Texas Tech University

2020 President's Engaged Scholarship Awards

The Offices of the President, Provost, and Associate Vice Provost for University Outreach and Engagement are pleased to announce the Recipients of the 2020 President's Engaged Scholarship Awards. This annual awards program recognizes individual TTU faculty and teams of faculty from all disciplines who demonstrate exemplary and sustained commitment to mutually beneficial engagement with community partners. Recognized faculty apply their teaching, research, or creative activity to address a significant community need or larger social issue, trying to find solutions that may improve the quality of life for individuals, families, and communities.

Three President's Engaged Scholarship Awards were bestowed in April 2020. They include:

• President's Excellence in Engaged Scholarship Award
• President's Emerging Engaged Scholarship Award
• President's Exemplary Program Award

The following includes descriptions of these awards and information regarding each winning project.

PRESIDENT'S EXCELLENCE IN ENGAGED SCHOLARSHIP AWARD

The President's Excellence in Engaged Scholarship Award recognizes TTU faculty for a longer-term project or initiative that demonstrates a significant and sustained commitment to addressing a community need or larger social issue through active collaboration with community partners. It carries a monetary prize of $2,000 and recognizes up to two faculty-led engaged scholarship projects or initiatives.

TWO WINNING PROJECTS:

1. The Texas Liberator Project

Aliza Wong In 2016, the Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission approached Texas Tech University with the task of creating an educational tool by which students across Texas would be familiarized with the liberation of the concentration camps in the European Theater of War during the Second World War. The commission provided access to the Institute for Oral History at Baylor University's collected oral histories of Texans who were veterans of the Second World War and who played a role in the liberation of concentration camps across Europe. Using these testimonials, the team at Texas Tech University developed a digital app to help share the stories of the Texas Liberators with high school students across the state. Texas Tech created a narrative by which students could come to understand the extremes of savagery and fanaticism, humility, and humanity of the Second World War from the perspective of the American soldier.

The Texas Liberator Project includes an online application, website, large-format quality book display featuring the narratives of 21 Texas liberators, and an exhibit at the Museum of Texas Tech University. Teams of Texas Tech undergraduate and graduate students guided by the Texas Tech faculty project leaders took on the gargantuan task of honoring the men and women who sacrificed so much to ensure the liberation, survival, and memory of the Holocaust.

Project Leaders:

Aliza Wong, Associate Dean, TTU Honors College; Associate Professor of and Director of European Studies, Department of History, College of Arts and Sciences
Rob Peaslee, Associate Professor, Chair, Journalism and Electronic Media, TTU College of Media and Communication
Randy Reddick, Morris Professor of Journalism, Journalism and Creative Media Industries, TTU College of Media and Communication
Jiawei Gong, Associate Professor, Digital/Transmedia Arts, TTU School of Art
Cameron Saffell, Assistant Director for Operations and Facilities, TTU Museum of Texas Tech University
Andy Gedeon, Exhibits Manager, TTU Museum of Texas Tech University

Students Involved:

Jeremy Huston, English, TTU College of Arts and Sciences
Ian Love, TTU College of Media and Communication
Stephanie Wuthrnow, TTU Heritage and Museum Sciences
Melissa Lambert, History, TTU College of Arts and Sciences
Shakil Shimul, TTU College of Architecture
Chad Campbell, History, TTU College of Arts and Sciences, TTU Honors College

2. Literacy Champions

literacy-champions As a component of the East Lubbock Promise Neighborhood grant, the Lubbock Independent School District (LISD) identified academic writing development as a significant need for K-12 students in the district and asked the Texas Tech College of Education to collaborate on providing support in addressing this need. Inadequate writing development of K-12 students has garnered national media attention over the lack of adolescent writing skills and the economic burden of their placement into developmental writing coursework in post-secondary settings. This trend is reflected in international achievement scores: one quarter of U.S. students in eighth and twelfth grade write "proficiently" (NAEP, 2011). While there is a significant research base for varied and authentic writing instruction, K-12 teachers consider these practices time intensive and irrelevant to the pressure of raising test scores. University faculty are considered out of touch with the immediate writing needs of struggling schools. In this context, literacy education scholars are turning toward engaged scholarship as an approach to bridge gaps between theory and practice to develop meaningful impact for K-12 students. Mellinee Lesley and Julie Smit have served as Literacy Champions to LISD for five years. Their partnership has evolved from working with multiple schools to focus on one high school with the highest writing needs. In collaboration with the instructional coach, they investigate how English teachers engage in continuous embedded professional development to transform their writing instruction and, as a result, how ninth and tenth grade students are developing their academic writing skills. While LISD has seen a rise in rigorous writing instruction and gains in writing achievement of their students due to the partnership, university faculty and graduate students have also benefited through manuscript production, presentations at national and regional peer-reviewed conferences, and extending the work of the ELPN grant to include additional external funding.

Project Leaders:

Julie Smit, Assistant Professor, Curriculum and Instruction, TTU College of Education
Mellinee Lesley, Professor, Language, Diversity, and Literacy Studies, TTU College of Education

PRESIDENT'S EMERGING ENGAGED SCHOLARSHIP AWARD

The President's Emerging Engaged Scholarship Award recognizes TTU faculty for a relatively new project or initiative that demonstrates high potential for the advancement of engaged scholarship. The project or initiative shows outstanding promise for having a significant impact on communities and the university. It carries a monetary prize of $1,000 and recognizes one faculty-led project or initiative.

WINNING PROJECT:

Promoting Child Development, Inclusion, and Health Through Natural Learning

kristi-gaines The Coalition for Natural Learning (CNL) is a collaboration between Texas Tech University faculty, Texas state agencies, departments, organizations, and childcare centers. It was created as a more formalized recognition of the ongoing multidisciplinary efforts between Dr. Kristi Gaines (Department of Design), Dr. Malinda Colwell (Human Development and Family Studies), Dr. Charles Klein, and Dr. Muntazar Monsur (Landscape Architecture). The CNL engages with its partners through research, teaching, service, outreach & engagement, working towards the common goal of creating environments that promote natural learning for children and their caregivers. In addition, environments are designed for people of different abilities (instead of disabilities), with the goal to create equitable spaces.

The work of the Coalition is providing state agencies, community leaders, administrators, educators, students, and parents resources for utilizing natural environments to promote the socio-emotional, physical, and cognitive development of children. The team views their work as a springboard to a much broader approach to natural learning paradigms in which a multidisciplinary team can work to improve educational and life-style opportunities using natural systems and approaches.

Project Leaders:

Kristi Gaines, Associate Professor, Design, Associate Dean, TTU Graduate School
Charles Klein, Associate Professor, Landscape Architecture, College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources
Malinda Colwell, Professor, Human Development and Family Studies, TTU College of Human Sciences
Muntazar Monsur, Assistant Professor, Landscape Architecture, TTU College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources

PRESIDENT'S EXEMPLARY PROGRAM AWARD

The President's Exemplary Program Award recognizes TTU faculty for projects demonstrating outstanding academic engagement and commitment to addressing a community need or larger social issue. The award recognizes the program's impacts on both the community and the university (faculty, staff, or students).

WINNING PROJECT:

CASNR Matador Institute of Leadership Engagement Program

MILEIn 2018, the TTU College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources began an innovative program to engage promising young adults with outstanding leadership in agricultural policy, natural resources, industry relations, and entrepreneurship. In an effort to address the increasing need for emerging leaders to fully understand the diverse issues, challenges, and opportunities affecting agriculture and rural America, the Matador Institute of Leadership Engagement (MILE) was designed to give CASNR undergraduate students a unique, high-impact learning experience. The MILE is a competitive, 14-student, three-semester leadership and professional development program that seeks to develop participants' personal and professional skills while exposing them to key issues affecting local, state, and national agriculture. Engaging MILE students with industry and community leaders is the program's primary focus. In the program's two years, MILE has partnered with agricultural and livestock organizations, financial institutions, and non-profit groups who are providing funding and programming opportunities to enhance students' leadership development. But not only that; the knowledge-sharing that occurs between the leaders in these organizations and TTU students creates a unique, high-impact experience that will propel them into their careers. MILE is making a positive impact on students and communities alike by creating a pipeline of trained, young leaders who are equipped with skills, knowledge, and understanding of the issues facing rural communities and the agriculture industry.

Project Leaders:

Lindsay Kennedy, Assistant Professor of Practice, Agricultural Education and Communications, College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources
Cindy Akers, Associate Dean, Academic and Student Programs, College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources

HOW TO APPLY IN 2021

The 2021 call for proposals will open again in Spring 2021. At that time, applications can be submitted by logging into Texas Tech Competition Space at ttu.infoready4.com.

For more information, visit the Texas Tech University Outreach and Engagement website at outreachandengagement.ttu.edu.

Outreach & Engagement