This page includes a list of the 2022-2023 recipients of the Resilience Lab/CSF Resilience & Compassion Seed Grants, with project title, leads, and descriptions.
Projects awarded funding exemplified all three facets of a successful proposal:
- Clear and direct alignment with the UW Resilience Lab and CSF joint goals as outlined on our application page.
- Positive impact on the sustainability, compassion, and resiliency of the UW and Seattle communities.
- Coherent vision for implementation, with defined roles for project members, detailed budget plans for allocated funds, and support from faculty/staff (if student-led).
Need inspiration for your own project? Keep reading!
Addressing Career Anxiety for School of Urban Studies Students
Dr. Lisa Hoffman, Professor
Candy Acosta, Program Coordinator
School of Urban Studies, Tacoma
The School for Urban Studies has developed a 2-credit independent study for Urban Design majors that targets the increased anxiety of many exiting students, partnering with local design and architecture firms to provide mock interviews and detailed feedback sessions to help prepare students for the workforce. “Many of our students are first in their families to attend college,” write Hoffman and Acosta, “and while they come with many assets, some also have had limited past experience with resume development, professionalized cover letters, or assembling a professional portfolio.”
This project aims to not only bolster the confidence of graduating students through project-based learning, but to close the racialized gap for post-graduation success, providing opportunities for first generation students and students of color to become integrated in the design workforce before they graduate.
Critical Conversations Collective (CCC) Ecosystem
Kaleb Germinaro, Doctoral Student
College of Education, Seattle
The Critical Conversations Collective is an interdisciplinary group of Black and Brown doctoral candidates on campus, offering space for students of color to participate in peer-to-peer mentoring and community building. The CCC aims to support doctoral students finishing their dissertations through writing groups, speaker events, and community celebrations.
“We cultivated this space in response to not feeling like we had spaces on campus, within our departments and colleges, for the discussions we wanted to be having,” writes Germinaro, “specifically those that involved justice and intersectional scholarship.”
SPOTLIGHT: BIPOC STORY CIRCLESProject Lead: Ching-In Chen, Assistant Professor BIPOC Story Circles offers a way to share experiences and build community and solidarity in investigating the complex individual and community relationships between breath, health, belonging and disaster in response to ecological change. Story circles are a method used in community-based theater to host challenging conversations within communities which result in social change through the acts of witnessing and imagining alternative futures.
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Embodying Abolition
Dr. Tahtzee Nico, Director
Val Schweigert, Associate Director
Q Center, Seattle
This project, led by the Q Center, aims to create a learning experience for students to deconstruct the systems of knowledge that support carceral structures, and to facilitate discussion about the role of intersectional identities in this work. In the process, sessions will explore antidotes to incarceration, including mutual aid, community care, and self-concept/esteem. “We hope to create an imaginative and planning space in hopes of manifesting new futures”, write Nico and Schweigert.
In addition to facilitated discussions, the Embodying Abolition project will include workshops for student projects, community volunteering opportunities, and a nature-centered retreat for participants.
Undergraduate Academic Affairs (UAA) Race-Based Staff Caucusing
Kathryn Grubbs, Director of EEP and UW Academy
Robinson Center for Young Scholars, Seattle
AJ Burgin, Assistant Director of Learning Resources
Student Athlete Academic Services, Seattle
As a predominately white institution, the University of Washington has an ongoing need to forefront anti-racism in the University’s programs and systems. In response, the staff in the Undergraduate Academic Affairs department facilitated race-based discussions, both to provide BIPOC staff an opportunity for healing and to create a space for white staff to share struggles and challenge each other in unlearning white supremacy culture.
“While the direct experience of caucusing is for staff,” write Burgin and Grubbs, “we see it benefitting our work with students and the larger community at UW as we take our individual learning and reflection into our direct engagement with others and how we guide our programs and policies.”
Advancing Equity through Embodied Pedagogies
Tikka Sears, Director of Theatre for Change
Penelope Moon, Director
Center for Teaching and Learning, Seattle
This project marks a starting point for the Institute of Embodied Pedagogies, a tri-campus cohort of faculty, staff, and graduate students that explores a diverse range of techniques for conflict resolution, community building, critical reflection, resilience, belonging, empowerment, and institutional change. The program emphasizes didactic skills that utilize the movement of bodies to facilitate learning, which increases student retention and instructor self-efficacy.
“Educators have few opportunities to collectively generate strategies with peers to create more inclusive and just academic environments,” write Sears and Moon, “and they rarely get to practice what they do or say in difficult situations involving oppression and privilege.” The Institute, still in its beginning days, aims to remedy this gap in pedagogy.
SPOTLIGHT: WHIPPING UP RESILIENCE IN THE KITCHENProject Lead: Anne-Marie Gloster, PhD Candidate This project offers a platform for community building and connectedness while promoting life-skills that contribute to sustainable health throughout the lifespan. Whipping Up Resilience is a culinary nutrition science seminar series based on student peer teaching that trains student culinary instructors on how to teach basic kitchen skills, food safety, nutrition, and food science at a low cost.
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Future Teachers of Color Organization
Andrea Carreno Cortez, Doctoral Student
Jazmen Moore, Doctoral Student
College of Education, Seattle
Research has long shown that teachers of color often face institutional barriers to well-being and community during their teaching careers and that teachers of color are more likely than their white counterparts to leave the teaching field at higher rates due to burnout. This project aims to organize undergraduate students of color and prepare them for entering white-dominated institutions, which have historically been unsupportive of culturally-sustaining and transformative frameworks.
Through peer mentorship and undergraduate-targeted programming, the Future Teachers of Color (FTOC) Organization seeks to “build a community and network of racial/social justice-oriented peers, to practice navigating deficit language and ideas about communities of color.”
College-High School Resilience, Outreach, & Wellbeing (CROW): Connecting Bothell and Bellevue
Dr. Kosuke Niitsu, Assistant Professor
Christina Lai, Undergraduate Student
School of Nursing & Health Studies, Bothell
This six-week pilot project brings together college student mentors and high school mentees both online and in-person, discussing techniques for resilience and well-being. Creating a conduit for high school students preparing to enter college, UW students will be trained as effective mentors then matched with their mentees, working through a resilience-based curriculum so that all participants are able to navigate and manage stress.
“If students are struggling with mental health, they cannot learn well in school,” writes Niitsu and Lai. This program connects the experience of trained undergraduate mentors to the needs of high-school students.
SPOTLIGHT: BBI SPACES MAPProject Lead: Kaleb Germinaro, Doctoral Student Aimed at understanding how community learning spaces in Seattle foster belonging among BIPOC individuals, bbispaces.com is a virtual navigation tool, building an encyclopedia of locations that strengthen support networks for community of colors in Seattle. This project engages in narrative methodologies, highlighting the strengths of these community spaces and telling their stories.
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