We recently kicked off the first meeting of our inaugural cohort of Public Scholars for the Future—a new program for graduate students who are integrating community engagement into their doctoral research. I am so inspired by their personal commitment to practicing public scholarship.

This group of highly motivated individuals have a keen awareness, understanding and respect for issues around equity, racial justice and mutually beneficial community engagement. They are serious about building trust and infusing reciprocity into their research, and their research is intertwined into who they are and the types of long-term relationships they seek with community partners. 

The Public Scholars for the Future program is supporting them in these efforts. They are learning the skills needed to execute this work at a high level as they progress through their academic careers. They know that when community knowledge is integrated with disciplinary knowledge, it not only improves research outcomes in significant ways, but their research will also achieve greater impact. Putting this into practice, Alice Dien, one of the students in the cohort, recently won top prize in the UC Davis Grad Slam competition and took home the Public Scholarship and Engagement Award for a convincing presentation of her research that focuses on a new, sustainable way to dry food through desiccants and fans, rather than burning natural gas to make heat.

There is tremendous value in all of this, but the program is doing even more.

Public Scholars for the Future is creating spaces where these individuals find their community. As doctoral students, they are often isolated in their own disciplines. Public Scholars for the Future provides an opportunity for these students to find others that share common values, drive and vision that centers community engagement in their work. They now have a peer-support network who will not only provide encouragement, but also a community to learn with one another in ways that deepen their public scholarship practice.

They all come from different fields–engineering, environmental science, health, humanities, social science—but share common goals and ambitions: to promote ethical collaboration; to do research with communities, not for communities; and to ensure knowledge is relevant beyond the academy.

In community,

Michael Rios
Vice Provost, Public Scholarship and Engagement