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South Jersey Institute for Population Health Announces Partnership with CURE!

We have exciting news! The South Jersey Institute for Population Health (SJIPH) is partnering with CURE to improve population health in South Jersey. Please find SJIPH’s announcement of our partnership below:

Since we were first established, the South Jersey Institute for Population Health (SJIPH) has had a commitment to improving population health and wellbeing and reducing health disparities in southern New Jersey through supporting collaborations between community stakeholders and research partners from Rowan University and Rutgers University-Camden.

As an exciting next step in this work, we are pleased to announce a new partnership with the Center for Urban Research and Education (CURE) at Rutgers University-Camden. Launched in 2011 by Dr. Paul Jargowsky, CURE is dedicated to building a Rutgers where community work and research go hand in hand. CURE will bring its mission and knowledge of community research and civic engagement to support the strategy, research design, and operations of SJIPH. This partnership will further enhance SJIPH’s integration into Rutgers’ research infrastructure and connection to affiliated faculty.

Leading the work for CURE is Dr. Stephen Danley, who started as the new SJIPH Co-Lead at the beginning of January 2024. As Co-Lead, Dr. Danley will work closely with Co-Founder/Co-Lead Dr. Nicole Vaughn of Rowan University, to advance SJIPH’s research mission, organizational strategy as well as expand dissemination of our work with communities and partners in the region and nationally. Dr. Stephen Danley is joined by three other members of CURE who will help SJIPH staff and grantees share their research findings and connect to new resources. You can read more about each team member below.

Meet the CURE Team

Stephen Danley, DPhil, CURE Director
Dr. Stephen Danley is an Associate Professor of Public Policy and Administration at Rutgers- Camden University and Director of the Center for Urban Research and Education. He obtained his doctorate from the University of Oxford’s Nuffield College through a Marshall Scholarship. Danley’s research focuses on various aspects of urban dynamics, including neighborhood movements in New Orleans, LA and gentrification in Camden, NJ.

Melissa Thompson PhD Student, CURE Graduate Assistant
Mel Thompson is a PhD student in Public Affairs, Rutgers University. She received a Rutgers Presidential Scholar and is Rutgers-Rowan Board Pre-Doctoral Fellow. Her research centers Black liberation, community development, and teacher housing.

Mariah Casias MS, CURE Department Administrator
Mariah is a graduate of Haverford College and received a master’s degree in Nonprofit Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania. She has worked in nonprofits and higher education in the Philadelphia region, including at Philanthropy Network Greater Philadelphia and the Center for High Impact Philanthropy (CHIP) at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy & Practice.

Yanan Li, PhD candidate Rutgers University-Camden
Yanan Li is a Ph.D. candidate in Public Affairs at Rutgers University-Camden. Her research focuses on social capital and social class mobility, with a particular emphasis on spatial analysis. She has received comprehensive training in both quantitative and qualitative analysis and has a strong ability in data visualization.

In welcoming the CURE team, we would also like to acknowledge the leadership and work of Dr. Naomi Marmorstein, who served as the previous Interim Co-lead from Rutgers-Camden from September 2022-December 2023, during which time SJIPH was awarded the 2023 Population Health Leader Award from Acenda Health.

As we develop and deepen the network of relationships that work to improve health in the region, SJIPH anticipates that this is the first of many new partnerships. Our expanded team looks forward to working with you in the future. Please visit SJIPH.org for more information.

Best,

SJIPH Team

CURE’s Next Chapter, by Dr. Stephen Danley

Ten years ago, I came to Rutgers-Camden because of the university’s commitment to community work. The Center for Urban Research and Education (CURE) has been the intellectual heart of that commitment, which is why I’m honored to be named its Director. At CURE, research and community work go hand-in-hand – that’s why I took this new position, and why I want to share a little more about my vision for CURE with you.

I have always admired CURE, particularly Dr. Paul Jargowsky’s work on segregation. To me, this is what research should be: it should build knowledge on the critical issues of our time, be a part of our policy and political discourse, and further justice in our communities. CURE has a legacy of doing just that.

When I got to Rutgers, CURE was conducting the Camden Neighborhood Change Study. Every day, folks were walking through neighborhoods conducting a survey of houses so that a) the city better understood its blight epidemic, and b) future researchers had a baseline to understand the changes already coming to Camden. I did what any young community-engaged scholar would do. I picked up a clipboard and volunteered to join.

My commitment to CURE is to make more of this work possible, and to do so in partnership with community. In that spirit, we are launching Community First, an initiative places the needs, aspirations, and voices of our local community at the forefront of our research endeavors. Community First represents a pledge to ensure that our work is not just academically rigorous but deeply relevant and impactful for the communities we call home.

CURE will continue to be an engine for that kind of work. Community First projects will be conceived at kitchen tables and nonprofit board rooms, building academic knowledge and pursuing justice. We’ll be piloting that model this Spring through a Community First class where PhD students conduct projects with community groups. We’ve also received over $100,000 in funding from Rutgers’ Urban Innovation Fund and the Rutgers Equity Alliance for Community Health (REACH) to work with One Camden to better understand how Camden residents are navigating the city’s school choice landscape.

This, of course, is only the beginning. We’ll be announcing new community partnerships, hosting seminars with community-engaged scholars, and continuing CURE’s legacy of world-class urban research.

Please join us in this work. Reach out to our team. Join our mailing list. Attend our events. Volunteer for CURE. Consider donating to the center. My email address is stephen.danley@rutgers.edu if you’d like to connect with our team and learn more about any of these possibilities.

I’m honored to be leading this next chapter in CURE’s illustrious history. Now, let’s get to the work.

Reflecting on CURE’s Legacy, by Dr. Paul Jargowsky Founding Director Emeritus

After 12 years as Director of the Center for Urban Research and Education (CURE), I am stepping down and turning over the leadership of the Center to Associate Professor Stephen Danley. Professor Danley, a noted urban scholar whose research focuses on social engagement and community development, has deep ties to the Camden community. I am very excited to watch CURE continue to grow and develop under his leader- ship. In anticipation of this new birth of CURE, it is useful to revisit the Center’s first 12 years serving the Rutgers-Camden campus and the Camden community.

In 2011, under the leadership of Executive Dean Margaret Marsh and Chancellor Wendell Pritchett, Rutgers University – Camden established the Center for Urban Research and Education. I was delighted and honored to come to Rutgers-Camden to be the founding director of CURE. Rutgers-Camden is an ideal set- ting for a center that bridges academic research with outreach to an economically challenged urban community. Camden, NJ, is one of the poorest cities in the United States, situated within the poorest major metropolitan area. Yet both Camden and the Greater Philadelphia Region have enormous potential, underutilized resources, and enthusiastic and engaged citizens.

CURE has several complimentary missions. First, CURE fosters a community of urban scholars across the campus that transcends academic departments and disciplinary backgrounds. Second, CURE promotes and facilitates new and interesting urban research by Rutgers-Camden faculty and students. Third, CURE builds links between the university and its community by partner- ing with government agencies, non-profit organizations, and community groups.

CURE has hosted memorable seminars, academic conferences, research projects, and publications. We have sought out emerging urban scholars, particularly from underrepresented groups, and promoted their work within Rutgers and beyond. We have also funded student research and conference attendance to help train the next generation of urban scholars. As CURE enters its second decade, this report looks back on some highlights of the first 12 years. We look forward to building on these accomplishments and invite you to join us as we seek to bring research to bear on problems and opportunities in urban America.

CURE’s successful program of research and public events were the result of the hard work of many people. I was fortunate to have Natasha Fletcher serving as Associate Director for most of the first ten years. More recently, Public Affairs graduate student Sarah DeGiorgis has been invaluable at keeping CURE functioning. Many Rutgers-Camden faculty have played important roles, as have many graduate students. In the same spirit, I am committed to helping income Director Stephen Danley in any way that I can as he takes the helm. Onward!

CANCELED: April 13 CURE Seminar Series with Camille Z. Charles, Ph.D.

Young, Gifted and Diverse

This event has been canceled until further notice.

Seminar Overview

Despite their diversity, Black Americans have long been studied as a uniformly disadvantaged group. Drawing from a representative sample of over a thousand Black students and in-depth interviews and focus groups with over one hundred more, Young, Gifted and Diverse highlights diversity among the new educated Black elite—those graduating from America’s selective colleges and universities in the early twenty-first century.

Differences in childhood experiences shape this generation, including their racial and other social identities and attitudes, and beliefs about and interactions with one another. While those in the new Black elite come from myriad backgrounds and have varied views on American racism, as they progress through college and toward the Black professional class they develop a shared worldview and group consciousness. They graduate with optimism about their own futures, but remain guarded about racial equality more broadly. This internal diversity alongside political consensus among the elite complicates assumptions about both a monolithic Black experience and the future of Black political solidarity.

About Professor Charles

Camille Z. Charles is Walter H. and Leonore C. Annenberg Professor in the Social Sciences in the Departments of Sociology and Africana Studies, and in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests are in the areas of racial inequality, racial identity, racial attitudes, intergroup relations, residential segregation, and higher education.

Professor Charles currently serves as Chair of the Department of Africana Studies, and as Interim Director of the Center for Africana Studies. In addition to these roles, she is also Faculty Co-Director of Penn First Plus, the University’s initiative to support first-generation, low-income Penn students. And, since 2006 she has served as Director of the Center for Africana Studies Summer Institute for Pre-Freshmen.

She is author of Won’t You Be My Neighbor: Race, Class and Residence in Los Angeles, which explores explanations for persisting residential segregation by race, and co-author of The Source of the River: The Social Origins of Freshmen at America’s Selective Colleges and Universities and Taming the River: Negotiating the Academic, Financial, and Social Currents in Selective Colleges and Universities, each based research from The National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen (NLSF), an effort to understand racial differences in the experience of elite higher education in the United States. Most recently, she is co-author of the forthcoming book, Young, Gifted, and Diverse: Origins of the New Black Elite, which employs a mixed-methods approach and an intersectional framework to explore the varied and multiple dimensions of diversity among Black students in elite higher education. Professor Charles earned her Ph.D. in at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1996.

CURE is part of State Policy Lab established at Rutgers via $1 Million awarded by NJ Secretary of Higher Education

Date

April 26, 2021

Media Contact

Megan Schumann

848-445-1907

megan.schumann@rutgers.edu

Rutgers has received $1 million from the New Jersey Office of the Secretary of Higher Education to establish a policy lab that will analyze solutions to critical issues facing the Garden State.

The State Policy Lab, housed in Rutgers’ Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy and managed in conjunction with the Rutgers-Newark School of Public Affairs and Administration, will include expertise from a network of scholars, community members and external policy experts.

“Rutgers-New Brunswick and its Bloustein School have always focused on serving the people of New Jersey,” said Rutgers-New Brunswick Chancellor Christopher J. Molloy. “We are proud to collaborate with the state on this partnership, which provides another important venue by which our world-class research will help enhance the quality of life in the Garden State.”

The main purposes of the lab, which is being funded through Gov. Phil Murphy’s 2021 state budget, includes providing policy-makers with clear and accessible research on state and local governance while assisting stakeholders in troubleshooting unanticipated implementation issues; generating data modeling for policy recommendations to enable state policymakers to test different budgetary and legislative scenarios; and building coalitions across governments, institutions of higher education and community organizations to support evidence-based policy initiatives.

“We look forward to providing our expertise with policy research, big data analytics and community engagement towards evidence-based decision-making in critical areas of policy and operations within the state of New Jersey,” said Piyushimita (Vonu) Thakuriah, dean of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. “I am particularly excited to be working with the School of Public Affairs and Administration in Rutgers-Newark, and a wider network of academic and policy collaborators throughout the university, statewide, nationally and even internationally to solve grand policy challenges. This is a fantastic opportunity for our students, as it is for us to be of service to our state.”

Charles Menifield, dean of the School of Public Affairs and Administration said he is hoping the new collaboration with Bloustein will be the first of many.

“This is an exciting time for SPAA and we are excited to work with the Bloustein School in launching this endeavor,” Menifield said. “It is a great opportunity for Rutgers to provide expertise to the governor and state legislature. I hope this opportunity leads to other collaborations.”

For New Jersey to continue to be at the forefront of innovation throughout the nation, policy issues need to be carefully addressed, said Brian Bridges, secretary of Higher Education.

“High-quality research and analysis is crucial to ensure New Jersey remains at the center of innovation,” said Bridges. “This will be even more critical as our economy recovers from the pandemic, as the State Policy Lab will examine how to address long-term issues facing the state and improve the lives of New Jerseyans. I look forward to Rutgers’ leadership in this high quality research endeavor.”

The State Policy Lab will utilize an equity framework to analyze policies and programs with the goal of identifying improvements that benefit all residents, particularly those from low-income backgrounds and those who have been historically disadvantaged.

Additional partners include the Walter Rand Institute (Camden), the Cornwall Center (Newark), the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling (New Brunswick), the Center for Urban Research & Education (Camden), the Rutgers Law School Center on Law, Inequality, and Metropolitan Equity, Kean University and New Jersey Institute of Technology.