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UGA Graduate Students at the Fanning Institute Help Build a Better Georgia
Writer: Kat Cason, 706-542-7039, kcason@uga.edu
Contact: Joe Whorton, 706-542-1108, jwhorton@fanning.uga.edu
Courtney Tobin, 706-542-1108, ctobin@fanning.uga.edu
November 1, 2011
Most graduate assistantships involve helping with research projects or teaching classes. At the Fanning Institute—a public service and outreach unit—graduate students help find solutions to community problems in a multidisciplinary environment as part of the Fanning Fellows program.
The Fellows program began three years ago when several graduate students from public administration and policy were included in Fanning projects. This year there are 17 Fellows—doctoral, masters and law students—from a range of disciplines: art, foods and nutrition, law, public health, marketing, exercise physiology, public administration and policy, social work, and environment and design. Solving community problems requires a team of people with different backgrounds and skills and the Fellows reflect the kinds of disciplines needed to address the issues.
Most Fellows work on at least two core projects under the direction of a faculty mentor.
Jennie Welch, a doctoral student in public administration, is part of a $75-million, five-year Wallace Foundation initiative to develop a large corps of effective principals in six urban districts across the nation. Her core project is to create the gold standard leadership program for aspiring school leaders in Gwinnett County public schools. The Georgia Leadership Institute for School Improvement (GLISI)—a division of the Fanning Institute that offers leadership training and capacity building for K-12 school systems throughout Georgia—is a partner with the county and GLISI faculty are mentoring Welch as she works with them as part of the UGA team.
“I like doing educational research,” the Roanoke, Va.-native said. “As a masters student at the University of Delaware, I actually worked for an organization that mirrors GLISI. It’s providential how aligned the work I was doing is to what I’m doing at Fanning now.”
Welch also will be developing a publication to inform aspiring school leaders about the best leadership programs statewide and she’ll be studying the impact of GLISI’s leadership program on student achievement in Georgia.
Whitney Bignell, a doctoral student in foods and nutrition, is helping Columbus, Ga., address the childhood obesity issue. As an undergraduate, the former Augusta native earned a bachelor’s degree in French at UGA. While working in the private sector for about a decade, Bignell developed interests in counseling and nutrition, and wanted a job where she helped people. She went back to school for a second bachelor’s degree in dietetics and eventually would like to train undergraduates in that field.
“I enjoy program planning, especially process evaluation,” Bignell said. “Programs can be well planned but if they’re not delivered properly, you don’t get the outcomes you want.”
For her core project, she is helping with a needs assessment for Live Healthy Columbus, which is part of the Live Healthy Georgia and Live Healthy America programs. The project involves determining what resources are already available to combat childhood obesity. She’ll look at who uses the programs, who they are intended for, and what barriers may prevent their use.
“[This project] lets me work with clients, which I didn’t get to do before,” Bignell said. “And I’m learning skills for facilitating public discussions.”
Allie Chambers’ core project is running a non-profit organization that is helping to coordinate community healthcare resources for the under- and un-insured in Athens-Clarke County. Also a doctoral student in public administration, Chambers serves as the executive director of the Athens Health Network.
She grew up on a dairy farm outside of Gray, Ga., and decided early on that UGA was the only school for her. She earned undergraduate degrees and a master’s degree in public health all at UGA. As a freshman, Chambers got involved in logistics for the Red Coat Marching band and traveled to China with them. And she’s been handling their logistics ever since.
“Working for the Red Coats is what got me interested in systems management,” Chambers said. “You plan and plan and things never turn out exactly like you planned. I like trying to figure out what happened in the process and how to fix it.”
The newly formed Athens Health Network is an umbrella organization that aims to reduce healthcare disparities by helping to coordinate services of existing providers, and identifying service gaps and ways to fill those gaps. So far Chambers, with the assistance of Fanning Fellow and M.P.H. student Jaynae’ Kearney, is building the organization’s infrastructure: by-laws and governance structure to include direct service providers and organizations that support the idea of healthcare for under- and uninsured.
“We are resource rich and monetarily poor so we’re looking for low-cost solutions with what we already have,” Chambers said. “Previously, local healthcare providers competed for resources, like volunteers and donations. Now we’ll see what we can do when we compete together.”
Other projects that the Fanning Fellows are working on include figuring out the best ways to use public input to solve environmental issues, developing tools to determine whether juvenile cases can be mediated or tried in juvenile courts, and connecting foster families using technology. Not only are these graduate students gaining experience with how to solve problems in education, healthcare, and more, but Georgia communities also benefit from their work, which is helping to resolve important local issues.
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