Article Highlights Rackham Public Engagement Program

In an article announcing the U-M Center for Academic Innovation’s new Public Engagement Faculty Fellowship, The Michigan Daily cited the public scholarship achievements of Rackham students and staff.

School of Education Ph.D. candidate Kimberly Ransom, who received a Rackham Public Scholarship Grant in 2018 to support her work to restore the last Rosenwald school building in Pickens County, Alabama for use as a museum and community center, spoke on the importance of public scholarship.

“I think public engagement is so important, particularly around scholarship, because it allows you to put research into action, and it allows you to use scholarship to bridge knowledge within academe with community knowledge,” Ransom says. “My goal is to be a researcher, but to also give back to the community, to have that research help the community in some way, but never taking for granted that the community also has something to offer, that the community also has knowledge to bring to the table, to tackle issues in our community and cities, nation, and world.”

Joe Cialdella, program manager for the Rackham Program in Public Scholarship, added that Rackham’s long-standing support for public engagement has helped graduate students use their expertise to directly help communities.

“The Rackham Graduate School has had a Program in Public Scholarship for many years that was designed to help graduate students who were interested in doing public engagement and community-based work and to help train graduate students to do that effectively and ethically and in responsible ways,” Cialdella says.

Read the full article at The Michigan Daily.

For more on Ransom’s public scholarship work, please read No History Left Behind.