West Madison Community Kitchen Program
Project Leaders: Rachel Bergmans, MPH, Epidemiology Dissertator, Department of Population Health Sciences and Alexandra MacMillan Uribe, MS, RD, Nutritional Sciences Dissertator, Department of Nutritional Sciences
In Dane County, female-headed households and African American communities are more likely to live in poverty compared to the general population. Poverty is associated with a failed food system which, in turn, negatively affects eating behaviors. Three main factors are associated with poor eating behaviors: food insecurity, lack of basic cooking skills, and low nutrition knowledge. Community kitchens are community-based cooking programs in which individuals meet regularly to prepare a meal and learn basic cooking skills and about nutrition. These types of programs can help resolve all three factors associated with poor eating behaviors. In collaboration with Lussier Community Education Center (LCEC) and High Point Church (HPC), the West Madison Community Kitchen (WMCK) program aims to empower and engage local low-income mothers and caretakers in a cooking class that emphasizes healthy, flavorful, time-efficient, and affordable meals in order to address malnutrition and food insecurity, and foster community cohesion in West Madison. Low-income mothers and caretakers are the target audience as they are more likely to influence other family members’ diets and make food-related decisions for the household. Anticipated outcomes of WMCK are to increase participant nutrition knowledge, cooking skills, social interaction, and knowledge of community resource.
The Clark Street Studio Project
Project Leader: Michael Dando, M.Ed, Curriculum and Instruction
Working with educators, administrators, and professional hip-hop artists, The Clark Street Studio Project seeks to establish the area’s first hip-hop high school program housed at the Clark Street Charter School in Middleton, WI. Research has demonstrated that hip-hop can be a powerful tool for engaging students, but with The Clark Street Studio, this team introduces an iteration of hip-hop education that goes beyond simply studying rap music as classroom content, and looks instead at engaging student knowledge, culture, and everyday experience. Using elements of hip-hop culture, this program uses a culturally relevant framework to create meaningful learning by critically examining hip-hop culture (spoken word, graffiti, DJ, and dance), elements of social justice, and participatory citizenship. The end result is the creation of a student written, recorded, and produced “Social Justice Mixtape” with one or more public performances offered to the Madison community free of charge. Students will be responsible for the entirety of the project including composition, recording, production, artistic layouts, publicity, event planning, and performance guided by professional hip-hop artists as well as expert educators and staff. Planning, recording, production, and co-ordination will all be done at the facilities already existing on site. Working with the aspiring artists currently enrolled in Clark Street Charter School, The Clark Street Studio invites student to think creatively and critically about what hip-hop education can mean, and to consider the implications that a broader definition of hip-hop education could have on their learning experiences and communities. Our vision is that hip-hop’s creativity and swagger that took it from a local phenomenon to a global force can lead to a fundamental change in the way the public thinks of teaching, school design, policy, and leadership. To that end we are seeking funding to underwrite educational materials including books and artistic supplies, honorarium for guest artists and speakers, expenses related to venue reservation and equipment rental, and pressing of 200 vinyl and digital of the “Social Justice Mixtape” which will be made available to local libraries and school districts.
Pollinators at the Zoo: Expanding pollinator habitat and stewardship
Project Leaders: Susan Carpenter, Senior Outreach Specialist, Arboretum and Bradley Herrick, Research Program Manager, Arboretum
Pollinator health and habitat protection are critical current issues. Agricultural interests, conservation organizations, policy makers, land managers, educators, and the public all have a stake in caring for pollinators and supporting their essential role across the landscape. Managed (domesticated) bees such as honey bees and native (wild) pollinators have experienced health problems as well as population declines due to habitat loss and other factors. These trends have serious implications for human agricultural systems, land health in natural and working landscapes, and ecosystem function in urban, suburban and rural areas. With increased public interest and concern, there is immediate need to expand outreach about pollinator stewardship to Wisconsin communities and beyond. This proposed project is based on lessons learned in successful UW-Madison Arboretum projects (Wisconsin native plant garden and Pollinator conservation citizen-based monitoring project). If funded, it will enhance pollinator stewardship practices through informing and inspiring diverse audiences at the (Dane County) Henry Vilas Zoo. Accessible demonstration pollinator gardens, interpretive signage and outreach materials that describe how to foster healthy pollinator populations and habitat will provide citizens with practical tools and will amplify important pollinator conservation messages and actions.
North Woods Tour
Project Leaders: Amy Sloper, Associate Lecturer / Special Librarian, School of Library and Information Studies and Catherine Hannula, MA Student, School of Library and Information Studies
In partnership with the Bayfield Carnegie Library and the Barnes Area Historical Association we submit this application for the North Woods Tour, an archival road show encompassing three separate Personal Archiving Day events in the northern Wisconsin cities of Bayfield, Barnes, and Eau Claire during the summer of 2016. These archival outreach events aim to educate and empower local communities to preserve their personal archives and history, which can be contained on a dizzying array of formats including photographs, letters, diaries, cassette tapes, super 8 film, miniDV video and increasingly digital forms such as e-mail and digital photos. We are requesting travel funding for the project lead plus a small group of archives students to run and provide the expertise at these events over 5 days. The proposed events build on the momentum and follow the model of a successful Personal Archiving Day we hosted on October 10, 2015 at the Madison Public Library. Attendees brought both questions and materials and archivists brought equipment and expertise to provide advice on proper storage and preservation practices and assist in the review of materials for which people no longer had playback devices, such as film projectors and video decks. Archivists engaged the audience in ways ranging from a presentation outlining the importance of their personal materials as cultural records, to individual advice on digitizing materials like VHS tapes both professionally and on a DIY scale, and finally ending with a screening of a participant’s 8mm home movies. We plan to provide on-site digitization equipment at future events. This project embodies the Wisconsin Idea by unifying citizens statewide with information professionals, where we aim to not only strengthen the relationship between Madison and the northern Wisconsin region, but also to provide students with invaluable experience in archival outreach and new approaches to community-based archiving. Perhaps most importantly, through teaching preservation techniques and empowering people to save their personal histories, we will more fully capture the history of Wisconsin and its diverse population.
Building capacity for mosquito-borne disease surveillance in Santo Domingo, Ecuador
Project Leaders: Jorge Osorio, Professor, Pathobiological Sciences and Rachel Sippy, PhD Student, Population Health Sciences
The rural poor of Ecuador are at particularly high risk for viral infections spread by mosquitos. Mosquito population patterns are important predictors of mosquito-borne illness, and surveillance of mosquito populations is a valuable tool for public health efforts. The University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW) has a long-term relationship with Andean Health & Development (AHD), a nonprofit working to improve the health of Ecuador’s rural poor through establishment of self-sustaining hospitals. Both UW and AHD are looking to expand their partnership, and through new engagement with the Departments of Population Health Sciences and Pathobiological Sciences, we seek to establish a mosquito surveillance pilot project in Santo Domingo, Ecuador. The UW will be able to spread the Wisconsin Idea to local trainees and regional professionals through this project, by sharing expert knowledge of mosquito ecology and training of local staff to perform surveillance activities and advance the efforts of AHD to improve health. The project will provide extensive background knowledge, education on mosquito trapping, identification, and documentation as well as supplies necessary for year-long surveillance activity. Students and faculty from UW will be able to share their knowledge of disease-spreading mosquito ecology and epidemiology with local staff and will also gain valuable insights into the patterns of disease in this region that can inform future disease prevention efforts. In addition, the surveillance data collected can be used by AHD hospitals as well as the city of Santo Domingo to enhance disease risk prediction and improve mosquito control efforts. This proposal is a simple, feasible project that will greatly enhance the ability of AHD and Santo Domingo to determine its public health risks and will enable UW to pilot the establishment of mosquito surveillance efforts in rural settings.
Colaboración Ambiental—Latino Earth Partnership in Ecuador
Project Leaders: Cheryl Bauer-Armstrong, Earth Partnership Program Manager, UW-Madison Arboretum and Dr. Maria Moreno, Multicultural Outreach Specialist, UW-Madison Arboretum
Colaboración Ambiental is a synthesis of the UW-Madison Arboretum’s Earth Partnership program with Spanish language and Latino cultures and communities in the U.S. and abroad. Since 1991, Earth Partnership has increased the capacity of students, educators, and community partners to restore the land and address the issues of biodiversity, climate change, environmental health, and water quality. Teams are working in 22 states, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and Puerto Rico with curriculum that extends across discipline, ecosystem, culture and place. Colaboración Ambiental was first launched internationally in Nicaragua as part of UW-Madison Arboretum’s Earth Partnership global initiative. Six schools and over 6 organizations including universities, arboreta and the ministry of education are collaborating to integrate Earth Partnership into education and community outreach. This model of community engagement is now expanding into Ecuador, spearheaded by the Education Department at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, the Ceiba Foundation, UW-Madison Arboretum Earth Partnership program, and UW-Madison student fellows. In 2015, a pilot 3-day workshop introduced teacher teams to Latino Earth Partnership in rural coastal Ecuador. With Baldwin Wisconsin Idea Mini-Grant funds, Earth Partnership Multicultural Outreach Specialist Dr. Maria Moreno will co-lead a one-week professional development institute for teachers and community members in rural coastal Ecuador and a one-day workshop and collaborative design dialogue at Universidad San Francisco in the capital city of Quito. Our shared vision is to establish a sustainable environmental education training program to improve environmental education, raise environmental awareness, and promote ecological stewardship through locally led professional development workshops in Ecuador.
Intervention for Latino Families in a School Setting
Project Leader: Carmen Valdez, Associate Professor, Counseling Psychology
The purpose of this study is to build on the knowledge and expertise of an existing family-focused intervention for Latino families in Madison by transferring the intervention from a community to a school setting. By doing so, the intervention is expected to reach more families and those who do not typically utilize outpatient mental health services. The 16-session intervention, Fortalezas Familiares (FF: Family Strengths), is a linguistically- and culturally grounded multi-family intervention for Latino families affected by maternal depression. The goals of FF are to help family members reach a shared understanding of depression, improve family functioning, build competence in parenting and coping, and draw on cultural resources. In previous implementations, FF has been shown to be feasible in community settings, acceptable to families and their mental health providers, and associated with positive improvements in parent, caregiver, and child coping and mental health, family functioning, and acculturative stress. The FF intervention has to date been offered to Latina mothers who are in depression treatment in outpatient mental health clinics, and their families, including other caregivers and children ages 4-18. Funds are requested to build upon this work by transferring the intervention to a school setting. Glacier Edge Elementary School is located in Verona, WI, which has become a new receiving community for immigrant families. From July of 2014 to January of 2015, the school district enrolled an additional 100 students from immigrant, predominantly Latino households. The school has struggled to incorporate these students into a largely White, middle-income, student population, and there are few mental health resources for youth and their parents. The school counselor, alarmed by the prevalence of parental depression in this multi-stressed population partnered with an advocacy group, Correr la Voz (Spread the Word), and have asked Dr. Valdez, PI of this study, to offer the FF intervention in the school. The intervention will be implemented and evaluated in terms of feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary outcomes. The school counselor will also be trained in the intervention with the aim of building existing capacity in the school that can extend beyond the study.
Recovering Analog and Digital Data
Project Leader: Dorothea Salo, Faculty Associate, School of Library and Information Studies
Many unique, historically-significant 20th-century recordings throughout Wisconsin are at risk of total loss due to physical deterioration of the consumer-grade materials (such as audiocassettes and VHS videotapes) on which they were captured, as well as the rarity of playback equipment and digitization expertise. The School of Library and Information Studies (SLIS) seeks a Baldwin Wisconsin Idea Mini-Grant to fund proof-of-concept digitization of at-risk historical materials from Wisconsin partner sites.
PEDALS (Program for Extensive Diabetes Activity and Lifestyle Success)
Project Leaders: Aditya Sukhwal, MD, MS, FAAFP, Assistant Clinical Professor, Family Medicine and Kevin Hanson and Kathryn Beaulieu, 4th Year Medical Students, School of Medicine and Public Health
Type 2 diabetes is a chronic medical condition that increases the risk of suffering from heart disease, strokes, and chronic kidney disease. Grant County, located in rural southwest Wisconsin, has an estimated prevalence of type 2 diabetes of ~8%. Obesity is also highly prevalent in Grant county, with 67% of residents considered overweight or obese (BMI >25). Of adults in Wisconsin with diabetes, 87% are overweight or obese. The state of Wisconsin and local health agencies recently developed county-specific Community Health Improvement Plans (CHIPs) to highlight each county’s major health needs, which for Grant County included goals targeting obesity and diabetes. To address the worsening burden of type 2 diabetes in Grant County, we propose to implement a modified version of the Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP). This program utilizes a CDC-approved curriculum to educate on both a healthy diet and exercise. The program has been shown to reduce the incidence of diabetes by 58% in pre-diabetics. A recent study showed that this program yields healthcare savings within three years that outweigh the initial costs of the program. We are seeking funding in order to implement a similar program at Southwest Health, located in Platteville, Wisconsin. We are hoping to recruit 20 diabetic patients to partake in our program, PEDALS. PEDALS will run for twelve weeks, having three sessions per week. Sessions will include structured time with both exercise specialists and diabetes educators. Patients will learn about and partake in exercises, meal planning, cooking, and other strategies to better manage their diabetes. Each patient will have pre and post-program laboratory evaluation, and will be monitored by a physician through the duration of the program. We hypothesize that at the conclusion of the program our patients will have better control of their diabetes with lower hemoglobin A1C values, will be on less diabetes medication, and most importantly, will have the knowledge and capability to sustain these improvements for the foreseeable future. We hope that this initial trial program will prove its value in the management of diabetes and serve as a model for other healthcare systems across the state of Wisconsin in development of their own programs.
The Art in Restoration
Project Leaders: Cheryl Bauer-Armstrong, Earth Partnership Program Manager, UW-Madison Arboretum and Stephen Laubach, Earth Partnership Outreach Specialist, UW-Madison Arboretum
A powerful learning opportunity occurs when art is integrated with academic subject areas. Combining art-based approaches with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) subjects creates STEAM; this has been shown to fuel greater student interest, engagement, and ultimately overall achievement and innovation. Although tapping into the creative process can generate many benefits, art tends to be marginalized and undervalued in many schools, and its potential as a powerful learning tool often remains unrealized. Similar benefits are observed when students learn in outdoor settings, using an experiential, place-based approach. Student engagement and enthusiasm increase and, for many learners that have difficulty in the “indoor classroom”, this approach reaches them in way that traditional instructional methods cannot. Combining the best of both worlds, nature-based art activities have the potential to foster a deeper understanding of nature as well as foster a connection to place that leads to responsible stewardship. Outdoor sites such as school prairies, rain gardens, woodlands and wetlands are largely underutilized by art teachers due to lack of training in environmental education content and outdoor education methods. A major barrier to this is a lack of quality professional development opportunities for K-12 art educators that focus on this area. In a needs assessment survey, 98% of art teachers reported a desire to integrate environmental education and collaborate with science and classroom teachers, and they cited professional development as a major factor that would assist their efforts. To meet this need, Earth Partnership will provide up to 10 K-12 art teachers in Dane County three credits for 45 hours of professional development. Earth Partnership has a long history of success with supporting area schools and providing quality professional development institutes that energize and empower teams of teachers to integrate ecological restoration projects in the school curriculum. Instruction in outdoor education methods and ecology combined with hands-on artist demonstrations and field experiences will enable these art teachers to confidently collaborate and integrate art, science, and nature in their programs and participate more fully in existing projects.
A De-industrial Home: Oral history and shared stories in Iron County
Project Leader: Amanda McMillan Lequieu, PhD candidate, Department of Community and Environmental Sociology
Between 1962 and 1980, the iron and copper mining companies that had sustained Iron County, Wisconsin since the late 19th century closed. Today, few employment opportunities, geographical remoteness, shrinking school systems, and only two grocery stores make everyday life challenging for one of the poorest and grayest counties in the state. This project will be a four-day public history event for residents of Iron County, Wisconsin, attending the Iron County Fair and Heritage Festival, culminating in a radio broadcast of edited, oral histories from residents. By extending ongoing research on the long-term effects of deindustrialization into the very communities impacted by the closure of industry, this project will enable more Iron County residents to engage with and contribute to their own regional story of boom, bust, and change. In coordination with the Iron County Historical Society, the Iron County Development Association, the Iron County Fair and Heritage Festival boards, and the local radio station, I will collaboratively create a publically accessible oral history exhibit on “Iron County as home,” and produce a podcast for a local radio show. Expanding a conversation around shared experiences of ‘making do’ in hard times may spark a sense of community among geographically and generationally disconnected residents.