Willenborg Fellows

Danielle will be pursuing an initiative to design curricular and co-curricular experiences that heighten students awareness of the benefits of hiring people with disabilities and build deeper support structures, networks and professional development opportunities for students with disabilities. Danielle will also be pursuing a joint project with Associate Dean Christina Curran to build a new Civic Learning course, CHS 400: Disability as Diversity: Implications for Health Wellness and Medicine.

Along with the CHS 400/500 course she will be designing with Danielle, Chris will be working with DU community partners to build experiential learning components for the HWE 299: Community-Based Learning in Health and Wellness and HWE 450: Internship (Capstone) Health and Wellness. HWE 299 will focus on partnerships that serve and support adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities inclusively in our communities.

Jenna’s project is to develop Spanish in the Community, a course that empowers students to successfully meet the “unique civic responsibility that comes with speaking Spanish in a Spanish-speaking community. This course aims to develop students' media literacy to analyze and challenge dehumanizing narratives about Central American immigrants and will provide opportunities to explore the history of immigration to the U.S., as well as "questions of citizenship, belonging, and racism,” and engage in communities “to deepen their knowledge of how public policy maintains inequities.”

Isadora will work with Professor Lisa Petrov to build a College Reading Writing and Speaking 101 and 102 bilingual sequence that both steeps students in the UNESCO ideal of global citizenship as “assum[ing] active roles...in building more peaceful, tolerant, and secure societies” and provides them with essential local context for that idea by allowing them “to practice good citizenship” with community organizations.

“A society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens, but by how it treats its criminals.” Jennifer takes Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s words as a guiding principle and plans to honor the dignity and possibility of incarcerated individuals beginning with her course on Hugo's Les Misérables. Jennifer completed rigorous, intensive, and internationally recognized Inside-Out training in June 2021, and will upgrade her freshman critical reading, writing, and speaking course on the topic to suit the venue. Jennifer will complete her Teaching Hugo’s Les Misérables website and expand her blog so that other Inside-Out instructors can use her course. Jennifer aims to bring the highest caliber of teaching and learning to all participants so that everyone will benefit intellectually and personally. Hugo’s appeal to respect the dignity of our fellow sojourners and fight for education, equity and justice are as relevant in the U.S. today as in post-Revolutionary France. Jennifer will use her Willenborg fellowship to raise awareness on and off-campus of the complexities of mass incarceration and to build students’ advocacy skills, democratic engagement, and work opportunities for the public good.

Liesl will be developing an internship program with the Communications and Research Divisions of Service Employees International Union–Healthcare Illinois Indiana. Working with three to four students in paid Willenborg Civic Action Internship positions, Liesl will provide students with academic mentoring to help them become knowledgable about the social, economic and political issues SEIU addresses and professional mentoring to support them in the professional expectations of the internship setting.

Lisa will work with Professor Martinez on the global citizenship focus of their CRWS 101 and 102 (bilingual sequences) as noted above. Lisa has been thinking about fostering students active engagement in public life for a while, developing a compelling vision for Civic Learning in the Spanish core with Professor Yanire Marquez-Etxabe at the American Association of Colleges & Universities’ Civic Prompts Faculty Institute in 2019.

Cecilia will be redesigning her LIS 888: Archives and Cultural Heritage Fieldwork course to allow students to engage constructively with organizations in Maywood, taking a close look at how “many communities, particularly marginalized communities, are challenging the “colonial” nature of archives. Professor Salvatore has already engaged in preliminary discussions with Akua Njira and her son, Chairman Fred Hampton, Jr. Ms. Njira and Mr. Hampton will likely serve as community partners and assist students in LIS 888 to conduct archival work on Maywood and Black Panther Party history.

Melissa will be developing a course, “Smart Decarceration and A Just Society: Emerging Policies and Practices.” Melissa’s course will be position grad students to respond to the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare’s call to meet the “Grand Challenges of Social Work,” but she hopes, too, that we will make the course available for juniors and seniors in undergraduate programs. Along with proving students with the tools to critique the effects of mass incarceration on “individuals, families, communities, states, and the nation,” Melissa also wants to deepen students relationships with organizers and activists working towards smart decarceration in our communities.

Professor Bland will be developing two projects during her time as a Willenborg Fellow. For the Healthcare Policy and Delivery Systems (Nursing 464) course, she will be developing class experiences that engage students in hands-on policy study and work with Illinois State legislators. She will also partner with Professor Laurie Zack on her project building civic engagement experiences for Transcultural Nursing (Nursing 464).

Ms. Durack and Monica Halloran, College of Applied Social Sciences (CASS) Assistant Dean of Student Services will create a course in conflict resolution that provides students hands-on experience with agencies who put this community building and repairing practice into action. Partnering with CASS, the sociology department, Maywood government and not-for-profits, Ms. Halloran and Ms. Durack will build professional growth opportunities for students in peer mediation, soft-skill coaching, and conflict management.

Assistant Dean Halloran and Linda Durack, Master's in Conflict Resolution Instructor, will create a course in conflict resolution that provides students hands-on experience with agencies who put this community building and repairing practice into action. Partnering with CASS, the sociology department, Maywood government and not-for-profits, Ms. Halloran and Ms. Durack will build professional growth opportunities for students in peer mediation, soft-skill coaching, and conflict management.

Professor Homan will be developing opportunities for students in his World Religion and Politics (Political Science 254) course to engage both in and out of the classroom with faith-based agencies working for change through public advocacy, legislative lobbying, and civic involvement projects. Professor Homan seeks to build on the partnerships forged by University Ministry to build rich civic learning and democratic action projects for his students. 

Ms. Muth Martinez will design and teach a course in leadership development that focuses on the subject from a lens of ethics and equity. Muth Martinez’s students will both study leadership models and practices on campus and engage with “leaders from mission-driven non-profits and organizations who understand that they must build fulfilled, diverse, and respected workplace teams to realize their particular civic goals.”

Professor Yousuf-Abramson will design a course that approaches grief and loss from both clinical and community health advocacy perspectives. Professor Yousuf-Abramson will teach students bereavement care practice and policy analysis of why such care is often unavailable to people “because of their socio-economic status.” Through the community partnerships she has built as field director, Professor Yousuf-Abramson will provide students hands-on work redressing these care gaps, potentially through “a bereavement mini-camp for children and adolescents on Dominican’s beautiful campus.”

Professor Zack will design her Transcultural Nursing (Nursing 315) course to serve in communities who are denied adequate care due to language barriers, lack of health insurance, lack of transportation, barriers of poverty, or [failure to accommodate] their cultural or religious beliefs.”  Zack will include United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in her curriculum and partner with agencies pursuing those goals. In this course and in work with Dr. Bland on the civic learning design of the Healthcare Policy and Delivery Systems (Nursing 464) course, she aims to empower students “to impact the health of the entire community through advocacy and policy.”

Mr. DeCostanza incorporated community-organizing training and practice in his Introduction to Social Justice and Civic Engagement: Theologies of the US Borderland / La Frontera (SJCE 210 / Theology 258) course. Working with his community partner, the Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership, DeCostanza will offer this opportunity for students to engage in community organizing and practice work when the course is offered each spring semester. He also aims to create more opportunities for SJCE 210 students to study the international politics of immigration in his San Diego/Tijuana-based Alternative Break Immersion.

Professor Jones and Allyson West, Lecturer in Nutrition, built community-based research, advocacy, and campus organizing around food insecurity into Jones’s Nutrition Research Methods (Nutrition 513) course. In the course and the research work that followed, Jones and West made this an opportunity for students to build skills in data collection, research, communicating findings, and advocacy. Their efforts have helped to turn an ad hoc initiative to meet campus food insecurity into a sustained food pantry and meal funding project, DU Feeds.

Professor Vail redesigned his Business Ethics (Business Ethics 310) course so that his students could engage in on-site visits and in class conversations with Chicagoland social entrepreneurs, including Chicago Furniture Bank, Beyond Green Partners, and Packed with Purpose. In the Spring of 2020, Professor Vail will be teaching a one-credit, spring cross-listed Business Law/Political Science Community Based Learning (BLAW 299 / POLS 299) course that will allow students a not-for-profit organization that is either advocating for legal change or assisting a specific community with knowledge of its legal rights.

Professor VanNatta designed a Special Topics in Criminology: Immigrants Rights Activism (CRIM 240) course with her partner organization Organized Communities Against Deportation (OCAD). Students learned about organizing and community-building strategies and intersecting challenges facing immigrant communities while creating material to support OCAD and other groups build successful immigrants’ rights campaigns. In the future, Professor VanNatta would like to work with OCAD, faculty colleagues in history and library information cciences, and students to build a Dominican University archive on the living legacy of immigrant community activism for social justice and human rights.

Professor Villarreal Sosa and Suhad Tabahi, Visiting Associate Professor of Social Work designed their Community-Based Participatory Research (Social Work 641) course to engage closely with “two communities have experienced increased incidents of hate crimes and a rise in xenophobia in a post Trump election, U.S-Latinx and Muslims.” In collaboration with Arab American Family Services, the Little Village Community Mental Health Collaborative, and the Rohingya Cultural Center of Chicago, Villarreal Sosa and Tabahi offered students opportunities to immerse themselves in participatory and dialogue-driven processes and build their skills as human service providers and political advocates who understand the assets of Latinx and Muslim communities.

West and Sarah Jones, Assistant Professor of Nutrition, built community-based research, advocacy, and campus organizing around food insecurity into Jones’s Nutrition Research Methods (Nutrition 513) course. In the course and the research work that followed, Jones and West made this an opportunity for students to build skills in data collection, research, communicating findings, and advocacy. Their efforts have helped to turn an ad hoc initiative to meet campus food insecurity into a sustained food pantry and meal funding project, DU Feeds.

Tabahi and Professor Leticia Villarreal Sosa designed their Community-Based Participatory Research (Social Work 641) course to engage closely with “two communities have experienced increased incidents of hate crimes and a rise in xenophobia in a post Trump election, U.S-Latinx and Muslims.” In collaboration with Arab American Family Services, the Little Village Community Mental Health Collaborative, and the Rohingya Cultural Center of Chicago, Villarreal Sosa and Tabahi offered students opportunities to immerse themselves in participatory and dialogue-driven processes and build their skills as human service providers and political advocates who understand the assets of Latinx and Muslim communities.

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