University Neighborhood Partners (UNP) Honors Think Tank

WHO ARE WE?

Through our research we worked collaboratively to find original solutions to problems within our various communities. One of our guiding questions throughout 2008-09 was, “What does building community mean in today’s society?” After examining the definition of “community” from multiple perspectives and addressing the question of how to create meaningful opportunities for community involvement for people from widely different backgrounds, we began our intensive community-based research with local residents in west side neighborhoods of Salt Lake City, Utah. With that, and other questions in mind, we sought to explore the idea of building communities through telling stories. Our work focused on issues of demographic change, cultural norms of family, language, tradition, local decision making, and neighborhood involvement. Using principles of community based research, tools of ethnography, and methods of examining individual life histories, we went beyond an “ivory-tower” approach to identify and develop concrete and grounded strategies for addressing these questions in the rapidly diversifying neighborhoods of Salt Lake City. At the end of the semester we shared the results of our research with members of the west side community, and the students and faculty of the University of Utah through various communicative methods. It is our hope that these efforts will not only help bridge the gap between the “east and west sides”, but also build more cohesive bonds between the members of the west side community.

WHO ARE THE FACILITATORS?

Kim Schmit, Trinh Mai, Sarah Munro

Sarah Munro is Associate Director of University Neighborhood Partners and Assistant Professor (Research) in the College of Architecture and Planning at the University of Utah. She received her BA in History from Harvard University, and her MA and Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Michigan. Her research focused on community organizing, leadership, and gender relations. She has spent time in Italy, India and Nepal working with community development organizations, and before that worked as a journalist in Italy. Sarah began working for UNP in 2002, shortly after its inception. In addition to guiding overall UNP work, her current work focuses on partnerships in the areas of resident empowerment and community leadership, capacity-building, and collaborative community-based research. An anthropologist by training, Sarah is particularly interested in community development and leadership in multi-cultural settings. She speaks Spanish and Italian fluently, and spends much of her time meeting with potential (and existing) partners to share ideas and find links between University and community resources. She grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and now loves to hike and camp in Utah’s beautiful mountains with her husband Claudio and son Powell.
Contact: s.munro@partners.utah.edu

Trinh Mai is an Assistant Professor/Lecturer and Special Assistant to the Dean on community-based research at the College of Social Work, University of Utah. She serves as the Social Work Faculty Supervisor at University Neighborhood Partners Hartland Center, providing clinical supervision to social work students completing their internships at the Center. At Hartland she also directs social work programs, coordinates partnerships with other university partners, community agencies and residents, and develops and supports community-engaged research. Besides campus community partnerships, her other interests include diversity and social justice, international social work, and community capacity building. Trinh’s past work experience is clinical and community social work practice with people of multicultural backgrounds, primarily Latinos and Asian Americans. She received her BA in Psychology from the University of Texas and her Masters in Social Work from the University of Houston.
Contact: trinh.mai@socwk.utah.edu

Kimberly Schmit is the Community Capacity Partnership Manager for University Neighborhood Partners (UNP) at the University of Utah. Kim’s primary responsibilities are to manage the partnerships for the UNP-Hartland Partnership Center, as well as engage with the wider community to see how this model might help support additional community capacity building projects. She spends most of her time working with resident leaders from all over the world who live at the Hartland Apartments, community non-profits, and University of Utah faculty and students to ensure a sustainable, comprehensive educational program that is driven by reciprocal learning and is in response to resident identified strengths and needs. In May of 2007 Kim received her MEd from the Department of Education, Culture and Society at the University of Utah, where she focused her studies on culturally appropriate curriculum for people who have been through the refugee experience and socially just techniques for community empowerment. In February of 2008, Kim took part in an UNP field research trip to the Thailand/Burma (Myanmar) border where she directed her learning to understanding the educational contexts of people from Burma, living in the Thailand refugee camps. Kim’s past work experiences include directing Higher Ground Learning, program directing at Spy Hop Productions and co-running Wasatch Dance Collective.
Contact: k.schmit@partners.utah.edu