Strengthening Communities Initiative

This program establishes a national model for strengthening communities by pairing university faculty with community organizations to target the needs of specific neighborhoods.

Faculty partners serve as content experts to expand the capacity of the organization in implementing a neighborhood-based project, and community organizations choose the projects based on resident participation.

In May 2008, five projects were awarded the first round of grants. The community groups are receiving grants totaling $76,980 and each project team includes a full-time faculty member, from such disciplines as anthropology, urban planning and architecture. The projects began work on their objectives in July 2008 and will work through January 2010 to complete the projects.

For more information on the Strengthening Communities Initiative, please visit the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy website.

Project SEED Overview

Project SEED is an opportunity for economically disadvantaged high school students to do chemistry research for 8 weeks at the University of Memphis during the summer. In 2008 participating students received a $2500 stipend. Project SEED at the University of Memphis was supported in 2008 by the American Chemical Society Project SEED Foundation and four corporations:

• Buckman Laboratories International, Inc.
• Cargill Foundation
• Schering-Plough Health Care Products, Inc.
• Valero Refinery of Memphis

Ted Burkey is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Director of the project. For more information, please visit their website

Veterans Oral History Project

The Assisi Foundation of Memphis in 2006 awarded the Department of History in partnership with the Military Order of the World Wars, Memphis Chapter, $120,000 to support the World War II Veterans Oral History Project. Of that amount, $90,000 was allocated immediately. On the basis of the progress report, the Foundation in January 2007 allocated the remaining $30,000. This generous grant makes it possible to undertake the task of interviewing 1,000 West Tennessee veterans of the Second World War.

All interviews will be archived in the Mississippi Valley Collection at The University of Memphis with the Library of Congress' Veterans History Project. There will be free access to these materials in the Mississippi Valley Collection at the Ned McWherter Library and in the Memphis Public Library and Information Center, where they will be broadly accessible and permanently available to the public.

Diversity Grant: "Integration Through Education: Muslims of Memphis and America"

The Tennessee Board of Regents has awarded a Diversity Grant in the amount of $100,000 to Dr Kent Schull for a proposal made jointly with Dr Jeffrey Byford of the College of Education, Health and Human Sciences, entitled �Integration Through Education: Muslims of Memphis and America.� Drs Schull and Byford will create an educational model and curriculum for the integration of Muslims into American society aimed at both educating mainstream America on issues related to Islamic culture and history and assisting Muslim Americans to embrace U.S. values and the advantages offered here in the states. This model and curriculum will be developed based on a four-pronged interrelated strategy:

Collecting information on the historic background and development of Islam and the modern Middle East. This information will then be synthesized and abbreviated for high school student consumption.

Conducting research on the Muslim community in the Memphis metropolitan area, where roughly 10-15,000 Muslims live. The information gathered (through a series of oral interviews and demographic surveys) will inform the curriculum and be used to write the history of Muslims in Memphis.

Surveying and interviewing Memphis-area high school teachers regarding classroom teaching strategies and practices related to Islam and the Middle East.

Combining what is learned from prongs one through three and developing a curriculum supplement to help educate Memphis high school students about the Middle East, Islam, and the Memphis Muslim community. This program may then also act as a model for the integration of Muslim populations throughout Tennessee, the United States, and Europe.

The Tennessee Alcohol and Drug Prevention Outcomes Longitudinal Evaluation (TADPOLE)

TADPOLE is a system that evaluates the outcomes of state-funded alcohol and drug prevention programs which targets youth in grades 3 to 12 who are "at-risk" for substance use and/or abuse. TADPOLE was jointly developed in 1992 by the Tennessee Department of Health, Bureau of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Services, the Primary Prevention Steering Committee, and The University of Memphis, Department of Anthropology.

TADPOLE is housed at the University of Memphis Alcohol and Drug Prevention Research Center under the directorship of Charles Williams, Ph.D.

For more information on TADPOLE, visit their website.