TABLE OF CONTENTS

Tidings from the Director

"Remarks on the Opening of the Maré from the Inside Exhibit at the University of Virginia"

Accomplishments

Max Stephenson

Lara Nagle

Neda Moayerian

Mary Beth Dunkenberger

Sophie Wenzel

Laura Nelson

Maggie Cowell

Sarah Lyon-Hill

Kim Niewolny

Laura Zanotti

Ben Grove

Joong Won Kim

Anna Erwin

Leslie Ann Robertson-Foncette

Rabita Banee

Project Updates

• New River Valley Community Services and Mount Rogers Community Services' Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration CCHBC Expansion Grant Updates
• Critz Community Visioning
• REVIVE! Training Events
• The Frontera Project at 2022 WOW Festival

Conferences & Events

• IPG Open House
• CCC Trustees without Borders Podcast with Josephus Thompson III and Michael Carter, Jr.
• Max Stephenson
• C. Meranda Flachs-Surmanek

Commentaries, Essays & Publications

• Soundings
• Books
• Articles

Faculty Spotlight

Professor Kim Horn, Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC

Student Spotlight

Regan Price, Public Administration Intern, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs

Remarks on the Opening of the Maré from the Inside Exhibit at the University of Virginia

BY MAX O. STEPHENSON, JR.

Director, Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

PROJECT UPDATES

IPG's Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic (CCBHC) Evaluation Team, led by IPG's Associate Director, Mary Beth Dunkenberger and IPG Research Associate, Liz Allen, continues to provide program evaluation and data management support to New River Valley Community Services (NRVCS) and Mount Rogers Community Services (MRCS) for their on-going CCBHC national grants. Each agency received 2-year Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration CCHBC Expansion Grants in May 2020, with grants running through April 2022. Both sites applied for and received 6 month, no-cost extensions to support further CCHBC related work through October, 2022. IPG's team will continue to provide services through the extension period.

Spring team members include Laura York, manager, who recently completed her Master's degree in Public Health (MPH) and joined IPG as a research associate; and additional data team members comprised of IPG GRAs Rabita Banee (PhD student, Public Administration and Public Affairs) and Dr. Leslie Ann Robertson-Foncette (Sociology).

Critz Community Visioning

Since Fall 2021, an IPG/CCC team led by Lara Nagle, Max Stephenson and Andy Morikawa has partnered with Reynolds Homestead, the VT Community Design Assistance Center (CDAC), as well as board members from the nonprofit organization Envision Critz to plan and implement a community engagement process to solicit community member and local student ideas for the design of a community center for Critz, VA in Patrick County. CCC members Kim Felix, C. Meranda Flachs-Surmanek, and Joong Won Kim have supported the process. C. and Joong Won also serve as graduate research assistants at the Institute.

The team hosted four community meetings, an online survey, and a school-based brainstorm activity to collect ideas for the development of preliminary design concepts, which were presented in March. The final design presentation will be held in early May. Following design completion, the team will continue to work together to identify and apply for funding to support restoration of the proposed site. Envision Critz will lead the effort and rally local community member engagement moving forward. The process has been supported to date by the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development and the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC). More information is available here.

REVIVE! Training Events

The Connection to Care (C2C) project is currently working with community partners to schedule REVIVE! trainings and outreach events in the cities of Roanoke and Salem, and the Counties of Roanoke, Craig, Franklin and Botetourt. The goal of these events is to raise awareness regarding the signs of drug overdose and to enable appropriate responses from friends, family and lay persons. In particular, the training involves learning how to recognize and respond to opioid overdose and includes provision of Narcan, a medication that can reverse the effects of such occurrences.  

The first event will be held at the Roanoke City Market Square on May 6 from 11 a.m. – 3 p.m., with other programs occurring throughout the spring, summer, and fall of 2022.

The Frontera Project at 2022 WOW Festival

With the support of research funding through the CCC and VTIPG, ASPECT PhD student Molly Todd will attend the 2022 Without Walls Festival (WOW) hosted by the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego. At the WOW festival, Molly will observe performances by artists working on questions of borders and boundaries, including The Frontera Project, a bilingual theater experience that is one focus of her dissertation. The La Frontera group shares an array of stories related to daily life on the US/Mexico border, using short skits, song, improvised movement, music, and participatory dialogue.

Beyond the stage, Molly will attend and conduct participant-observation at the group’s theater workshops, at which they will work with students and community members to build creative and critical thinking skills related to the different kinds of borders that shape people’s lives.

CONFERENCES & EVENTS

IPG Celebrates New Updates to Office

IPG hosted an open house on March 23, 2022 to celebrate its newly renovated offices at 201 West Roanoke Street! Building improvements include new flooring, paint, and stairs. Please come visit us soon in our refurbished space and be sure to check out the artwork of past and current students, including our newest additions of GRA Dr. Leslie-Ann Robertson Foncette’s beautiful photographs! Please visit our website to see additional photos from the event.

CCC Trustees Without Borders Podcast with Josephus Thompson III and Michael Carter, Jr.

In this February 3 episode of Trustees without Borders, Josephus Thompson III, poet and creator of The Poetry Cafe, and Michael Carter Jr., 11th generation farmer and owner of Carter Farms in Orange, Virginia, discuss the ways that creativity, the rhythm of poetry, and nature help inspire their work with the community and catalyze change. CCC interviewers included graduate students C. Meranda Flachs-Surmanek, Urban and Regional Planning/Theater, and Justice Madden, Agricultural, Leadership and Community Education, with host Andy Morikawa, Senior Fellow at IPG.

You can listen to the conversation here.

Dr. Max Stephenson served as a guest lecturer in Dr. Jerald Walz's, Agricultural, Leadership, and Community Education Essential Skills of Nonprofit Leaders class on January 26. His lecture focused on key capabilities necessary for nonprofit leadership.

In addition, Dr. Stephenson spoke in the Lifelong Learning Institute at Virginia Tech's 2022 Great Decisions Speaker Series on March 9. His presentation addressed the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Myanmar and the role of The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in efforts to ameliorate it.

Dr. Stephenson also spoke at the ASPECT book presentations event on March 17, which featured the book Maré from the Inside, which he edited alongside Drs. Desirée Poets, Department of Political Science, and Nicholas Barnes, University of St. Andrews. You may find the book here. Dr. Poets and ASPECT PhD student Andreza Jorge, a native of Maré and collaborator in the book project, also spoke at the event.

The three also spoke at the launch of the Maré from the Inside exhibit roundtable at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville on March 25. Dr. Stephenson's presentation was entitled "The Significance of Informal Urban Practices: Duality between oppression (military on the streets) and community's own generative capacity (agency, social resilience capacity)." Dr. Poets presented "How does the exhibit articulate questions of informality? Beyond the reductionist view of informality." Ms. Jorge presented "Informality as technologies of survival, ontological, and epistemological points of reference." Activist and Maré resident Henrique Gomes discussed how and why he worked to develop the exhibit.

Dr. Stephenson will be presenting at two upcoming conferences: the European Union Studies Association Conference in May (with Dr. Neda Moayerian) in Miami and as a distinguished faculty member at the International Society for Third-Sector Research Conference in July in Montreal.

C. Meranda Flachs-Surmanek, graduate research assistant at IPG, adjunct instructor for the Center for Communicating Science, and MFA/Masters Candidate in the Theatre: Directing & Public Dialogue and Urban and Regional Planning programs has been invited to co-present a workshop at the Pedagogy & Theatre of the Oppressed (PTO) Conference at Loyola University in Chicago in May. PTO is an international organization that supports people whose work challenges oppressive systems by promoting critical thinking and social justice through liberatory theatre and popular education. C. has explored the use of Theatre of the Oppressed praxis for IPG/CCC community engagement projects in Patrick County.

C. will design and facilitate the conference workshop with their collaborator Laura Epperson, a "Post-MFA" Fellow at VT, alongside three undergraduate students from their Fall 2021 course Introduction to Applied Collaborative Techniques. The students are pursuing majors in education, nursing, and biomedical sciences. The class inspired their interest in employing arts-based techniques in their respective fields. The workshop is entitled "Performance and Play: Fostering Student-Centered University Learning Cultures." It will examine how centering play, reflection, and relationships can support students in building their capacities for collaboration, creativity, and communication. Likewise, the team will explore how classrooms grounded in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paola Freire's theory of learning, can help challenge the innate hierarchy present in university learning environments.

C. is also an invited panelist and will be co-facilitating a workshop, "Collaborative Planning, Civic Practice, and Social [In]Justice: Engaging for Progressive Change through Collective Creativity," at the 2022 Northeast & Mid-Atlantic Creative Placemaking Leadership Summit with their longtime collaborator Carly McCollow. The session will be submitted for American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) Certification Maintenance (CM) credits.

COMMENTARIES, ESSAYS & PUBLICATIONS

Dr. Kimberly Horn, EdD, is a Professor and Scientist at the Virginia Tech Carilion Fralin Biomedical Research Institute. Arriving in 2018 from George Washington University where she was the research dean in the School of Public Health, Dr. Horn is a nationally recognized intellectual leader, scholar, and innovator. Almost two decades of continuous federal, state, and private agency research funding has afforded her opportunities to develop internationally recognized programs of inquiry in substance use disorder prevention and intervention.

A significant part of Dr. Horn’s portfolio is the Not On Tobacco (N-O-T) teen smoking cessation program, which she co-developed during her time at West Virginia University, where she served as a Professor of Community Medicine and Associate Director of the Mary Babb Randolph Cancer Center. N-O-T was adopted by the American Lung Association and has now been implemented across the US, and globally, for more than two decades. As a result, the program has helped hundreds of thousands of youth stop using tobacco. N-O-T is cited as the most widely used teen tobacco use cessation program in the U.S., and has received several national designations, including the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration Evidence-Based Model Program, a National Cancer Institute Research Tested Intervention Program, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Adoptable Program, and an Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Model Program.

Recently, Dr. Horn and colleagues developed two new N-O-T components. Prior to COVID-19, the demand for adolescent tobacco intervention was higher than it had been for many years. Since the advent of the pandemic, the demand is even higher, yet pathways to deliver services in-person are more complicated than ever. Responding to public interest in virtual access during the health emergency, Dr. Horn and her colleagues adapted N-O-T for virtual delivery by developing a new self-paced web-based application, called NOTforme. As Dr. Horn as noted, “while in-person interventions such as N-O-T remain important options, virtual and remote options are the future. We learned through COVID-19 that we must be ready to provide alternative delivery modes that not only mitigate access challenges, but also may be preferred by some program facilitators and youth.”

Since arriving at VT, Dr. Horn has also returned to some of her early work in substance abuse prevention, reinventing programs and spearheading collective innovations to address the opioid crisis locally, statewide, and across Central Appalachia. In her current role as the founding director of the new Opioid Research Consortium of Central Appalachia (ORCCA), Dr. Horn works with numerous academic, healthcare, and community stakeholders to facilitate needs-based research projects. A good example of such an initiative is Horn’s collaboration with Mary Beth Dunkenberger, Associate Director of the Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance. Horn and Dunkenberger worked with members of the Roanoke Valley Collective Response to the Opioid and Addiction Crisis (RVCR) (co-founded by Horn in 2018) to develop the innovative Connection to Care (C2C) project. The C2C project is a novel multi-stakeholder intervention that applies real-time referral at various points-of-care to persons experiencing or at-risk of overdose or other substance use health-related consequences. The referrals, along with backpacks with potentially life-saving items, including Narcan, are intended to connect individuals to appropriate harm reduction, treatment, and recovery programs. The program includes on-going evaluation of its short and long-term outcomes. As Dr. Horn as observed, “We have favorable preliminary results indicating this intervention is preventing high risk individuals from falling through the cracks following overdose. One thing is certain, however, without community engagement, this project would not be possible.” Horn credits much of her research success to community engagement, “Community-engaged research is our best bet to building trust among and hearing the voices of marginalized underrepresent groups and communities so that as researchers we design the most effective interventions. If our interventions are not relevant, translatable, and sustainable, we have failed."

For anyone interested in learning more about community engaged research, Dr. Horn and colleagues recently developed a new certificate-earning, open-access training program, which can be accessed through ORCCA’s website.

Regan Price is currently a graduate student in the Master of Public Administration program at Virginia Tech. She graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2020 with a BA in Philosophy and a concentration in Ethics and Public Policy. For the past two years, she has served as a graduate assistant in the Office of Government and Community Relations with the Office of the President at Virginia Tech. In this role, she works alongside Virginia Tech staff members to track public policy and budget initiatives of the Virginia General Assembly and the U.S. Congress that are significant to the university. The purpose of these efforts is to ensure Virginia Tech’s research, service, and community priorities are reflected in state and federal budgets and to strengthen relationships with elected officials, other government and nonprofit leaders, and private sector actors to achieve the university’s goals.

Her previous work and academic experience have focused on the design, implementation, and evaluation of public policy that furthers social development, with an emphasis on addressing equity in program designs. She is interested in data-driven policy and program decision-making that is also grounded in sound normative approaches. She is particularly passionate about integrating gender equality into public policy and budgetary decision-making, as well as serving people with disabilities.

Ms. Price began working as a Public Administration Intern in March 2022 at the United Nations (UN) Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Division for Public Institutions, where she assists senior staff members as they develop research materials and carry out institutional and governance capacity-building activities so countries can achieve the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. The internship is funded by the Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance (IPG) and Ms. Price will be working with Institute Faculty and Staff to develop a white paper on good global practices in gender-informed public service, based on her experience at the UN.

Regan is married to a master’s student in environmental science at Virginia Tech, has two dogs, and is a vegetarian and avid animal lover. 

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