2007 Lynton Recipient

NERCHE Announces the Recipient

of the 2007

Ernest A. Lynton Award for the Scholarship of Engagement

Lorlene Hoyt

Assistant Professor, Urban Studies and Planning

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Each year the nominations for the Ernest A. Lynton Award for the Scholarship of Engagement catalogue the progress of the scholarship of engagement in terms of disciplinary reach, strength of community partnerships, and complexity of student collaborations. In the early years of the Award the pool of faculty nominees was dominated by senior faculty who had traditional academic credentials on which to build their outreach work. Many of these pioneering faculty challenged the academy to broaden fundamental structures, such as promotion and tenure criteria, and to acknowledge the importance of academic outreach; the results of such efforts are evident in a rising number of colleges and universities that reward the scholarship of engagement. This evolution is also substantiated by the increase in Lynton Award nominations of junior faculty who are practicing engaged scholarship at the outset of their academic careers, whether or not their respective institutions place a premium on such work.

As a group, the 2007 nominees for the Lynton Award represent the very best examples of engaged scholarship—operating from the grassroots to government at all levels, from channeling the expertise of the disenfranchised to improve their own lives, to policy formation. Aiming to capture the extraordinary quality of the faculty nominees, NERCHE has created a new category, Citation for Distinguished Engaged Scholarship, in addition to the primary Award.

The 2007 Lynton Award Review Committee comprised NERCHE staff, as well as:

Carol Colbeck, Dean, Graduate College of Education, UMass Boston;
Dwight Giles, NERCHE Senior Associate and Professor of Education, UMass Boston;
Peter Kiang, Professor of Education and Director of the Asian American Studies Program, UMass Boston and former Lynton Award recipient;
KerryAnn O’Meara, Associate Professor of Education, University of Maryland, College Park;
Scott Peters, Assistant Professor of Education, Cornell University;
Eugene Rice, Senior Scholar, Association of American Colleges and Universities; and
Lorilee Sandmann, Associate Professor of Education, University of Georgia.

Recipient Descriptions

This year we are pleased to present the Ernest A. Lynton Award for the Scholarship of Engagement to Lorlene Hoyt from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Citations for Distinguished Engaged Scholarship go to both Pennie Foster-Fishman from Michigan State University and Irma Ramirez from California State Polytechnic University.

Each of these scholars has established deeply committed and sustained relationships with community partners. In addition to her disciplinary strengths, each has a rich repertoire of expertise that is necessary to carry out engaged scholarship in reciprocal ways that acknowledge the skills and grounded knowledge that each collaborator contributes to the partnership. Each understands that stripping faculty expertise of its elitism does not diminish its efficacy or inherent value.

Lorlene Hoyt, Assistant Professor, Urban Studies and Planning at MIT, has developed broad and deep relationships with residents, non-profit organizations, city employees, and private sector developers in the City of Lawrence in northernmost Massachusetts over the past four years. Through the multiple projects of MIT@Lawrence, Lorlene’s work involves generating affordable housing, asset building, youth development, and sustainability in the poorest areas of an economically depressed and racially divided post-industrial city.

Data from letters of support from a faculty colleague with whom she co-teaches, community partners, and one of her students, as well as evidence from her syllabi combined to create a powerful narrative of engaged scholarship. Her faculty colleague writes that “the engagement in Lawrence is not simply a drop-in drop-out class for students, but an enduring commitment to combine technology, planning, institutional and political analysis and strategy to rebuilding the physical and social fabric of Lawrence’s poorest neighborhood.” MIT@Lawrence has resulted in a wide range of institutional relationships in Lawrence as well as within MIT. Recently Lorlene was awarded a Community Outreach Partnerships Centers Program (COPC) grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that integrates faculty from the Sloan School of Management, the Center for Real Estate, and the Media Lab and graduate and undergraduate students from across campus to work on projects in city administration, other nonprofits, schools, and local businesses.

The letter signed by her community partners—staff of Lawrence Community Works, as well as residents of the neighborhood—attests to her skills as a facilitator, shepherding through “a multi-stakeholder and inclusive process unheard of in the city of Lawrence” which has resulted in a rezoning effort that mandated the inclusion of affordable housing, a “long-range anti-gentrification strategy of immense importance to the working families of Lawrence.” Further, they acknowledged the value of a sustained co-equal partnership to their community: “Those of us ‘in the trenches’ can count on students returning every year . . . This is a change in the way universities relate to communities insofar as we are less of a laboratory that benefits the students in their professional development and more of an equal partner in an ongoing practice and dialogue around effecting change in the city.” Her graduate student detailed how he experienced the cumulative process of students building on their predecessors’ work from year to year in the community: “It is a testament to Professor Hoyt’s persistent dedication to the city of Lawrence that these MIT@Lawrence projects build off the previous one in a sustained effort to engage the Lawrence community and offer a valuable learning experience to the students involved.” As a result of student work in required practicum for a Master’s in City Planning that is committed to work in Lawrence, he reported, the Lawrence City Council is debating an ordinance designed to improve the city’s public process disposition process.

The syllabus of that practicum clearly identifies the course’s engaged underpinnings: “Unlike the conventional model of academic research and the most prevalent types of applied research, LCW members will not function as passive subjects, nor do students act as experts whose principle responsibility is to deliver a final product. Rather the practicum follows a participatory action research model whereby students work hand-in-hand with LCW members.” This commitment to working “hand-in-hand” is evidenced in her scholarship as well, with the forthcoming publication Voices from Forgotten Cities: Innovative Revitalization Coalitions in American’s Older Small Cities, co-authored with Andre Leroux from Lawrence Community Works.

Click here to see more information on Lorlene Hoyt’s work.

We are very pleased to inaugurate the Ernest A. Lynton Citation for Distinguished Engaged Scholarship by awarding it to two exemplary scholars.

Pennie Foster-Fishman, Associate Professor and Chairperson, Community-Ecological Psychology Program at Michigan State University and University Outreach and Engagement Senior Fellow. Pennie’s engaged work on how organizational, inter-organizational and community systems can improve to better meet the needs of children, youth, and families is exemplified in a seven-year partnership with SILC (Michigan’s State Independent Living Council) helping to enhance the collaborative capacity of the disability network in Michigan. At the center of her approach to inquiry is the full participation of community partners in the research and the linking of student work to community-identified projects. As a result of the capacity building and research efforts of Pennie and her students, SILC has created the largest, most diverse and perhaps most effective state-wide disability coalition in Michigan. Further, Michigan State University funded Pennie to develop its Faculty Learning Community on the Scholarship of Engagement for faculty from multiple disciplines, charged with understanding the implications of engagement and the engagement process for faculty work at a research-intensive university. This work produced several journal articles, a book chapter, multiple conference presentations and a book on reflective discourse as an approach toward understanding critical engagement. The book is being read by MSU faculty and graduate students and in a joint set of activities with HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities).

Irma Ramirez, Assistant Professor, Architecture Department of the School of Environmental Design, California State Polytechnic University. Integrating community organizing into the design and construction process of sustainable communities, Irma has served as a co-principal investigator for much of the work done by the John T. Lyle Center for Regenerative Studies at Cal Poly Pomona in the deeply impoverished “colonias” in Tijuana as part of Habitat 21, the Center’s project for sustainable settlements. Working with Corazón, a non-governmental organization serving people who are poor in Tijuana, Irma’s students have collaborated with residents on the design and construction of “Info-Structures” which serve both as bulletin boards for Corazón to communicate with the community about their programs and as places where residents can congregate in landscaped civic spaces displaying public art. In the process, students revise their notions about the skills and abilities of local residents (typically women in the community) and the authority and power of residents is acknowledged as they use previously untapped assets necessary for local civic improvements. For Cal Poly Pomona students who are unable to participate in one of the university’s many international opportunities because of the cost or family responsibilities, work in Tijuana provides an international experience that is affordable and feasible.

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