Community Engagement
Serving Local Communities
EPOL extends its research and service into local communities through its faculty and graduate student work in the Education Justice Project (EJP), directed by Prof. Rebecca Ginsburg and Saving Our Lives, Hear Our Truths (SOLHOT), directed by Prof. Ruth Nicole Brown.
Each of these programs provides educational experiences to populations underserved by traditional education programs and each, too, provides its participants — whether students, faculty, or community members — with an opportunity to learn and grow in community with one another.
EJP and SOLHOT have received numerous awards for their work and stimulated transformative research projects, conferences, dissertations, and publications. EJP, supported by EPOL and the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, offers upper-level undergraduate courses to inmates at the Danville Correctional Center. SOLHOT brings together Black women and girls, from middle school-aged to graduate student-level, to collaborate and work against obstacles in their lives using arts-based sharing of lived experiences.