ANN ARBOR—The University of Michigan’s Edward Ginsberg Center for Community Service and Learning announced six programs which will receive funding from the Student and Faculty Initiatives Fund. Each program will receive approximately $2,000.

The Center created the Student and Faculty Initiative Fund after receiving donations from two individuals who requested that the funds go to aid community service and learning. Groups submitted proposals including objectives, activities, timelines and budgets.

“We were looking for projects that would have a real impact on student learning and on community improvement,” said Jeff Howard, assistant director at the Ginsberg Center. “These groups are making genuine contributions to improving the quality of life in the community as well as to learning on campus.”

Documentary Works is a student organization which conducts poetry workshops for young people in Chicago’s Robert Taylor housing project. Its members plan to create a video detailing growing up in public housing, to be viewed on the U-M campus.

Funding also went to School of Art and Design lecturer Janie Paul‘s “Art in Prison,” a course in the U-M School of Art and Design which gives students the opportunity to each art to prisoners, both for therapeutic and post-release preparatory reasons. Some of the prisoners’ art pieces were displayed in the annual Creative Arts in Prison at the Rackham Building in early February.

Members of the Student Artist Outreach Program will use the funding to bring art into the community through methods including musical performances in the University Hospital cancer ward and after-school art classes in local schools.

Funding was also awarded to ProCEED, a group from the U-M College of Engineering that is dedicated to incorporating community service into mechanical engineering course offerings. The funding will launch ProCEED II, which will introduce community service opportunities into other engineering departments.

The Public Health Student Association will use the funds on a trip to North Carolina to assist hurricane and flood relief and to document their work in a multi-media presentation that will be shown on campus.

Michael Spencer, assistant professor in the School of Social Work, received funding to help him and his students conduct community-based research on the mental health of inner city children in the Head Start program.

For more information, contact Howard at (734) 647-7402.

Edward Ginsberg Center for Community Service and Learningassistant directorSchool of Art and DesignProCEEDPublic Health Student AssociationMichael Spencer