Associate Professor Ronald Berkowsky and student Ashley Garcia present research at the President's Dinner.
By Julie Drake
海角社区CI鈥檚 Center for Community Engagement actively facilitates partnerships between faculty and students with community-based organizations for service-learning projects.
鈥淚f we can view community-based research as a service-related activity, in that context the Center for Community Engagement has really done a fantastic job of connecting students, faculty members, etc., with various different community partners around Ventura County,鈥 said Ronald Berkowsky, Associate Professor of Health Science, who serves as community-based research faculty lead.
海角社区CI has a robust data collection system to identify certain service-learning opportunities.
鈥淭he idea is that you are working with the community organization to come up with a research question, to come up with an approach to address that research question, making sure that it is addressing a particular community need,鈥 he said.
Berkowsky is working with the Center for Community Engagement to produce a data collection strategy so they can get a better idea as to the extent of community-based research on campus.
The goal is to find out how many faculty are doing the projects; how many students are engaged in the projects; and who the community partners are with which they are working.
Faculty and students also engage in research in the context of a capstone class, which is typically limited to one semester.
鈥淎ctually, a lot of our faculty kind of have capstone projects that students engage in to get this experience,鈥 he said.
Some faculty members do research projects outside of the context of a classroom, such as collaboration with community partners or working with students in the context of an independent research project.
鈥淲e know that this work happens on campus. We just don鈥檛 have a ton of data on who is doing what, with whom, where, etc.,鈥 he said.
Berkowsky highlighted a couple of projects that he has been engaged in over the past couple of years.
One of those projects involved work he and his students did with CAREGIVERS, a Ventura-based nonprofit organization that provides volunteer caregiving services to independently living older adults and those with disabilities in Ventura County.
His students collected and analyzed over 400 surveys the nonprofit organization had collected over a 10-year period but lacked the capacity to analyze. The data was collected from volunteers for CAREGIVERS and from older adults who had received caregiving services.
鈥淭hat project gave the students the opportunity to test their research and their analytical skills,鈥 he said. 鈥淚t also provided valuable data to CAREGIVERS on the impacts of their organization in the community.鈥
When the students presented their work, the nonprofit organization was incredibly thankful.
鈥淭hey had always known the value of their organization but with this project they actually had the data to kind of back up what they already knew,鈥 Berkowksy said.
The organization can use the data to advocate on behalf of their services and volunteers and provide evidence when submitting grant applications for funding.
A group of students took the report they had delivered to CAREGIVERS and continued working on it to revise and turn it into a potential research publication. That was submitted to 海角社区CI鈥檚 internal journal, CBR@海角社区CI, an annual volume that highlights community-based research across campus.
The paper, Evaluation Of Volunteer Care Recipient And Caregiver Experiences In Ventura County, by Brandon Luna, Carmele Forbes, Bailey Morris, Stephanie Rosales, and Berkowsky was published this past December.
The project was awarded a community-based research award last year at 海角社区CI鈥檚 Celebration of Service.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a particular project that I鈥檓 really proud of,鈥 Berkowsky said.
One other project he highlighted is a current project conducted in coordination with the LGBT+ Aging Coalition of Ventura County. The organization is a volunteer-based program of the Ventura County Area Agency on Aging. They educate and advocate on behalf of LGBT+ elders but with a limited number of volunteers.
Professor Geoffrey Dilly explains a microplastics community research project to President Yao and his wife CJ. Student researcher Alyssa Mak also assisted with the research project.
Berkowsky collaborated with a team of three students over the summer in the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellows program, also known as SURF.
The students, Rosalinda Arias, Ashley Garcia, and Gracie Lake, conducted a community-based research project to identify and evaluate service needs among LGBTQIA+ older adults in Ventura County.
鈥淲e organized three focus groups in Ventura, Oxnard, and Thousand Oaks, and conducted one-on-one interviews with members of the LGBT+ Aging Coalition,鈥 Arias said.
They recruited participants via a combination of word of mouth, flyers and community outreach to ensure that they connected with individuals who were eager to share their experiences and perspectives.
The students analyzed the data they collected and presented the results in February to the coalition leadership and membership. They provided recommendations as to what the LGBT+ Aging Coalition can do moving forward given the restrictions on their volunteer base and provided next steps on short- and long-term goal setting.
鈥淭his project provided a deeply rewarding opportunity to listen to the lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ elders, who shared powerful stories about the barriers they face in healthcare, social interactions, and the pursuit of spaces that allow them to live and thrive, Arias said.
鈥淭heir stories gave us a greater understanding of the unique challenges this community faces, and their insights were essential in shaping our approach to improving services for LGBTQIA+ older adults.鈥
Berkowsky and one of the students presented the results at the American Society on Aging National Conference held in Orlando, Florida, April 21-24.
Nien-Tsu Nancy Chen, 海角社区CI Associate Professor of Communication, incorporates community-based research in her Health Communication course. She connected with the Saticoy Food Hub through the Center for Community Engagement.
鈥淭hey were really trying to get a good sense about the accessibility to healthy food in their community and also the affordability of those healthy items,鈥 Nien-Tsu said.
Saticoy is a small unincorporated community in Ventura County with about 1,100 residents and no grocery store. There are three corner stores within Saticoy including one on the border with Ventura with a small amount of fresh produce.
鈥淭here鈥檚 a lot of challenges for people to get access to healthy food, especially if you don鈥檛 have transportation,鈥 Nien-Tsu said.
It鈥檚 hard for corner stores to sell perishable items, and when they do they tend to be more expensive than what you can find in a larger grocery store. The food they do carry is less nutritious with high calories. There is also a lot of alcohol in the shops.
Nien-Tsu鈥檚 students used the U.S. Department of Agriculture Community Food Security Assessment toolkit. Based on community feedback, they replaced certain items in the toolkit with more culturally relevant grocery items such as tropical fruit for the mostly Hispanic community.
The Saticoy Food Hub encouraged people to grow their own food in their backyards through the Saticoy Sowers program. The eight-week course teaches residents how to grow their own food. They also want to encourage residents to share surplus food.
鈥淚 think they really want to encourage the idea of sharing,鈥 Nien-Tsu said.
The Food Hub also started a monthly farmers market last year where they encourage people to sell their surplus produce.
鈥淭hrough the Saticoy community we learned that a lot of the information is disseminated through interpersonal communication, interpersonal networks rather than digital communication,鈥 she said.
Nien-Tsu added, 鈥淚 think they have been doing a lot of wonderful projects, and they always want research to support further development of their programs. They want to know what鈥檚 working well, what鈥檚 an area for improvement and how they can better support food sovereignty moving forward.鈥