UA Crossroads Collaborative awarded Honorable Mention in 2014 Annual Community-Campus Partnerships for Health Promoting Health Equity and Social Justice Award
The Crossroads Collaborative at the University of Arizona is pleased to announce that it has been selected as Honorable Mention for the 2014 Annual Community-Campus Partnerships for Health Promoting Health Equity and Social Justice Award. The award recognizes organizations that have worked to “improve higher education, civic engagement, and the overall health of their communities.” Crossroads Collaborative Co-directors Adela C. Licona, Ph.D. (Department of English – Rhetoric, Composition and the Teaching of English) and Stephen T. Russell, Ph.D. (McClelland Institute) note that the award team gave high praise to the deeply collaborative nature of Crossroads projects both across academic departments within the University of Arizona and between the university and Tucson community organizations.
In 2010 Stephen T. Russell and Adela C. Licona, together with Sally Stevens, received a nationally-competitive Ford Foundation grant to undertake cross-disciplinary, community-engaged work around youth, sexuality, health, and rights (YSHR) that allowed them to co-establish the UA Crossroads Collaborative in Tucson, AZ as a think-and-do research tank. Affiliated faculty, graduate students and community organizations and youth work collaboratively to understand the full spectrum and myriad dimensions of youths’ evolving identities, and what these complex and shifting terrains mean for their health and well-being. Instead of bringing pre-determined research agendas to communities and community organizations, their work is developed in collaboration with those communities to address and inform topics relevant to them. The Collaborative’s work has resulted in qualitative, quantitative, and expressive data and products that amplify youth voice by powerfully combining stories and numbers. This approach simultaneously creates formal knowledges and fosters youth-driven praxis, culminating in educational and social-change oriented products that include – among others – academic and community-oriented publications, presentations and workshops; ongoing engagements with local policymakers and media; youth-driven videography, publications and direct advocacy. In these ways, they take seriously their role and responsibility as a “collaborative” to work in partnerships to advance research, graduate training, and public conversation—and, ultimately, social change in the area of youth, sexuality, health, and rights (YSHR).
Reviewers praised the group's inclusion of “a diverse group of highly relevant community partners who share common goals” and the “the very careful attention paid to the co-production of knowledge, mutual respect and creation knowledge production and capacity building functions.” Crossroads Collaborative's breadth and depth of activities and the interdisciplinary nature of their partnership created a strong impression among the reviewers. The fact that the partnerships stayed involved and active for years afterwards highlights another strength of the exemplary involvement of its members!
You can contact these Partnership Representatives:
Stephen T. Russell, Ph.D.
Co-Director, Crossroads Collaborative
The McClelland Institute
The University of Arizona
P.O. BOX 210078
Tucson AZ, 85721-0078
Adela C. Licona, Ph.D.
Co-Director, Crossroads Collaborative
Department of English
Rhetoric, Composition, and the Teaching of English, RCTE
The University of Arizona
P.O. BOX 210067
Tucson AZ, 85721-0067
Leah S. Stauber, Ph.D.
Editorial & Research Associate
Crossroads Collaborative: Youth, Sexuality, Health and Rights
The University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721
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