, and what was difficult for them. And another thing that came out of it that both the students in the blog and those that I interviewed is that they used Spanish that they didn’t use in the classroom. So even students who were more advanced said that there were a lot of words that they had never used in the classroom. For instance, one student mentioned words that were related to habitats, because the classroom was studying about habitats in 2nd grade, and she’s never learned about habitats in Spanish, because she started learning Spanish in high school. It was helpful for intermediate students too. In general, a lot of these community service-learning opportunities in university language programs are designed for advanced learners. The dual language school is a unique environment that really supports language learning and makes interacting in Spanish more accessible for intermediate students. We call it educational scaffolding, where you give a lots of support when you want to tell ideas, and so, the teachers are doing lots of support, such as using images and gestures. So, I think that’s a positive thing.

Why do you think it is important for GW faculty to be involved in community-engaged scholarship or research?

We are very privileged to be at a university like this. The students here are privileged because they’ve been able to get to college, which means they have literacy and education, plus the means to be here in GW. And, there’s a similar idea with faculty – we are also privileged with the education and experiences to get to where we are now. So, I think as a university community, we should recognize these resources we have and contribute to the world that we live in, and we can do that directly through the DC community, which goes much further than Foggy Bottom. The college setting is unique because it is our job—students and faculty-- to do in projects like this where we learn and interact in the community. That’s something that is really special and that you can’t find in many jobs.

I teach courses in language education and they’re part of the graduate program for secondary education; for TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). So, if people are interested in becoming a teacher, then I encourage them to explore the programs that GSEHD has, because we have multiple pathways to become a teacher. And some of them are where you can get licenses to become a teacher here in DC or the U.S., and some are where you can just learn some of the skills and knowledge to become a teacher in a private school or overseas.

And for those students interested in Spanish, another pathway starts at the undergrad level. Students who are majoring in Spanish, for instance, can take graduate courses their senior year. And then, earn a master’s degree in just 5 years; so in 1 year after they finish their bachelor’s degree. So, that’s a new program that we are beginning, and we are starting it also within other content areas. But, regardless, undergrads at GW can come to GSEHD to earn a Masters in our intensive 13-month program after they finish. So, I hope GW undergrads in our program will grow, because I think GW has a lot of smart, creative, thoughtful students who would be wonderful teachers.  And our programs are related to community-engaged teaching and so, not only do we put our students in schools, where they work with mentor teachers, but as much as possible, we like to expose them to working with other organizations in the community.

Congratulations to Maranda Ward, of the Medical School’s Clinical Research and Leadership department, on her new role. Dr. Ward brings both scholarly expertise and leadership experience to her new role, having already served in 2017-2018 as a Commissioner of an Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC) in Ward 7.

Link here for a recent article in The Hatchet describing her work.

Follow Dr. Ward yourself via her podcast: #EquityMatters (link here).

January 22, 2019/ 

Our November faculty spotlight is Nashman affiliate faculty, Dr. Maranda C. Ward from GW's School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS). She is currently teaching two Nashman designated Community-Engaged Scholarship courses.  One is an online course where she serves as the course director and has integrated IRB-approved research funded by the GW SMHS Center for Faculty Excellence, HSCI 2110: Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.  The other is funded by a Nashman course development grant, HSCI 2195: Applied Health Equity.  Nashman's Community-Engaged Scholar, Emebte Atanaw, sat down with Dr. Ward to ask about her role as an Nashman affiliate faculty and her newest course offering.

Dr. Ward is a member of two Nashman Faculty Learning Communities (FLCs): Black Lives Matter and Community-Based Participatory Research. Both FLCs began in January and have met throughout the year. Dr. Ward explained that she joined the Black Lives Matter FLC because she “wanted to be connected to other faculty that shared similar commitments to developing inclusive spaces and talk about the complex meanings attached to race. She adds, "it was really exciting to see that it wasn’t just all black faculty- it was actually faculty that identify in a range of ways who care and believe that black and brown lives matter.”

She also joined the Community-Based Participatory Research FLC stating, “I’ve always been civically engaged in DC. I am an educator and use DC as my classroom whether this includes undergraduates at GW or DC youth in my after school program. I wanted to be engaged in an FLC that had community at its center. I also wanted to be engaged with other faculty who believe in the power of community voice.” She looks forward to leading a new FLC in the coming year focused on Community Engaged Scholarship in Online Courses.

Dr. Ward noted that she works with many organizations here in DC. “Other than my ANC work, the most prominent organization that I work with is my own- Promising Futures. Back when I was a student at GW I received the Knapp Fellowship and used the funds to translate my dissertation research on youth identity into an arts-based curriculum. I engaged the DC youth in my program to express their identity in an artistic way and hosted a community conversation in Ward 8. As former faculty in the GW School of Business (GWSB) developing and teaching their service-learning curriculum, one of my former students asked me to advise him on his own non-profit interests to serve DC youth. He now operates the Equal Education Fund and formally partners with the DC youth in my program pairing them with fifteen GW college students as their mentors. And, one of my other former GWSB students created a GW student-run consultant firm currently funded by the Nashman Center to build organizational capacity to DC community-based organizations based on a service-project integrated in one of my courses. To say this is fulfilling work is an understatement."

We asked Dr. Ward for advice for students who are trying to get more involved with community service work at GW. Not only did she distinguish between the concepts of community service, service-learning, and community engagement but she also praised The Nashman Center as “a great resource for increasing the visibility of a range of different partners". She laughed that "there's the 'foggy bottom bubble' and the types of classes I teach are aimed at popping that bubble." She continued, "The Nashman Center is in a great position to introduce students to the rich culture and history of DC. I think there's a lot of misconceptions about places outside of Northwest. There is power and resources East of the River and I feel like The Nashman Center can bring awareness to the great things happening there. In fact, introducing these things first is an important first step when talking about ways to engage within the community because if you only go East of the River to serve in a so-called low-performing school you will continue to have a deficit oriented lens about those neighborhoods.”

The Nashman Center is delighted to have Dr. Ward as an affiliated faculty member. Visit our website to learn more about our Nashman Affiliated Faculty and their work. You can meet and hear from the students in Dr. Ward's community-engaged courses at the Symposium on Community-Engaged Scholarship taking place on campus on Friday December 7th. Click here.

Dr. Cleary is a Nashman Affiliated Faculty member and an epidemiologist in GW's School of Public Health.

Bianca Trinidad, a Nashman Center Course Guide spoke with Dr. Cleary about his work.

"My research over the past almost 10 years here at GWU has involved community groups. They have been interventions focused on trying to improve adolescent health, such as positive youth development, so interventions designed within those frameworks. Therefore, that is in line with what I am doing now.  My current work is more focused on not just adolescents but also the transition from adolescence to young adulthood, and more specifically - I’ve been working with a group of non-speaking, autistic young adults. And that has been the structure for the development of a new service learning course and hopefully, future research within this area."

Tell us about the Adelante  intervention project.

"The intervention was implemented in Langley Park, Maryland, and the target population was new immigrants from Central America. The goal of the intervention was to provide positive environments to improve what Lerner identified as the five C’s of positive youth development, which are competence, connection, confidence, character, caring, and a sixth, contribution back to the family and community. So, there were many components to the intervention - all of these folders on the shelves behind me represent different components! They all were designed to capitalize on improving the PYD constructs."

Which one did you find the most interesting?

"What I feel was most effective were the family dinners, and these family dinners were intended to engage parents as advocates for their families and in the community, and that could involve a lot of things--from having to deal with the school system to having to deal with health care providers--it was a wide range. But what it really did was provide a network for families who just got into the United States to A) have a network for support, but B) to also have a network to go to if they needed information about anything. And it included the GWU research team. There was an office in Langley Park staffed by our community partner, the Maryland Multicultural Youth Center, and included a great team of case workers. They helped do all this on the ground level. Personally, I thought that the family dinners were one of the most fun aspects of the intervention that had the potential for a long-term impact. You can imagine if you don’t speak the language, you’re new to the community, it would be difficult to navigate daily life. There are many things we take for granted, especially if you’ve lived here your whole life - in terms of how to interact with the school, the police, healthcare providers. Those are all real life everyday issues that people have to negotiate, and so, I think that the family dinners were definitely very positive. And so, the parents that were engaged in this parents-as-leaders program really became leaders in the community. I mean, they really wanted to continue working with the Adelante team, which was really great. Photovoice was another intervention that an epidemiology doctoral student at the time, Idalina Batista Cubilla, PhD, took the lead on. It was a way for kids to document what it’s like to grow up in Langley Park, which was wonderful. Staff at MMYC also produced a telenovela from the adolescents perspective in the community - was pretty effective as well. It gave a snapshot of what it’s like to grow up in Langley Park as a teenager, and some of the issues. What we were really focusing on were violence prevention, substance abuse prevention, and reducing sexual risking-taking behavior. So, those were the broader issues. The issue with affecting change in those outcome areas is that it takes a lot longer than within the 5-year grant period that we were given. So anyway, back to the question, I definitely do think that the family dinners was the most positive activity within the intervention.

What inspired you to start this intervention?

"I live near there and so does Mark Edberg, PhD, who is in the Department of Prevention and Community Health, in the Milken Institute School of Public Health, and is the Principal Investigator of the Avance Center. So, this was a study within the Center. We both were seeing what was happening in Langley Park and wanted to do something about it. We started working in Langley Park in 2005 with a CDC funded study, and then we got this larger NIH fund P20 grant."

Were there any other challenges or surprises that came out of doing the study?

"Whenever you’re doing work within a community, things take longer than you might expect. There is a certain level of trust and it has to be built up. I think that the Adelante Intervention was successful, because we’d been there for 5 years before, and so, we were a known entity. Before that, we didn’t have a brand as we do now. And that brand, Adelante - the name and the logo - was developed by youth in the community. So, I think in everything that we’ve doing, we’ve tried to incorporate community input. One of the reasons why the intervention was so accepted in the community was that the community had a hand in developing what we were doing and had a say in it. And that’s what I’m trying to bring into what I’m working on now with the group of non-speaking autistic young adults. They’re going to be involved in the course I am teaching next semester. They’ve been reviewing my syllabus and giving me ideas on what I should and shouldn’t cover. So, I’m using the same framework, just in a different community right now."

That seems like such a great upcoming course, can you tell us more about it?

"It was developed with a community. It’s a service-learning course, and so, the students in the class will be volunteering at a number of places. SPARC is an educational program for anyone with a developmental disability, and growingkids Therapy Center is specifically for children and young adults with autism. This group of young adults, they call themselves The Tribe, are well-known advocates for the non-speaking autistic community. So what I’m trying to do with this course is to introduce GWU students to the community to encourage and facilitate engagement. This idea first came to me a year and a half ago when I went to a conference that was focused on non-speakers, and I was talking to young adults and their families. A similar course was being offered at UVA, Charlottesville, and it was very successful. But Tribe members said, “We live up here. So, can you do something here at GWU?”, because by proximity, it’s easier. And they’ve been wonderful in terms or giving me feedback on not just the content, but on how the course should be run. And, they will be coming to some of the classes. Out of a semester of 15 classes, I think some are going to come to all, and the larger group will be there for at least five classes. The reason behind this is that we’re hoping to get more collaboration between the students in the course and people in the community. The goal is in order to understand the needs of the community, Tribe members need to be involved in the course, and we need to hear from them about what resources and services they need – their feedback should not only be driving our services, but also our research as well. And so, the Tribe members will actually be involved in discussing with us what’s next. There’s both a service-learning component to the course, as well as a research component. So, the classes are a mix of science, viewpoint, and community engagement. We are going to cover the science of autism as it related specifically to this transition from young adult to adulthood. But, we’re also going to get classes that will have people from the community, their parents and siblings, as well as practitioners to give some voice to their experience with this population.  And then, we’re going to have a number of classes with experts from inside and outside of GWU speak about their research. So, I’m very excited about it. It’s interdisciplinary, with faculty from the Milken Institute School of Public Health, Columbian College, the School of Education, and Children’s National Health Services. Faculty from across the university are going to contribute to the course, and everyone who I’ve approached has been excited about being involved in the course."

"And the best thing is - I was visiting growing Therapy Center on Monday to go over the syllabus with the young adults, and they are very excited about the course as well. They are just excited to be coming to campus and to be involved in something like this. And, the key is that they will be involved. They have been actively involved from the very beginning, and I want to respect that. The ultimate goal is to inspire students in the course to go into this field and whether they go into the field to become health care or service providers for people with autism or they become researchers in the field. The service learning is going to give them an opportunity to volunteer at the centers that do phenomenal work at providing educational resources and activities for these young adults communities that have aged-out of our current educational system. We’re going to be focusing on key issues that everyone experiences when transitioning from adolescence to young adulthood, and that includes further education, employment, independent living and interpersonal relationships. These are all issues that everyone deals with. We’re just experiencing this through the lens of autistic young adults, and more specifically, non-speaking autistics, which again does not mean that they cannot communicate. In the beginning of the course, the students will learn about the different methods non-speakers use to communicate. So, many of the young adults communicate through using letter boards. Others use keyboards, and others have developed their speaking ability so that they can answer independently without much assistance from a communication specialist."

I’m really excited for the future of this course and all that it has to offer. Why do you think it is important for GW faculty to be engaged in community-engaged scholarship?

"It falls under what many of us do in public health and what we call “community-based participatory research”. It’s not as effective when we just enter a community that we don’t belong in and try to affect change from the outside. You’re going to meet a lot of problems. And any time it’s new, like, when we first started at Langley Park, there were issues, like, “Who are you--coming into our community?” And still, in the current environment, there are issues, because people are less willing to open their door when we send someone to do a survey, for obvious reasons. But because we’ve been in the community for a while, and we’ve done good work for the community and people recognize the logo, they know who we are. So, that’s how we can affect the greatest amount of change. And that’s what I’m trying to do with this course as well. If we’re going to be able to affect change into the community, the community has to be involved in the research from the very beginning. And so, that’s why it’s important to do something like this from both the service-learning and community-engagement as it relates to research as well."

"One of the nice things about putting together a course like this is that I get to meet faculty from across the university from several departments that have similar interests. It has been very exciting to hear that they’re excited about the course as well.  I’m trying to make it as interdisciplinary as possible. The young adults from the community who are going to be joining us are not coming for only a few classes just to have the students get to know them. They want to talk to the researchers as well, and they want to give their feedback to clinicians as well, about how they’re treated. So, I think this interdisciplinary perspective is really important both for the community and for learning about the community and their experiences. It’s been great to meet other faculty within the university.

Any other projects that you would like to highlight?

"I’m excited to move into this other area and new community group and apply the same principles. But hopefully the 2nd and 3rd time around, things will go a lot faster. I know it’s not instantaneous. I went to this conference a year and a half ago, but I’ve known people in this group for years before that. So, it takes time to gain trust from people in the community, and rightfully so. There are a lot of people that are protecting members of this community in particular. As a researcher, you must remember and respect that and try to demonstrate some level of authenticity that you are really going to be working in their best interest and with them included. When I do my next research project, I hope members of the community will be research staff on the project. When I put together a paper about the development of this course, they will be co-authors on this paper, because they helped with the development of this course. Inclusion like that I think are important for the community and for us, as researchers. I’m hoping that the students who take the class will understand that feel empowered to get more involved. If they get that, I will be satisfied. There’s a lot of stuff to learn, but it’s also about the experience and the process. If the students can take what they get out of the course and use it towards their career, that is what’s most important."

We want to thank Dr. Cleary for taking the time to talk about his work with us. Learn more about the Nashman Affiliated faculty.

Read on about how Dr. Gedan engages her student research team in important conservation work in the Chesapeake Bay: Link here.

The Julian Clement Chase Prize, which has been awarded by GW’s Writing Department since 2016, was featured in a recent article in the Washington Post. One of the winners named, Xavier Adomatis, is a Civic House student and was recognized for his paper, “Re-Segregate D.C. Schools: An analysis of gentrification’s peculiar consequences on Francis-Stevens.” For more information about Julian Clement Chase and the prize, check out the full article here.

Our October Faculty spotlight is Dr. Imani M. Cheers from the School of Media and Public Affairs. Our Community-Engaged Scholar Emebte Atanaw sat down with Cheers to ask about her Scholarship of Engagement.

Dr. Cheers is a professor of Digital Storytelling in the School of Media and Public Affairs. This is her 6th year at the George Washington University. We wanted to know about how she incorporates service into her classes. Dr. Cheers explained her local and international work to us. “All of my courses are inspired by social justice and advocacy. I try to base the courses with local communities around the D.C. area, specifically the Shaw and Anacostia neighborhoods. I also include international focused advocacy in my courses. I’ve done activities such as beach clean-ups in Belize, working with local community leaders in Southeast D.C., and humanitarian work.”

We asked Dr. Cheers what advice she would give to professors and students at GW who want to do work in the community. She gave us some great insight. “Most people want to do good work but don’t have the connections or know where to do their service. We live in D.C. where there’s lots of community work to be done. We often neglect service in our own backyard. There’s organizations such as D.C. Central Kitchen who value their volunteers, and many public schools in D.C. eager for students to get involved. Overall, there’s much service to be done, and it’s only a couple blocks away.”

The Nashman Center is delighted to have Imani Cheers as a Nashman Affiliated Faculty member. To learn more about our Nashman Affiliated Faculty, click here. To learn more about Dr. Cheers’ research check out her new book “The Evolution of Black Women in Television: Mammies, Matriarchs and Mistresses” and her blogs at https://www.thecheersreport.com and https://www.blackwomenintv.com. You can see Dr. Cheers’ student research projects at the Symposium on Community-Engaged Scholarship Dec. 7th. Click here to RSVP for the event.