Daraja Brown is a second-year Civil Engineering student with a Spanish minor from Charlotte, NC. She first connected with SLS through the Building for Equity and Sustainability VIP, within which she is a sub-team lead for the Ratings Systems sub-team and recently had the honor of receiving a VIP Mentor Award. Daraja is passionate about leveraging her engineering knowledge and career to advance equity in historically-marginalized communities, and looks forward to continuing to learn how to best do so!

When I first joined the Building for Equity and Sustainability VIP, I had no idea I would end up joining a team of incredible change makers from around the country who are all united by our shared passion for advancing equity through our infrastructure. In fact, I never even considered joining a research team before I learned about the VIP because I knew I’…


Every year, the University System of Georgia (USG) Teaching and Learning Conference brings together educators and researchers from across Georgia to share their experiences and insights on innovative teaching methods that foster connections, strengthen learning, and create opportunities to support student success. This year, a group of students from the SLS-affiliated VIP course “Building for Equity and Sustainability” shared their perspectives on how the class’s innovative teaching methods can enhance students’ learning experience by helping them build community and fostering a sense of trust and belonging, which empowers them and lets them take control of their own learning .

The presentation explored how the VIP’s student-led team projects engaged and inspired students to develop meaningful connections with each other and with local communities. Lauren Riehm, an architecture student who has been in the VIP for two years, discussed…


Earlier this spring semester, the Office of Civic Engagement hosted the 13th Annual MLK Day of Service event dedicated to celebrating the life of Dr. Martin Luther King (MLK) Jr. Students and volunteers gathered bright and early at the Student Center to spend their “day off” giving back in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King. As stated by Civic Engagement at Georgia Tech, they “offered the chance to make it a ‘day on, not a day off,’ partnering with Atlanta community organizations to connect, serve, and move us closer to Dr. King’s vision of a ‘Beloved Community.’” 

CSC Day of Service eventAs part of the…


This post is a re-print of an article published by the Georgia Tech Office of Undergraduate Education.

Georgia Tech's Serve-Learn-Sustain recently hosted an Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) session in Jackson, GA.

The session was part of a short course, titled "ABCD in Practice," aimed to introduce and review the basics of ABCD, which is an approach that focuses on working with communities based on their assets and strengths.

The course, led by two Serve-Learn-Sustain faculty members, Dr. Jennifer Hirsch, and Dr. Ruthie Yow, was open to undergraduate and graduate students, as well as community partners from outside Georgia Tech. 

In February, course participants visited the Henderson School, an all-Black school in Jackson, GA, that opened in 1955 and closed in 2010. The school is being restored and repurposed by the Henderson School Alumni Association Trust (HSAAT), which hopes to turn the building into a community and workforce…


Georgia Tech student Alex Ip is a graduating Environmental Engineering major and Founder and Editor in Chief of The Xylom, a student-led nonprofit newsroom exploring the communities influencing and shaped by science.

Using skills he learned at Tech, including through SLS-affiliated courses and programs, he has been digging deep into the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center controversy, including how it influences and impacts both people and nature. Read his recent article on The Xylom’s website and learn about the site's mission at https://www.thexylom.com/about-us.

Please note that the link above takes you to a website outside of Georgia Tech. The views and opinions expressed on that website are those of the authors and do not reflect the views or positions of Georgia Tech.

 


Last month, SLS welcomed Anna Tinoco-Santiago as our new Community Engagement Specialist.  In this capacity, she will report to Ruthie Yow and support Serve-Learn-Sustain’s service-learning and community engagement work by developing and maintaining relationships with off-campus partners and by designing, managing, and implementing related programs. More specifically, Anna will: identify, develop, and maintain partnerships with off-campus partners to engage in and advance learning and action related to sustainable communities; collaborate closely with and serve as a connector among Georgia Tech’s other key community-related initiatives and offices; and develop and manage SLS programs intended to support SLS faculty and students, complement SLS courses, and benefit partners.
 
Anna's professional background includes years of experience creating and strengthening relationships between non-profit organizations, businesses, and the surrounding community. Most recently,…


History can provide valuable lessons and insights about sustainable efforts and how past civilizations have created opportunities to build community. By studying the successes and failures of previous societies, we can learn about more sustainable community-building practices that can impact our efforts to create a better world today. Last summer I wrote a series of four articles about the Spanish settlement and colonization patterns in New Mexico, focusing on their interaction with and impact on the native Puebloan peoples of the American Southwest. By exploring both the Spanish and Puebloan values, beliefs, and translations of these onto the built environment, the reader can gain a deeper appreciation for the diversity of perspectives needed to create sustainable communities and the ways in which these perspectives shape our relationship with others and the natural world.

 


The City of Atlanta owns ~381 acres in unincorporated DeKalb County – the site of an old prison farm that was built on Indigenous Muscogee land, part of what is now called South River Forest. Surrounded by Black-majority neighborhoods, this land was envisioned as a park for communities – then the City decided to build a new $90M police, fire, and corrections training center.

SLS Signature Partner, The Center for Civic Innovation, created this explainer in order to better understand the history of community participation and engagement in this process to date–– something that is core to our mission of work to ensure that people’s needs and voices are at the center of local decision making. We encourage anyone who wants to share their support or concern for this process to our elected officials.

Here are 10 main…


nicole kennard

Nicole Kennard is a Materials Science & Engineering major, graduating in May 2017.  She is the President of Engineers for a Sustainable World, Leader of the Hydroponics Project Team, and a student liaison for the Center for Serve-Learn-Sustain.

I recently attended Serve-Learn-Sustain’s MLK Day of Service at Friends of Refugees in Clarkston, GA, which is about 20 minutes from Georgia Tech. 60,000 refugees have begun their journeys as new Americans in this area, and Clarkston has even been called “the most diverse square mile in America” by the New York Times Magazine.

Coming into this service day, I didn’t know what to expect, except for a day of hard work—which it was. I helped to build a sidewalk outside the community center, while others worked on cleaning up paths to the school. However, this day was…


SLS Director Jennifer Hirsch and Service Learning and Partnerships Specialist Ruthie Yow, together with Assessment Manager for Academic Effectiveness Sarah Wu from the Office of Academic Effectiveness, have recently published an article on SLS' approach to integrating community partnerships for sustainability into engineering education in the journal Engineering Studies.

Abstract: Engineers are crucial to solving the world's most pressing challenges, but they cannot do it alone. Creating new and more just systems that support people and planet requires that engineers learn to engage with diverse stakeholders as equal partners. This article shares how the Serve-Learn-Sustain (SLS) initiative at the Georgia Institute of Technology has been introducing new approaches to problem-solving into engineering and technology-focused education to better prepare students to address the sustainability challenges of our moment, in collaboration with community…