Six Cross-university “Global at Home” projects funded through the AGSC-led Atlanta Global Research and Education Collaborative (AGREC)

Posted January 28, 2021

The Atlanta Global Research and Education Collaborative (AGREC), launched in Fall 2020, aims to connect the region's international assets through an emphasis on supporting "global at home" projects that serve students, faculty, and community partners and define the metropolitan area as a hub for global education and research.

The Atlanta Global Studies Center (AGSC) — a partnership of Georgia Institute of Technology and Georgia State University — houses the collaborative, which includes Emory University’s Office of Global Strategy and Initiatives, Spelman College and Agnes Scott College.

Grant Program Funded Global Engagement Research and Education Projects

As part of its initial programs, AGREC offered grants to support collaborative, interdisciplinary, and cross-university research and education projects with a focus on global engagement. The 2020-2021 grant program, “Connecting Globally While Grounded at Home,” placed significant focus on programs’ potential to develop new and sustainable relationships among partners such as universities, businesses, non-governmental organizations, and community groups, as well as their impact on Atlanta communities.

Six projects funded under the current grant program will explore a wide range of global issues and also provide training to the Greater Atlanta region students:

• Savings Lives in the Refugee Community: A Cultural and Linguistic Adaptation of Stop the Bleed

• Water quality monitoring network for highly impacted urban headwaters in metro Atlanta

• Advancing a Community-Based Participatory Research Model for Metropolitan Regional Immigrant Integration and Receptivity through the One Region Initiative

• The Global Communities Internship Program

• Atlanta-area migrant communities and climate change: characterizing drivers of migration, exposure risks, and health vulnerabilities

• Growing Intercultural Competence for Peace and Mediation: Piloting an Atlanta-Based Global Community of Practice for Hyperlocal Case Studies and Education

Project teams consist of faculty from the five AGREC member institutions who are also joined by colleagues from Kennesaw State University, Atlanta Metropolitan State College, Morehouse College, and Georgia Piedmont Technical College. The project teams are also collaborating with a variety of organizations and community partners, including the Grady Emergency Medical Services, Somali American Community Center, South River Watershed Alliance, West Atlanta Watershed Alliance, Welcoming America, Clarkston Community Center Foundation Inc., Cosmo Health Center, Re'Generation Movement, and TRENDS Global.

Three projects are co-led by AGSC Affiliated Georgia Tech and Ivan Allen College faculty

Dr. Allen Hyde, Assistant Professor of History and Sociology, co-leads the project on Advancing a Community-Based Participatory Research Model for Metropolitan Regional Immigrant Integration and Receptivity through the One Region Initiative. Hyde said the project seeks to evaluate One Region Initiative by Welcoming America, which models regional policies for creating welcoming communities for immigrants and refugees, using community-based participatory research to address community identified gaps in this process. “This grant allows us to provide funding to partner with local community partners, municipal leaders, and Welcoming America to help identify successes and areas of improvement for other regions to replicate if they want to pursue similar policies and goals; publish academic publications; and complete and share reports/materials for the general public,” said Hyde.

Dr. Hyoun-A Joo, Assistant Professor of German, is the co-PI for the project on Growing Intercultural Competence for Peace and Mediation: Piloting an Atlanta-Based Global Community of Practice for Hyperlocal Case Studies and Education. Joo said the goal of their project is to contribute to communication and interactions that bring about peace and mutual understanding through intercultural and global competence. “To pursue this goal, we propose to leverage the case study method in the foreign language classroom to immerse students in decision dilemmas that they must solve through communication, thereby applying their intercultural knowledge. The AGREC grant was instrumental to bring together an interdisciplinary team to kick-start this project with a case study workshop planned for February 2021,” said Joo.

“Our project, the Global Communities Internship Program (GCIP), will bring together five students from five RCE partner universities and colleges (Atlanta Metropolitan State College, Morehouse, Georgia Tech, Agnes Scott, and Emory) to participate in an internship program pilot themed around global citizenship, cross-cultural learning, and community engagement,” said Dr. Ruth Yow, Service Learning and Partnerships Specialist at Georgia Tech’s Serve-Learn-Sustain (SLS). Yow said the students will each intern with a Clarkston-based refugee-facing organization--drawing on Emory's SHINE partnerships-- and will engage in a seminar program during the summer --offered by SLS--to deepen their learning and support their professional development.” Yow also acknowledged the critical role the AGREC funding and played in putting the project team together. “GCIP would not be possible without the rich network of the RCE Greater Atlanta, which brought Johannes Kleiner (Associate Director, Civic and Community Engagement, Emory) and me together via the RCE Community of Practice: University-Community Relationships and AGREC's funding and proposal support.  The AGREC award enables us to pay both partners and interns, and the AGREC team supporting cross-institutional collaboration brought us into conversation with Agnes Scott Professor of French, Philip Ojo.  Dr. Ojo's spring 2021 course, Journeys: Post Colonial Legacies, serves as a ‘part one’ for our program, allowing our community partners to get to know each other and the university partners through engagement with Dr. Ojo's course, which is focused on themes of global learning and intercultural communication,” Yow said.  

More information about currently funded projects and upcoming grant program is available on the AGREC website.

* AGREC received generous support for the collaborative from Georgia Tech’s Office of the Vice Provost for International Initiatives through the Steven A. Denning Award for Global Engagement