Evaluation as a Tool for Social Justice: Feb. 25 2011 at the CUNY Graduate Center

February 7th, 2011 by Jared Becker No comments »

SAVE THE DATE

Friday, February 25, 2011

8:30AM -2:30PM

EVALUATION AS A TOOL FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE:

A Continuing Conversation and Call to Action Among Funders, Evaluators

and Community-based Practitioners

WHY: Building on the Critical Perspectives on Evaluation convening held at CUNY in February 2010, to apply the lens of social justice to the practice of evaluation; to spark dialogue and action among passionate and concerned people across disciplines and sectors to situate evaluation squarely in the center of the social justice movement.

WHERE: The Graduate Center, CUNY

365 Fifth Avenue (corner of 34th Street and Fifth Avenue), NYC

This event is co-sponsored by

The Full Frame Initiative: Katya Fels Smyth, Founder and Executive Director and Rasmia Kirmani Frye, Director of Community-based Policy

The Public Science Project, The Graduate Center – CUNY: Michelle Fine, Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Maria Elena Torre, Director

Alisa Del Tufo, Founder, Threshold Collaborative, Ashoka Fellow

For more information, please contact Rasmia Kirmani-Frye at rasmia@fullframeinitiative.org

Article 15 Project website

February 4th, 2011 by Jared Becker No comments »

The Children’s Environments Research Group (CERG) has collaborated with World Vision International, Redd Barna (Save the Children Norway), and UNICEF to develop a website devoted to the Article 15 Project. Here’s their mission statement:

“Children have the right to meet together and join groups and organizastions as long as this does not prevent other people from enjoying their rights.”

–Article 15 of The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child

The Article 15 Project was created to support “child managed” organizations and clubs around the world to fulfill their rights.

The mission of the project is to create modules of guidance for establishing and sustaining “child managed” organizations. These modules will be posted on this website so they are accessible to all.

Currently this website hosts the most recent literature on and tools for child-led groups and clubs. Check out our resource section.

Visit the Article 15 project website at http://article15.squarespace.com/

“Fighting Obesity: Hold the Fries” – CUNY Campaign Against Diabetes

January 31st, 2011 by Jared Becker No comments »

The CUNY publication Salute to Scholars – Winter 2011 features a panorama of the many CUNY research projects focusing on the widely discussed obesity epidemic in the US–a major public health issue, as evidenced by First Lady Michelle Obama’s campaign to raise awareness about healthy nutrition, especially among young people. This excerpt features a mention of Prof. Nick Freudenberg, who’s led the CUNY Campaign Against Diabetes, headquartered at the Center for Human Environments for the last four years. CUNY CAD has produced several major reports, which are now archived on the CHE website, and can provide a basis for further research and public health projects–see the Health and Society Research Group page at

http://web.gc.cuny.edu/che/groups/hsrg.html

Note: Iris Mercado, also mentioned in this excerpt, collaborated on CUNY CAD in its early years, and brought some of its programming to her home campus, Hostos.

Nicholas Freudenberg, Distinguished Professor of Public Health at the new CUNY School of Public Health at Hunter College, is one of the leaders of the effort to end the obesity epidemic. “Our faculty is engaged in research on obesity at every level — from animal studies on fat metabolism to evaluation of community and school programs to analyses of local, national and global food policies,” he says. “And as the university that trains more teachers, nurses, social workers, nutritionists and public health professionals than any other institution in the region, CUNY can prepare the work force needed to bring obesity under control.”

Throughout the University professors and students — and their courses, workshops, research studies, advocacy projects and counseling groups — are bringing slow but real change. The University’s cafeterias are beginning to address complaints that healthy food in their facilities is both too expensive and too hard to find. Walking groups for exercise are being formed and more posters now urge people to burn extra calories by taking the stairs. At Queens College, students are lobbying for more healthy choices in vending machines. And these choices do exist. For example, the baby-carrot industry recently unveiled its own vending machines Iris Mercado, who teaches health education and nutrition at Hostos Community College, leads a group, Healthy Weight. “One day that you overeat does not erase everything that you have done for three or four months,” the assistant professor recently told the group’s members. And she has some tips, too: Fill up on some plain yogurt or skim milk before a party, for example. “And remember,” she adds, “a pina colada has more than 600 calories. A rum and Diet Coke? Only 150.”

To read the entire article in Salute to Scholars, see

http://www.cuny.org/news/publications/salute-to-scholars/winter2011/fightingobesity.html

Spring 2011 Events at the Center for Human Environments

January 27th, 2011 by Jared Becker 1 comment »

SPRING 2011 EVENTS AT CHE

Cross-National Think Tank on Grief and Loss

February 11, 2011 at CUNY Graduate Center / Room 6304.01

Agenda topics include: Grief and Resilience; Grief and Community Organizing; Mourning; and a 9/11 Panel Discussion: “Grieving Families Ten Years After.”

Sponsors: Public Science Project at the Center for Human Environments; the Clinical Psychology Program at CUNY Graduate Center; MA in Mental Health Counseling at College of State Island, CUNY; and York University Psychology Clinic, Toronto, Canada.

NOTE: Registration for this conference is closed as of 1/3/2011.

Taking Public Participation in Research Seriously

February 24 at 6pm at CUNY Graduate Center / Room 6304.01

A roundtable discussion about when and why public participation in research is the right way to go. Panel discussants include: Brett Stoudt, Joan Greenbaum, Kim Sabo, Maria Torre, Michelle Fine, Roger Hart.

Sponsor: Center for Human Environments.

The Culture of Climate Change: 10th Annual Nature Ecology Society Colloquium.

March 10-11, 2011 at the CUNY Graduate Center

Sustainability, Environmentalism, Ecology, Conservation, Environmental Justice, and Green Everything! The terms swirl interchangeably around one another to challenge and cope with “Climate Change”. Specialists try to be more disciplined in using these and other such terms, cordoning them off from popular meanings but also separating disciplines and discourses in ways that prevent effective communication. This year’s Nature Ecology Society Colloquium is intended to open up the conversation around climate change and engage its many representations and registers. Our two-day colloquium brings together CUNY and allied Students, Artists, Activists, Designers, Journalists, Musicians, Performers, Film and Video Makers, Humanities Scholars, and Life, Natural, Physical and Social Scientists to exchange their ideas about climate change.

Hosted by: Environmental Psychology PhD Program; Center for Human Environments

For more information: http://www.nature.cuny.edu/

Researching Children, Global Childhoods & Education

March 24-25, 2011 at CUNY Graduate Center / Room 9100

This international conference brings together experts in Critical Childhood and Educational Studies, with the aim of advancing theories and methodological practices that cultivate children’s agency in the research and educational process. The conference is interdisciplinary, drawing on state of the art knowledge regarding children and changing childhoods from sociology, psychology, anthropology, political science, cultural geography and education. Central themes include issues related to power, generation, identities and subjectivities (e.g. gender, ethnicity/race, class, sexualities), children’s language, and cultural and social brokering, as these are influenced by broader processes of globalization, economic inequalities, migration, political violence, exclusion/inclusion, consumption, commercialization and children/youth activism.

This conference is a joint initiative of the CUNY Graduate Center and the School of Education, University College Dublin. CUNY co-sponsors: Urban Education; Social/Personality Subprogram in Psychology; Center for Human Environments; Public Science Project.

For more information: https://globalchildhoods.commons.gc.cuny.edu/

Summer Institute on “Critical Participatory Action Research”
June 6-10, 2011 at CUNY Graduate Center / Room 6304.01

A 5-day intensive training designed to introduce the theory, methods, and ethics of critical participatory action research (PAR) to graduate students, faculty, and members of community-based organizations. Through seminars, roundtables, and hands-on workshops with experienced PAR researchers, participants will gain the necessary skills and knowledge to integrate a critical PAR approach into their scholarship, research, and/or organizing.

Sponsored by the Public Science Project at the Center for Human Environments.

For more information: http://www.publicscienceproject.org/

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