The Center for the Common Good at the University of St. Thomas recently announced recipients of a new grant initiative to support research on community-engaged teaching projects. The inaugural recipients are both faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences and part of the ACE (Academic Community Engagement) cohort.
Theology Professor Cara Anthony and Susanne Wagner, associate professor of modern and classical languages, were each awarded for proposals to carry out research in the coming year assessing their course-based community partnerships.
Ann Johnson, who serves as faculty liaison for the Center for the Common Good, said the awards “demonstrate the commitment to quality our faculty members bring to their community-based teaching. This kind of research benefits our community partners as well as the students who engage in the projects. It helps both faculty and partners evaluate how they can strengthen their projects and reach their goals.”
Dr. Anthony will be involving students from her fall 2025 course, Theology and the Environment, in qualitative research in collaboration with the Creation Care team of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. Reactions of participants in an environmental justice pilgrimage offered by the Archdiocese will be analyzed to evaluate program effectiveness and impact, and findings will be summarized in a scholarly essay.
Dr. Wagner is also examining program effectiveness. Her St. Thomas students regularly volunteer in an after-school German language learning lab program for K-12 students. Her project investigates parental perceptions of the program and is the first of its kind to evaluate the role of parental perceptions of this national program, which has 150 labs across the U.S. Dr. Wagner anticipates it will provide useful data on parents’ motivations for enrolling their children, as it links to student success. This information will help shape implementation plans and promote participation.
Both projects represent community-based research, a type of research carried out in collaboration with community partners with the goal of providing potential solutions and contributing to long-term sustainable change in the community. The Center for the Common Good also awards grants for “Research/Assessment on the Outcomes of Community-Based Learning,” which evaluates student learning outcomes as a result of participating in community-engagement projects.
New grants for the 2025-26 academic year will be available in September 2025. For more information on Community Engagement Scholarship Grants, visit the website of the Center for the Common Good.
