CURL at 25

 

Cuneo Hall (swiped from luc.edu)

Three alumni from the Center for Urban Research and Learning shared recollections and advice via Zoom last week. The Center is located at Loyola University on the north side of Chicago, and recently celebrated its 25th anniversary, having been founded in 1996. From the beginning its focus has been on seeking knowledge that is practical and helpful. The Center funds faculty and student research that is "action-oriented," with "linkage with Chicago communities" is at the core of its activity. Its mission statement states the goal of developing "innovative solutions that promote equity and opportunity in communities throughout the Chicago metropolitan region and beyond." 

Ellen Shephard at CURL in 2016

I first encountered the Center's Friday Morning Seminars in the fall of 2016, when I was searching for some gathering in the Chicago area that would support my study of cities. I saw Ellen Shephard of Community Allies speak memorably on the economic contributions of local businesses; I still refer to the notes I took that day. Subsequently I attended talks by graduate student Bill Byrnes in 2017 on law enforcement and the black middle class, alumna Dr. Sophia Rodriguez of the University of Maryland in 2018 on the role of public libraries in orienting recent immigrants, and Jennifer Axelrod of the Chicago Community Trust in 2019 on philanthropic efforts to address the racial wealth gap. 

Then came the coronavirus pandemic, which kept me away for two years When I returned this year, I saw that things weren't quite back to normal; most people including the presenters were on Zoom, while I shared the seminar room with the two people who were producing the Zoomcast. Oh well. Maybe next year, we will all be in person, and can enjoy one of those marvelous spreads virtually everybody on the panel remembered from past CURL events.

Sophia Rodriguez, who received her Ph.D. from Loyola in 2014, recalled that once she got connected to CURL, "things seemed more real there" than in her graduate department where she felt herself losing touch with the education communities where she had worked and which she was now studying. The "ethical community-based work" of the Center spoke to her, so in addition to her graduate assistantship she worked on a CURL project bringing organizational leaders together around early childhood education policy proposals.

Asma Ali, specialist master at a major consulting firm--supposed to be unnamed but pretty quickly revealed to be Deloitte Touche--noted the variety of projects in which she was involved with CURL, in contrast to the focused specialization of the Ph.D. program. She commended CURL's founding attention to cultural responsiveness. "The stop-and-listen part is getting more attention" from programs today, she noted, but "CURL was doing it 20 years ago." Talking and listening to under-represented communities is not "just a soft skill that anybody can pick up." CURL not only taught her how to do that, but inspired her to push for it in her various jobs since.

Amy Kerr, director of evaluation at the for-profit consulting firm Professional Data Analysts, agreed that "learning to build trust" is essential to the work of CURL. She advised current students to "think about what you want your life to look like" after graduation.  She said she had always admired top university researchers, but knew she could not be "a happy human being" in such a job. She advised students to stay open and keep learning on the job, but also to keep asking whether they were where they wanted to be and whether their life looked like they wanted it to look. "Are you living your values day-to-day?" 

The emphasis on the values that infused the work of the Center and its fellows came up again and again on the panel--quite a contrast to the phrase "value-free" which was all in vogue when I was in graduate school. In this way they are not just "contributing to understanding," the felicitous phrase used by my graduate adviser, but they contribute continuously to the possibility of common life.

The panel was moderated by Teresa Naumann, operations manager and senior researcher at the Center.

Loyola University is located right by Lake Michigan,
as in right by.

The public library as base for belonging

Sophia Rodriguez at the Center for Urban Research and Learning

Until schools reinvent themselves, which I don't see happening anytime soon, after-school programs are going to be the micro-spaces where students gain a sense of positive identity.--SOPHIA RODRIGUEZ

After a lull after the 2008 recession, immigration to America is at historically high levels--maybe not as much in percentage terms as in the 1850s or 1880s, but about 1.5 million newcomers arrived in 2016, which is a lot. Their impacts are felt strongly in some places, less so in others, as these newcomers are not randomly distributed.

One such place is Hartford, Connecticut, where 130 students from Puerto Rico moved into the school district following Hurricane Sandy, adding to an influx of immigrants from a variety of Latin American and African countries, as well as Myanmar (Burma). With 20,000 students in the public school system, this would have been a major event, even without the challenges of language, academic background, and housing uncertainty.

Dr. Sophia Rodriguez, assistant professor of Educational Foundations at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, spoke at Loyola University's Center for Urban Research and Learning about an unusual pilot program based at the Hartford Public Library. Library and school district officials saw an opportunity because many immigrant students lack permanent homes and so hang out at the library. Dr. Rodriguez's report on the first year of the program was cautiously positive: Students reported greater feelings, not only of belonging, but also civic competence.

Newcomers refers to people who have been in the United States less than 30 months. Some are seeking refugee status, some are going through naturalization, and some are undocumented. Some are fleeing violence, some seek economic opportunity, some have lost everything they had in a hurricane or other natural disaster. Rodriguez, who has worked in a variety of school systems throughout the country including Chicago's, notes that even in culturally diverse urban areas, school-aged newcomers face hostility, lack of staff awareness, lack of support staff for languages other than Spanish, and a powerful norm for conducting classes in English, all in schools that are often under-resourced.

The Hartford program sought effective integration of newcomer youth into the community. Dr. Rodriguez used the word belonging, and I gather the program does, too, but as she pointed out that traditionally refers to improving the individual's comfort level with his or her surroundings. Hartford worked up a "civically-minded social justice curriculum... including policy awareness, accessing resources, and how to engage in activism." She describes three levels of belonging: (1) personal-individual day-to-day feelings; (2) relational i.e. networks of peers; (3) civic awareness i.e. feelings of belonging to the city.

The good news is, observation and surveys from 2017-18 showed improvements on all three dimensions, and responses from participants and staff were broadly positive. The program's small size (never more than 35 participants) and national-linguistic diversity improved students' levels of belonging by creating an instant peer network. Using the public library as a base showed that institution's potential in any city to be a "springboard to other resources and opportunities." All this was achieved despite numerous "logistical, methodological and staffing challenges."

Side note: As someone occasionally involved in after-school activities, the apparent willingness of students simply to hold still after a long school day seems miraculous.

With such a small sample--only 22 students participated in the surveys--inferences are made cautiously. Indeed, only on the second dimension  of belonging ("relational") were improvements statistically significant. Participants in the second year of the program are all Spanish-speaking, which presents a different dynamic from the diverse first-year group.

If someone, say library director Bridget Quinn-Carey, were to talk about this program at 1 Million Cups, very soon someone would ask if the program could be scaled up. Aye, there's the rub. One of the favorable circumstances of the program is the relatively small size, smaller than the typical class at Hartford or Bulkley High Schools. Effective integration of newcomers takes investment in staff and other resources, at a time when schools are hardly flush. This program was funded in part by the U.S. Institute for Museum and Library Services, but they're not going to be good for more than piloting and research.

In the richest society in the history of Earth, resources for those investments are here, just historically hard to tap. It might be worth it. Diversity can be a source of strength for this uncertain century--no ecologist in the world speaks favorably of monocultures--but only if newcomers are effectively integrated. Large-scale immigration is a fact, and we can choose how to respond. We can follow the example of our President, and respond with bigotry, political opportunism, and what amounts to a government kidnapping ring. Or we can rise to the challenge of inclusion, and support the work necessary to make it happen.