President's Challenge - Past Winners

• Project description: A cross-campus team based in the humanities will create a sustainable, yearlong, asset-based program to engage students to facilitate storying in partnership with community groups affected by poverty across Milwaukee. In a city of festivals, we do not celebrate or honor the stories of the larger community in a sustainable way that builds the skills of both students and community members. Stories that emerge from Milwaukee neighborhoods that experience poverty tend to focus on crime, not resilience or tales of everyday life. The Story Fellow program will build reciprocal partnerships with organizations engaging people affected by poverty across Milwaukee to mentor students as story facilitators to expand the range of stories the public hears about their lives.
• Team members:
  • From Marquette: Dr. Sarah Wadsworth, professor of English and director of Marquette University Press, and Dr. Andrew Kim, associate professor of theology and director of the Center for the Advancement of the Humanities
  • From UWM: Dr. Anne Basting, professor of English and the director of the Center for 21st Century Studies, and Dr. Ben Trager, lecturer in educational policy and community studies and interim director of the Center for Community-Based Learning, Leadership, and Research
  • Community Organizations: The Gathering, Milwaukee Turners, Story MKE, East Side Senior Services, Milwaukee Academy of Sciences, Islands of Brilliance, Beckum Little League/Park, Milwaukee Parks Foundation, Jewish Family Services

• Project description: Milwaukee County’s 2021 Community Health Needs Assessment reported the top five health issues are mental health, violence, drug use/overdose, alcohol and health care access. More specifically, when asked the top three issues in their community, 51% of respondents identified mental health. The CHNA also identified the top community needs as access to affordable health care and access to mental health services. This pilot project is addressing mental health and access to healthcare for the most socially vulnerable populations in Milwaukee within the larger context of the social determinants of health and the socioecological mental health and well-being model. This project will have three focus areas including: coordinated community engagement, telehealth and working with the young adult population.
• Team members:
  • From Marquette: Dr. Lee Za Ong, assistant professor of counselor education and counseling psychology; Dr. Stacee Lerret, clinical professor in the College of Nursing; and Dr. Julie Bonner, staff physician in the Marquette University Medical Clinic
  • From UWM: Dr. Hobart Davies, chair and professor of psychology.
  • Community Organizations: Milwaukee Health Department, City on a Hill, and Wisconsin Association of Free and Charitable Clinics.

• Project description: HATCH is a Milwaukee-based initiative that integrates three models of social support or mental health care into W2 (Wisconsin Works) and prison reentry services. These three distinct yet self-reinforcing intervention models include Community Building Workshops; Peer Led Circles of Support; and Trauma Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment. Together they supplement services for economically vulnerable adults with the intention of helping to reduce social isolation and strengthen social connection, facilitate trauma healing and improve mental health, and promote life satisfaction and support economic self-sufficiency. Implementing trauma-informed and culturally responsive services through HATCH is meant to enhance Milwaukee-area W2 programs and help raise some area families out of poverty and into economic self-sufficiency by facilitating successful community integration among area residents at-risk for long-term unemployment by marring basic need services (employment, housing) with services that address higher order needs (social connection, mental health services).
• Team members:
  • From Marquette: Dr. Ed de St. Aubin, associate professor of psychology
  • From UWM: Dr. Dimitri Topitzes, associate professor in the Helen Bader School of Social Welfare and clinical director of the Institute for Child and Family Well-Being, and Najee Ahmad, graduate student in the Helen Bader School of Social Welfare.
  • Community Organizations: Community Advocates Public Policy Institute, Wisconsin Community Services, America Works, Progressive Community Health Centers, Mann Behavioral Services.

Principal investigator: Dr. Noelle Brigden, associate professor of political science.

Restorative Justice in Movement is a collaboration with the Milwaukee Turners at Turner Hall to promote embodied empowerment for women from communities disproportionately impacted by incarceration. The trauma of mass incarceration and forced absence is a gendered violence, experienced differently by men and women, but widely shared in the Milwaukee Black community. Thus, the program’s first cohort of participants will be an intergenerational group of women who identify as friends and family members of incarcerated people. They will participate in movement workshops focused on several different athletic modalities: powerlifting, yoga, self-defense and rock climbing. Participants will build their cohort community through support of their shared athletic pursuits. They will also have the opportunity to engage researchers in an oral history project and be invited to co-create the research and programming for future iterations of the program.

Additional Marquette faculty team members: Dr. Alison Efford, associate professor of history; Dr. Kristof Kipp, associate professor of exercise science; Dr. Heather Hlavka, associate professor of social and cultural sciences; Dr. Abir Bekhet, associate professor of nursing; Dr. Jennifer Ohlendorf, assistant professor of nursing; and Dr. Julia Paulk, associate professor of languages, literatures and cultures.

Principal investigator: Dr. Nilanjan Lodh, assistant professor of medical laboratory science

This project will determine how telehealth interventions—the shift of in-person monitoring to remote monitoring due to the pandemic—has affected the health disparities among the African American population in Milwaukee, as well as support existing community-led intervention efforts related to telehealth and remote health monitoring for African American communities. The overall project goals are to evaluate new telehealth interventions in African American community in Milwaukee related to remote monitoring of chronic health conditions, such as diabetes and asthma, which have rapidly emerged as major factors of comorbidity and premature mortality in African American population. It will also build and/or strengthen relationships with community partners in health care and other agencies working to reduce disparities.

Additional Marquette faculty team members: Dr. Aleksandra Snowden, assistant professor of social and cultural sciences, and Dr. Praveen Madiraju, associate professor of computer science.

The 2020 President's Challenge, developed in partnership with American Family Insurance and Johnson Controls, provided funding for innovative, interdisciplinary, collaborative work that addresses needs in Milwaukee’s community that have been created or magnified by the COVID-19 pandemic and represent critical areas in the community’s recovery efforts.

The program supported proposals up to $50K for one year and was selected from the following community-informed focus areas:

Mental health and wellness

• There is a need to better understand COVID-19’s current and future effects on mental health and wellness as Milwaukee endures and ultimately recovers from the pandemic.
• Includes, but not limited to: impact on psychological trauma, economic trauma, mental health, behavioral sciences, food insecurities, models for recovery, impacts on healthcare workers and their families

Economic revitalization

• According to a recent study, Milwaukee is estimating the economic fallout from the pandemic will cost the city $6.7 million in revenue in March and April alone. How can and does Milwaukee revitalize its economy and communities?
• Includes, but not limited to: innovations, models for recovery, anticipated changes, public policy, monetary policy, fiscal policy, government operations, public services, small business support

Health services

• This pandemic has highlighted strengths and opportunities within Milwaukee’s healthcare services.
• Includes, but not limited to: healthcare analytics, healthcare delivery, population health, health communications, disproportionate impacts on minoritized-groups, pandemic preparation

Winners:

1. Dr. Walter Bialkowski, “Empowering Those Who Seek to End Hunger through Collaboration and Innovation” 
   Solutions to optimize public food service distribution to meet the growing need brought upon by sudden unemployment.
2. Dr. Andrea Schneider, “When Safer-at-Home is Not Actually Safe: Supporting Intimate Partner Violence Survivors during Quarantine” 
   A study on the impact of safer-at-home orders has on intimate partner violence
3. Mr. Patrick Kennelly, “Promoting Resiliency & Improved Coping in Education (PRICE)”
   An online toolkit resource for teachers to assist students from disproportionately affected populations with the effects of COVID-19 and systemic racism

Learn more about the 2020 winners. 

In 2018, President Mike Lovell, with the Johnson Controls Foundation, "committed to awarding a $250,000, two-year grant to one interdisciplinary, collaborative proposal that seeks to change the trajectory of lives in the greater Marquette community by addressing one or more of the critical areas in which neighborhood inequities exist: health, education, safety, housing, transportation and economic prosperity." Read more about the first President's Challenge. 

Winner:

Dr. Amy Van Hecke, "Next Step Clinic"
The Next Step Clinic is community clinic meant to address the mental health and developmental needs of underserved children and families in Milwaukee. Read more.