From the September 2021 Desktop News | The University of Alabama College of Arts and Sciences recently selected the inaugural class of Faculty and Staff Community Engagement Fellows. The program supports faculty and staff as they develop community-engaged research, creative activities, teaching and learning initiatives. Each fellow is selected based on the potential of their project’s positive impact on the community and society as a whole.
The 2021-2022 fellows bring together a diverse group of scholars from a variety of backgrounds and fields. Throughout the year they will participate in monthly special topics seminars, work on pilot projects, strengthen community partnerships, and create an environment where researchers and scholars can help each other grow.
Since 2008, Dr. Marcia Hay-McCutcheon has been part of UA’s communicative disorders faculty, where she focuses on improving access and affordability of hearing healthcare in rural Alabama. The Hear Here Alabama initiative, created in 2015, addresses inequities in hearing healthcare in Alabama with the help of the Hear Here bus, a mobile audiology clinic that travels across the state to underserved communities. received her B.A. (1986) and B.Ed. (1987) degrees from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, an M.A. in Audiology (1997) from the University of Tennessee and a Ph.D. (2004) at the University of Iowa.
Dr. Yinghui Liu is an Assistant Professor in the department of chemistry and biochemistry. She earned her chemistry Ph.D. from The University of Alabama in 2016. She teaches undergraduate organic chemistry laboratory and general chemistry courses, as well as serving as a lab coordinator of the organic chemistry labs at UA. Dr. Liu is a recipient of the 2019 Summer Teaching Grant from The College of Arts and Sciences. During her time as a Community Engagement Fellow, she will develop hands-on chemistry labs for the middle school science curriculum.
Dr. Di Luo is a historian of modern China and assistant professor in the department of history. She received her Ph.D. from The Ohio State University in 2015. Dr. Luo’s research interests focus on the agentive role of disadvantaged groups in society, such as illiterate persons, rural populace, and minorities, for a better understanding of empowerment and dominance, human conflict, and social inequality and inclusion. As a Community Engagement Fellow, Dr. Luo will work on a digital humanities project on the history of Asian community at UA and in Tuscaloosa. Collecting and presenting diverse stories and lived experiences, Dr. Luo says that this project will make a crucial contribution to enhancing inclusiveness on campus and in local community.
Dr. Nicholas Magliocca’s current research is in human-environment geography, with a particular focus on land-use change and social-ecological systems. His research program investigates the intersections of security, equity, and sustainability in diverse problem domains, including large-scale land acquisitions, food-energy-water systems, and illicit economies. His area of community engagement focus is on understanding barriers to and increasing irrigation adoption among farmers in Alabama. Dr. Magliocca received his B.S. in Ecology, Behavior, and Evolution from the University of California at San Diego; Master’s in Environmental Management from Duke University; and Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
To learn more about the program, visit the Community Engagement Academy website.