Center On-going Projects and Working Groups

On-going Projects

As of March 15, 2019:

  • SSRC “Scholarly Borderlands” grant for $50,000 due end of April (for two years, just on Immigration and Environment).
  • Exploratory survey of the membership of Suffolk AME (municipal employees union): $5000 mostly for grad student writing the white paper.
  • Exploratory study of the Council on Thought and Action (an antirecidivist group for the recently incarcerated): $1000 mostly to fund the fees for interviewees.  Note: you can’t expect to get any grants in soc sciences or partnerships with community groups without doing initial studies like this.
  • A working group on incarceration and jails begun Fall 2017 is looking into grantable projects combining mappable data on NYS and Long Island jails/prisons and the incarcerated, collected over the past year, with oral histories.
  • A collaboration with ERASE Racism to study outcomes of their interventions in their this-year’s “Build a More Just Long Island” campaign, which could possibly lead to grant-making.
  • We are working with an LI school district (Herricks) on developing a high school course in racial literacy, while seeing how we might scale up for schools across Long Island, somewhat modeled on Howie Schneider’s news literacy initiatives, which have received many grants.
  • We’re developing a proposal for a match-maker website between academics, non-profits and government officials across Long Island, so they can find one another and arrange collaborations.  First step was a directory of the groups as well as SBU resources we developed called the Ineqwiki.  In addition to sketching out further plans for the website, we’re now orienting this existing tool also toward enabling students across all the depts to fulfill the new +Exp distribution requirements, by finding a non-profit and its current inequality/justice project(s) with which they’d like to work.  I was going to be asking around SBU for some seed money to really get a website prototype going, following recent entrepreneurial and well-funded models such as Research4impact .
Having acquired Center faculty affiliates over the past year, we have consolidated other working groups over the fall 2018, several of which are exploring further grantable projects/revenue streams
  • Immigration/Environment
  • Health Access and Disparities (working with those on East Campus such as in the public health program and center for health technologies)
  • Worker Cooperatives (working with the Long Island Progressive Coalition)
  • Curricular Innovations (looking into offering Center’s own course for +exp and on other topics, on the model of the Career Center, which would provide a small revenue stream)

Center Working Groups

As of March 15, 2019:

  • Worker Cooperatives/Surveys Working Group: (two surveys underway already)
    Richard Chan, Business School
    Gerrit Wolf, Business School
    David Wiczer, Economics
    Meta Brown, Economics
    Leonie Huddy, Political Science
    Stanley Feldman, Political Science
    Chris Sellers, History (Moderator)
    Students
    Graduate Student Michelle Io-Low, Political Science, leading union survey work
    Outside-SBU Collaborating Groups thus far:
    Long Island Progressive Coalition
    Suffolk Association of Municipal Employees
  • Jails and Incarceration Working Group: (one sociological study already underway)
    Gil Jang, Geospatial Center
    Rob Chase, History (Moderator)
    Shobana Shankar, History
    Nancy Tomes, History
    George Leibowitz, Social Welfare
    Jason Barabas, Political Science
    Nancy Franklin, Psychology
    Susan Hinely, History/Writing Program
    Students
    Graduate student Valerie Rehm, sociology, directing a research project on Council of Thought and Action (COTA)
    George Leibowitz’s masters students in spring 2019 Forensic Social Work class will be undertaking COTA research project as well
    Outside-SBU collaborators/contacts thus far
    Nassau County Jail Advocates
    Campaign for Alternatives to Solitary Confinement
    Long Island  Progressive Coalition
    Suffolk County Police Commissioner for COTA
  • Racial Justice and Literacy Working Group
    Tracey Walters, Africana Studies (Moderator)
    Zebulon Miletsky, Africana Studies
    Abena Asare, Africana Studies
    Francesca Spedalieri, English
    Rob Chase, History
    Chris Sellers, History
    Hector Alcala, Public Health
    Crystal Fleming, Sociology
    Students:
    Graduate student Miriam Sarwana, Psychology worked on flyers, spoke at forums.
    Graduate student Emry Breedlove, Sociology, worked on flyers
    Undergrad Phil Zucchi, History, working on a flyer
    Outside collaborators/contacts
    ERASE Racism: collaborating on “Building a More Just Long Island” campaign including well-attended forums and other events
    Herricks School District: Advising/designing prototype course in “racial literacy”
  • Immigration/Environment Working Group: Application for Sawyer Seminar Spring 2018 (unsuccessful); applying for SSRC “scholarly borderlands” initiative, due April 2019
    Georges Fouron, Africana Studies (Affiliate member)
    Ian Alan Paul, Emerging Media/Art (Affiliate member)
    Michael Rubinstein, English (Sawyer)
    Lori Flores, History (Sawyer)
    Chris Sellers, History (Sawyer, SSRC)(Moderator)
    Peter Caravetta, Italian/Philosophy (Affiliate member)
    Gallya Lahav, Political Science (Sawyer)
    Mary Jo Bona, WGSS (Affiliate member)
    Nancy Hiemstra, WGSS (Sawyer, SSRC)
  • Health Access and Disparities Working Group:
    Debra Dwyer, economist currently working in SBU administration, (Moderator)
    Brooke Ellison,Center for Community Engagement and Leadership Development , School of Health Technology and Management
    Amy Sullivan, Dance (has worked with Parkinson’s patients)
    Chris Sellers, History (also has M.D., worked in environmental health)
    Hector Alcala, Public Health
    Al Jordan, Public Health
    Adding faculty from sociology, the dental school
    Other Public Health faculty, as that program has established an affiliation with our Center
    Outside non-SBU collaborators: TBA but Public Health has many contacts
  • Curricular Innovations Working Group: looking at possibilities for
    creating minors in migration and/or social justice
    interdisciplinary and team teaching in related areas
    Enabling Center to coordinate and offer +exp courses across curriculum
    Mary Rawlinson, Philosophy (Moderator)
    Francesca Spedalieri, English/ WGSS
    Nancy Hiemstra, WGSS
    Patricia Dunn, English
    Genna Hymowitz, Departments of Psychology, Psychiatry & Surgery
    Pamela Block, School of Health Technology and Management

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