Community Based Research

For Students

UVA Community Based Undergraduate Research Grants

Mission: Community based research seeks to foster collaborative partnerships between university researchers and the community, share knowledge among key stakeholders, and address social inequities.

Goal: Community Based Undergraduate Research Grants will provide opportunities for students to develop research projects that apply their academic skills, experiences, and ideas to real world problems. The grants are not limited to a single academic field. Interdisciplinary work is encouraged. Student researchers, under the guidance of a faculty advisor and in collaboration with a community organization, will identify a project that addresses a documented public need or issue. Student researchers will design a research project, adopt and deploy a research methodology embedded in an academic field(s), create a research product (paper, presentation, etc.) that benefits the community organization and meets expectations of academic rigor as agreed on by the faculty advisor and the student researcher(s).

Process: Awards will be granted on a competitive basis. Please see attached application form. A budget of anticipated expenses including travel, living expenses, research supplies should not exceed $3,000. If research is a team project that includes graduate students and other undergraduate students, then the budget may not exceed $5,000. An honorarium of $1,000 will be awarded to the faculty advisor.

Application Form: Community Based Undergraduate Research Award Application, 2010-2011 (PDF)

This Year's Funded Projects:

• Title: “Finding Poetry in Urban Gardening: A Community’s Tool”
  Student Researcher: Michael Mahoney, 3rd year English major (poetry)
  Faculty Advisor: Victor Luftig, English
  Community Partner: St. Paul’s Memorial Church
  

 

• Title: “More than a Cavity: Utilizing Dental Hygienists to Improve Dental Health in Southwest Virginia”
  Student Researcher: Laura McLaughlin, 3rd year Human Biology major
  Faculty Advisor: Tanya Wanchek, Weldon Cooper Center
  Community Partners: Southwest Virginia Health Authority and The Healthy Appalachia Institute

 

• Title: “The Effects of Gender Inequality on Healthcare for Women and Children in Vietnam”
  Student Researcher: Hannah Pocock, 3rd year English major (Modern Studies)
  Faculty Advisor: Ellen Fuller, East Asian Studies and Studies in Women and Gender
  Community Partner: Children of Vietnam

 

• Title: “The Effect of Career Development Centers on the Brain Drain in South Africa”
  Student Researcher: Sarah Munford, 2nd year in Global Development Studies, and Ishraga Eltahir, Political and Social Thought and African-American and African Studies
  Faculty Advisor: Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton, Religious Studies
  Community Partner: South Africa Migration Project

 

• Title: “Culturally Competent Health Care: Partnering to Study Diseases of Poverty in a Multiethnic Community”
  Student Researchers: Robin Kendall, 2nd year Finance and Global Development Studies major Virginia Ruddock, graduate student in Clinical Nursing Leadership
  Faculty Advisor: Brad Brown, Commerce
  Community Partner: Casa Materna

 

• Title: “Implementing a Sustainable Water Filtration System through Community Engagement”
  Student Researcher: Ethan Heil, 2nd year, Civil Engineering
  Faculty Advisor: James Smith, Civil Engineering
  Community Partner: University of Venda’s Global Sustainability Club

 

• Title: “Sustainable Stormwater Management: Validating Water Quality and Quantity”
  Student Researcher: Michael Downey, 2nd year, Anthropology major and a team of students from environmental sciences and engineering, Environmental Thought and Practice
  Faculty Advisor: Janet Herman, Environmental Sciences
  Community Partner: City of Charlottesville, Dept. of Public Works

 

• Title: “Implementing Health Building Principles in a Piedmont Housing Alliance Development”
  Student Researcher: Matthew Bowyer, 3rd year, Interdisciplinary Studies Chase Sparling-Beckley, graduate student Architecture
  Faculty Advisor: John Quale, Architecture and Ralph Allen, Chemistry
  Community Partner: Piedmont Housing Alliance

 

Last Year’s Recipients: 2008 Grant Recipients

Selected Resources on Community Based Research:

• Campus-Community Partnerships for Health: http://www.ccph.info/


• University of Washington School of Public Health: http://sphcm.washington.edu/research/community.asp


• Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning. Volume 9, Number 3, 2003. Special issue on Community Based Research: http://www.umich.edu/~mjcsl/volumes/vol9.3abstracts.html (abstracts only)


• Strand, Kerry, and Sam Marullo, Nick Cutforth, Randy Stoecker, and Patrick Donohue. Community-Based Research and Higher Education. San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2003. (preview only)

This program is a collaboration between the Center for Undergraduate Excellence and the Office of University Community Partnerships. For more information contact:

Lucy Russell
Center for Undergraduate Excellence
434-924-6058
lsr2n@virginia.edu

Megan Raymond
Office of the Executive Vice President & Provost
434-924-0875
mmr8r@virginia.edu

For Faculty

Institute on Aging
The Institute's mission is to enrich the lives of elders by acting as a catalyst and coordinator for aging-related research. Funding for student assistance with collaborative, community-based research in the field of aging is available to students up to $5,000.

*Community is defined in regional terms: local, statewide, national or international. Community organizations can include but are not limited to social service agencies, non-profit organizations, faith-based organizations, non-government organizations, community youth groups, and school systems. Documented need means that there is significant evidence to support viability of an issue within the community (e.g. affordable housing, youth violence, access to healthcare, general literacy, public transportation, voter turnout, sanitary water supply, etc.)