CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Outstanding individual and group outreach efforts were recently recognized with the 2023 Campus Awards for Excellence in Public Engagement. The awards honor faculty and staff members, students, and community members who engage the public to address critical societal issues.
The recipients, as characterized by their nominators, are Tracy Dace, Kevin Tan, Sara Benson, and the Cline Center for Advanced Social Research.
Dace, the founder and chief executive officer of the Driven to Reach Excellence and Academic Achievement for Males Opportunity Center in Champaign and executive director of the Ujima Freedom School at Illinois, is the recipient of the Community Award for Excellence in Public Engagement.
DREAAM is an early education intervention that promotes long-term educational pipelines through social emotional learning and STEM education opportunities available to community youth. The program partnered with departments across the University of Illinois, including the College of Education, to create and implement the Ujima Freedom School at Illinois in conjunction with Champaign Unit 4 School District and the Office of Public Engagement, Office of the Chancellor.
Dace mentored and supervised students in the School of Social Work and worked closely with engineering undergraduate and graduate students who participate in the Worldwide Youth in Science and Engineering outreach and public engagement program through the Grainger College of Engineering.
Dace also led multiple focus groups that brought together public engagement specialists from across the university and the community to discuss ways to encourage more students from various racial and ethnic backgrounds to pursue STEM careers. In 2021-2022, Dace was a lead partner in the development of the Partnerships in Equity, Access, and Representation in STEM initiative funded by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Call to Action to Address Racism and Social Injustice grant.
Tan, a professor of social work, is the recipient of the Distinguished Award for Excellence in Public Engagement.
Tan’s work emphasizes that issues of anti-racism, diversity, equity and inclusion must be at the forefront of all public engagement activities. He embraces reciprocal and mutually beneficial partnerships between the university and community while simultaneously preparing students to become socially engaged citizens. As an immigrant to the U.S. from Singapore, he observed the emotional struggles of racial trauma and stress that students experienced daily in the school systems.
His extensive research collaborations with a Champaign Unit 4 high school have included regular meetings with teachers, administrators and students, to forge an understanding of different perspectives. Following the killing of George Floyd, Tan conducted several workshops in the Mahomet-Seymour area through his Healing Illinois grant. He developed close relationships with the community and worked with constituents to envision how this school district could promote greater diversity, equity and inclusion and social-emotional learning.
Through his work with the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority Restore, Reinvest, Renew grant with the Danville School District and in his Extension-Faculty Collaboration Grant that includes the Illinois Aspira Chicago School Network, Tan addressed racial disparities through capacity building. He provided consultation and training with middle and high school mathematics and science teachers to enhance their abilities to promote social and emotional skills with their students.
Tan has also played a central role in the development and implementation of live simulations for undergraduate and graduate students at Illinois. The simulations focus on competencies students are learning, but highlight at every point diversity, equity and inclusion as well as difficult conversations on racism.
Benson, a professor and copyright librarian at the University Library, is the recipient of the Emerging Award for Excellence in Public Engagement. Holding a J.D., a Master of Laws, and a master’s in library and information science, she serves as an advocate for both librarians and the public in the complex arena of copyright law.
She launched Copyright Chat, a podcast that engages the public to better understand arcane issues of copyright law. Highly regarded within the field, episodes have been cited by the World Intellectual Property Organization.
She has worked extensively with the American Library Association Office of Policy and Advocacy. Selected through a competitive process to serve as a member of that body’s Policy Corps, Benson educates other librarians about the intricacies of copyright law. This led directly to discussions with the U.S. Copyright Office about the restrictions that limit a library’s ability to provide access to movies that are not in commercially available streaming formats.
Her advocacy work and nuanced understanding of the law led to her selection as a Fellow by the ALA Office of Policy and Advocacy. Moreover, her ongoing work with the International Federation of Library Associations Copyright and Other Legal Matters Committee has impacted that organization’s output with respect to copyright advocacy and led to her selection as IFLA’s delegate to the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights.
The Cline Center for Advanced Social Research is the recipient of the Team Award for Excellence in Public Engagement. The mission of the center is to transform information into knowledge that advances human flourishing. Through partnerships across the country, and with data science informing its efforts, the non-partisan and non-advocacy center has been deeply influential in the understanding of significant political events, such as the January 6 attempted coup at the U.S. Capitol.
The interdisciplinary staff at the Cline Center brings people with substantive knowledge and experience with social issues together with others who have the technical skills to develop research products and ways to bring information to a larger public. Crucially, through relationships with public organizations, the team helps identify what the group needs to make a difference on social issues.
The center’s Systematic Policing Oversight Through Lethal-force Incident Tracking Environment project brought together policy advocacy groups (e.g., NAACP and ACLU-Illinois), criminal justice researchers (e.g., Center for Policing Equity), and law enforcement groups (e.g., International Association of Chiefs of Police and the Police Executives Research Forum) to examine incidents where police use firearms – including those with non-fatal outcomes – as well as any other use of force that results in a death.