TABLE OF CONTENTS

Welcome

Director's Corner

• Soundings
• Tidings

Five Pieces Worth Reading

Community Change Collaborative

• A Focus on the Community Change Collaborative
• Spring 2023 Meetings
• Doug Jackson Shares His Work with CCC
• Community Change Journal is Seeking Submissions

New Podcast Series

Pondering Past Podcast Programs

• Karen O'Brien: How Quantum Social Theory Can Influence Our Climate Change Response
• Alexander Wendt: Exploring the Quantum Social Science

Recent Publications

Featured Events

• VTIPG Invites You to Our Spring Open House!
• 2023 Winter Summit of Dialogue on Race

Employment Opportunity

Welcome

Director's Corner

Soundings

Tidings

Five Pieces Worth Reading

VTIPG Communications Coordinator Billy Parvatam shares five articles each week that address timely and meaningful concerns that address the state of democracy and civil society in the Five Pieces Worth Reading series, including the following items during January.

January 5: These pieces focused on Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's efforts and deals to secure the Speakership and the long-term ramifications that continued GOP chaos could have on legislators' ability to address the nation's debt ceiling, factors likely to determine the course of U.S. democracy in 2023, a call on President Biden to do more to combat climate change, and the case for continued U.S. government support of Ukraine.

January 12: These articles described why many Republicans disapprove of their party's congressional leadership, how America's gun culture leads to deadly violence, how Florida Governor Ron DeSantis could shape the GOP's foreign policy orientation, how President Biden's possession of classified documents in his personal office differs from former President Trump's custody of documents at his home in Mar-a-Lago, and a piece that argues that Biden has not reversed all of the Trump administration's inhumane immigration policies. 

January 19: These commentaries focused on Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin's decision to end state support to bring a Ford battery plant to Pittsylvania County, how the Republican Party has become uninterested in following Constitutional norms, how China's population decline impacts its future economic growth, how today's social and political divisions are similar to those that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. faced during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, and how Operation Warp Speed's success in vaccinating Americans must be considered one of the great achievements in the country's history.

January 26: These essays focus on rural America as a base for the Republican Party, the fact that classified documents were found in former Vice President Mike Pence's home and how former President Donald Trump could exploit that discovery, passage of the Electoral Count Reform Act, Arizona Democratic Congressman Ruben Gallego's decision to challenge Senator Krysten Sinema from the left, and a report that Africa has become less safe and democratic during the past decade.

Community Change Collaborative

A Focus on the Community Change Collaborative

The Community Change Collaborative (CCC) is an interdisciplinary graduate student group hosted and overseen by the VT Institute for Policy and Governance (VTIPG). CCC explores the forces shaping community change, approaches to community engagement and how to build sustainable, cross-sectoral partnerships. The group's interests range from the local to the international scale and they apply a variety of analytical lenses to connect theory and practice for the benefit of our community partners, practitioners and scholars interested in community change. CCC programs include a Speaker series and Faculty Forums, film screenings, the graduate-student-run Community Change Journal and community-based research projects. More information is available at ccc.ipg.vt.edu.

Spring 2023 Meetings

CCC meets weekly during the Spring 2023 semester on Fridays from 3-4 p.m. Members typically discuss books, articles, and films focused on community and social change. Please contact Brad Stephens at bas615@vt.edu to join the CCC listserv to receive more information about meetings and events.

Doug Jackson Shares His Work with CCC

CCC has hosted speakers working in a variety of policy areas and contexts through the years. It is always interesting to see how those we feature are working to encourage people who are fostering change at different scales and utilizing a wide range of strategies and tools to do so. Doug Jackson, just up the road in Roanoke, Virginia, visited CCC to share how he is working to promote change in that community and across the region. Jackson, by virtue of having two distinct positions that are focused on community change, is currently working in multiple communities and contexts every day. He argued that he always seeks to employ or develop appropriate approaches for each engagement. During his visit to the Virginia Tech campus on November 14, 2022, Jackson participated in a podcast interview, a roundtable discussion, and offered a public talk.

To read more of this commentary by CCC member Brad Stephens on Jackson's visit, please visit: https://ccc.ipg.vt.edu/NewsandEvents/Events/doug-jackson-shares-recent-work--year-of-the-artist-and-other-pr.html.

Community Change Journal is Seeking Submissions

As a continuation of Community Change’s fourth issue, this open access, peer-reviewed graduate student journal seeks submissions that speak to the what, why, and how of transmission and transition in community change. Submissions may take the form of scholarly articles, book reviews, and multimedia from a variety of disciplines. 

The full call for submissions is available online.

The final submission deadline is February 14, 2023. For more information about submission requirements, please visit: 

https://www.communitychange.ipg.vt.edu/about/submissions/. 

Inquiries may be directed to community-change-journal-g@vt.edu.

New Podcast Series

VTIPG is excited to partner with VT Publishing and VT Libraries on a new podcast series called "Social Science for Public Good." The new programs will focus on connecting activists, NGO leaders, and government professionals to social science theories and research that will help them conceptualize social change with heightened sensitivity and thereby craft strategies that will encourage effective community action. The inaugural season of the podcast will unpack current theories of trust and power in the course of twelve episodes. Interspersing interviews with prominent theorists and accompanying material designed to provide context, these programs will seek to communicate not only the content of current theorizations of these core concepts, but also how they are relevant for those seeking to promote change. The first season of the podcast will be released beginning in June. The new series nicely complements the Institute's long-standing Trustees Without Borders podcast series, which has focused on the perspectives of professionals engaged in efforts to promote social and political change. This project, supported by a collaborative research grant from VT Libraries, is also a natural extension of the Institute's ongoing partnership with VT Publishing, which has already seen the publication of several books, including Maré from the Inside and Conversations in Community Change.

Please contact graduate assistant Brad Stephens for additional information.

Pondering Past Podcast Programs

Trustees Without Borders (TWB) is a podcast series produced by the Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance (IPG) and the Community Change Collaborative (CCC). The series has been hosted by IPG Senior Fellow, Andy Morikawa, for more than 10 years. TWB features leading practitioners, thinkers, and designers working to reframe and strengthen communities, doing so without borders or limits on their ideas and aspirations, without borders on what they think is possible, without borders concerning with whom they will work and without constraints on their dreams for a more just and inclusive community.

From this rich repository, we highlight two podcast episodes that are thematically related and present a particular concept related to community change praxis with complexity and depth. The following conversations with esteemed guests Karen O’Brien and Alexander Wendt focus on the potential for quantum social theory to help us reframe how we approach the greatest challenges of our time. The Institute would like to thank the Virginia Tech Department of Political Science and especially Dr. Laura Zanotti of that department for their assistance in bringing these guests to campus.

Karen O'Brien: How Quantum Social Theory Can Influence Our Climate Change Response

In this episode from Fall 2021, Dr. O'Brien spoke to the possibility of quantum social theory and what it means for avoiding hopelessness concerning the possibilities for social change. She explores what happens when we put human capacity at the forefront of transformative possibility. She challenges us to see new paths to individual agency and social change.

Listen here: https://anchor.fm/trustees-without-borders/episodes/Karen-OBrien-How-Quantum-Social-Theory-Can-Impact-Our-Climate-Change-Response-e1eqirc

Alexander Wendt: Exploring the Quantum Social Science

In this episode from Fall 2019, Dr. Wendt discussed the possibility of using quantum tools for refining empirical and theoretical social science, rethinking topics such as international relations and game theory, and enhancing our understanding of human agency, relational identity and entanglement. The interview compares quantum and classical systems regarding the conceptualization of consciousness and the mind-body relationship, material and quantum constructs, and how quantum models could help to overcome the divisions between the natural and social sciences.

Listen here: https://anchor.fm/trustees-without-borders/episodes/Alexander-Wendt-Exploring-the-Quantum-Social-Science-e1eqirp

Recent Publications

Morshedzadeh, E., Dunkenberger, M., Nagle, L., Ghasemi, S., York, L., & Horn, K. (2022). Tapping into community expertise: Stakeholder engagement in the design process. Policy Design and Practice, 5(4), 529–549. https://doi.org/10.1080/25741292.2022.2157130

Todd, M. F., Grimes, C., Moayerian, N., Poets, D., & Stephenson, M. (2022). Reflections on a Cross-Border Collaborative Research Effort During COVID-19. Community Change, 4(1), 3.

http://doi.org/10.21061/cc.v4i1.a.37

Featured Events

Research and Fiscal Manager. The Research and Fiscal Manager is a leadership position in Virginia Tech’s Institute for Policy and Governance (IPG). IPG is a dynamic research institute. We work to improve programs, policies and funding for vulnerable populations at the local, national and international levels.

The incumbent will provide fiscal, administrative and logistical support for research projects at the institute, as well as special events and initiatives. To learn more about the position, please visit:

https://careers.pageuppeople.com/968/cw/en-us/job/522891/research-and-fiscal-manager.

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