One of my favorite scholars, Dr. Anetha Perry – known to many of us on campus as Sister Anetha – was recently profiled by Rutgers–Camden (link). I had the honor of chairing Sister Anetha’s dissertation, and contributed a quote to the article:
“Dr. Perry’s dissertation changed what I thought was possible in community-engaged research,” said Danley. “Her work was a groundbreaking study of Black settlement houses, and the impact was felt by neighbors and scholars alike.”
I wanted to take a moment today to talk about what I find so incredible about Sister Anetha’s work – and how’s it’s influenced our work, and our Community First Fellows program, here at CURE.
Sister Anetha conducted the first autoethnography in the history of the MS/PhD in Public Affairs/Community Development. Ethnography involves immersing oneself in a research context and collecting data through participant observation. For Sister Anetha, the subject of her study was her own life.
Her dissertation examined her own efforts to open the Black Settlement House that her parents ran when she was young – the Perry House. The dissertation is a remarkable piece of work, demonstrating both the challenges of opening such a facility, and the impact it had on the neighborhood. She recently published her first article from the dissertation: A Year to Go Home: A Story of Fighting Deep Disinvestment in Built Environment (link).
A critical moment during Sister Anetha’s dissertation was when her fellow PhD students conducted a fundraiser to raise $5,000 to help with repairs that would allow the Perry House to reopen. It was a tremendous moment of camaraderie and generosity within the program. But the more I thought about it, the more it felt like an indictment of how we support research here within academia. We were able to fund Sister Anetha’s scholarship through a graduate assistantship for years. But we were unable to fund the community work at the center of her scholarship.
Why couldn’t we fund those repairs? Why couldn’t we contribute to Sister Anetha’s work at the Perry House more directly? I began looking for models that integrated work done in the community with research. Was it possible to fund research in ways that more directly strengthened work happening on the ground? I found good examples. One example comes from Public Health, where “interventions” are often considered pilot programs, and funding includes both the money to run the pilot and to study it. A second is funders, such as the Rutgers Equity Alliance for Community Health (REACH) and Rutgers-Camden’s Urban Innovation Fund, that require a portion of funding go directly to the community partner participating in the research.
Here at CURE, Sister Anetha’s example was the starting point for our Community First initiative, which focuses on projects that not only invest in research, but which contribute to the mission of a community partner. The centerpiece of that initiative is our Community First Fellows – graduate students placed with community organizations over the summer to partner on research projects that move forward the mission of the placement organization.
This past week we had our final training with those fellows – trainings that focus on research skills, how to engage with community, and how to build community-engagement into their careers. I couldn’t help about how proud I was that at CURE we’re able to fund so many talented, community-engaged scholars to follow in Sister Anetha’s footsteps. And how much we owe to her example.
– Dr. Stephen Danley, Director, CURE