2023-2024 IHDSC Partnership Development Seed Award Cohort

IHDSC is pleased to announce its first cohort of Partnership Development Seed Awardees! The program is designed to invest in the cultivation of new and existing research-practice-partnerships (RPPs), which we know are central to equity-driven scholarship. The Institute is committed to creating and strengthening partnerships that are mutually beneficial, equitable, and sustainable and that center the voices of community stakeholders. This year, we partnered with NYU’s Cross-Cutting Initiative on Inequality to launch a new call to move the needle on institutional barriers that have historically limited the development and sustainability of RPPs. Together, we aim to stimulate social impact locally and globally through the expansion of RPPs that represent our core principles: equity, collaboration, and interdisciplinarity.

Through the Partnership Development Seed Award Program, IHDSC aims to:

Inspire the formation or fortification of new and existing partnerships with stakeholders outside of academia including non-profit and community-based organizations, advocacy groups, governmental agencies, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
Support scholarly affiliates’ commitment to developing sustainable RPPs by investing financially in the early stages of relationship development
Amplify research and collaboration strategies that center the voices and experiences of community stakeholders in the creation of new knowledge for social impact

While IHDSC’s long standing Seed Award program provides funds for pilot research projects, this new program is intended to fund partnership development activities.

Perceiving Leadership

Dr. Emily Balcetis and Dr. Jordan Daley lead the NYU Social Perception Action and Motivation (SPAM) Lab. For the project, SPAM will partner with BioBus to support students in the last phase of the BioBus’ STEM Pathway: The Pursue Junior Scientist Internship program. This yearlong, paid program is BioBus’ most comprehensive offering, allowing high school students to design and perform independent research projects. Junior Scientists spend 70+ hours on skill training, 100 hours on research, and undergo extensive training under the guidance of BioBus Community Scientists. In the Junior Scientist Internship program in the Lower East Side neighborhood, students learn the scientific method, use scientific tools like microscopes, learn the history and current environmental issues of the LES neighborhood, the career paths of BioBus Scientists and researchers across NYC, and professional skills like communication and team collaboration.

The NYU team will join the BioBus mentorship and instructor team to deliver Junior Scientists learning modules it created and tested during a previous pilot study to assess feelings of belonging and capacity to grow leadership abilities in STEM. The goal is for NYU to collaborate with the BioBus team to build out the identity development component of its trainings for Junior Scientists. This partnership would reflect the first BioBus has established with a Psychology Department. The goals of this parternship include bolstering adolescents’ sense of identity as scientists and leaders, and their beliefs they can grow their skills.

PI: Dr. Emily Balcetis, Associate Professor of Psychology, FAS

Co-PI: Dr. Jordan S. Daley, Provost's Postdoctoral Fellow, FAS

Partner: BioBus

Uplifting the Voices that Matter: A Research-Practice Partnership with Vibrant Emotional Health, the FACES Lab, and Families

For this project, the Families and Children Experiencing Success (FACES) Lab at NYU will facilitate an official research-practice partnership with Vibrant Emotional Health located in New York City. As a research-practice partnership, they want to identify and leverage community strengths and create a formalized space for discussing families’ strengths, mental health needs, and perspectives on mental health care. They aim to do this by engaging families directly in a research-practice partnership for generating research and the development of evidenced-based processes to best support families’ wellbeing (e.g., navigating youth mental health systems and the local school system). To date, the research partnership between the FACES Lab and Vibrant has not had the opportunity to directly engage family voices, given the lack of time and resources to foster these relationships. We believe in working directly with families to value their lived experiences and define a shared set of research questions of interest to them to collectively “tackle problems caused by unequal and harmful social systems” (Cornish et al., 2023, p. 1). This will allow the FACES Lab and Vibrant to take advantage of research funding that prioritizes this type of partnership and center family needs in open-access publications that influence practice and policy (e.g., improving community mental health and schooling systems).

PI: Dr. Anil Chacko, Department Chair; Associate Professor of Counseling Psychology, Applied Psychology, Steinhardt

Partner: Vibrant Emotional Health

Understanding Community/school Perspectives on Racial Equity: A Partnership between the South Orange/Maplewood Community Coalition on Race and NYU's Learning Race Lab

The South Orange/Maplewood Community Coalition on Race (CCR) seeks to collaborate with the NYU Learning Race Lab to empirically assess community needs and the coalition's impact to define their short and long-term planning/programming efforts. CCR is located in two adjacent towns in Essex County NJ that share a school district. The CCR is a community-based organization, working for over 25 years to develop and implement place-based solutions to racial integration and inclusion. Its mission is “to build and sustain a community that is racially, culturally and socially integrated and truly inclusive where there is equity and equality for all.” The CCR sets its mission and annual objectives through an executive committee and a 20-member Board of Trustees which includes liaisons from both of the governing bodies of the Township of Maplewood and the Village of South Orange. It conducts its work through five committees of volunteers, one of which focuses on promoting racial equity and integration in the schools. The Schools Committee offers programming, advocacy, and close working relationships with the school superintendent, principals, parent and student organizations, and teachers. The goal of this project is to lay the groundwork for a sustainable long-term relationship with the CCR generally, and the Schools Committee specifically, that would contribute to the CCR’s interest in developing evidence informed strategic decisions.

PI: Dr. Diane Hughes, Professor of Applied Psychology, Steinhardt

Co-PI: Blair Cox, Doctoral Student, Psychology and Social Intervention, Steinhardt

Partner: South Orange/Maplewood Community Coalition on Race

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IHDSC Partnership Development Program 2024-2025

IHDSC is pleased to announce its first Partnership Development Seed Award Program! The program is designed to invest in the cultivation of new and existing research-practice-partnerships (RPPs).