Dec. 19, 2023
From our 2023 Annual Report
The Ginsberg Center offers numerous leadership opportunities for students that allow them to explore and deepen their skills. To demonstrate the impact of these opportunities, we share information about our various programs as well as highlights from our current students and alumni. We invite students to learn more about us and get involved.
Community Leadership Fellows
This year-long fellowship for University of Michigan undergraduate juniors and seniors provides students an opportunity to apply their existing leadership experience, community-based work, and classroom learning within a local community organization that directly addresses community impact areas.
Nifemi Awosika, Community Leadership Fellow
“Working with 826michigan mattered to me because I could see the positive impact my work had on the students I worked with, as well as for the organization as a whole. Over the course of the semesters, the students I worked with showed improvement in their writing skills which made me feel very fulfilled. And the development and communications work I was doing for the organization was clearly going to benefit [826] in the long run.”
Kayla Thomas, Community Leadership Fellow, Alum
“As this was my first time getting the opportunity to oversee the execution of a project, this fellowship challenged my management skills. Through working for Black Men Read, I was able to improve my ability to demonstrate many of the skills that are needed for a management position–communication, initiative, and organization being just a few. Leadership is about being willing to do what is necessary in a given moment in order to achieve the desired objective and challenging/encouraging others to do the same. Leadership is more about initiative than it is position.”
Carolina Jones Ortiz, Community Leadership Fellow, Alum
“My goal had always been to combine my art skills with my passion for social justice, and the MacDonald Fellowship allowed me to do just that. Without collaboration, without listening, and without humility, my art would not have served what it needed to. It made me eternally grateful to have a community that was honest with me so that my work could improve and so that I was actually helpful, and not just driven by good intentions.
Before working at the Ginsberg Center, I didn’t quite understand how art could serve others. I always saw it as a personal means of expression, but now I see it as a collaborative process that can be shared. Art now, to me, means translation.”
Graduate Consultants
Through a generous gift from Bill and Inger Ginsberg, the Ginsberg Center offers a leadership development opportunity for U-M doctoral students and candidates called the Ginsberg Graduate Consultant Program (formerly Graduate Academic Liaisons). Consultants work with our Academic Partnerships team (Engaged Learning) or Community Partnerships team (Community Engagement).
AunRika Tucker-Shabazz, Engaged Learning Consultant & Community Engagement Consultant
“In my capacity as a liaison (consultant), I was better able to understand how material inequality interacts with spatial and social hierarchies to reproduce disparity over time. Working in Ginsberg challenged me to problem solve within higher education, to better connect and socially network with leaders in the community. Ginsberg brought me into contact every day with local leaders, whose emotional intelligence forms the backbone of social change. I was challenged to think with and through community, rather than about community. I learned that community is a verb, something practiced and embodied; the people and organizations within Michigan demonstrated this quality more than ever.”
Elana Goldenkoff, Engaged Learning Consultant & Turn Up Turnout
“I love working with students to think about the impact of social identities and promote cultural humility in their engagement processes. Every time I have discussions with students about the intersection of identities and power and privilege, it challenges me to think about biases and blindspots in my own Ph.D. research and activism spaces where I work outside of campus. We really need more young people to have a say in the political leadership in this country and I am so proud that our hard work here on campus, along with the Ann Arbor Clerk’s Office, helped Michigan to have the highest youth turnout rate in the country!”
Community Technical Assistance Collaborative
As Ginsberg’s in-house data analysis and evaluation program, CTAC supports nonprofits, schools, and government organizations in building capacity to carry out their work, tell their stories, and secure funding. To date, CTAC students have collaborated with almost 50 community organizations in southeastern Michigan – helping them to identify and understand data related to the questions that matter to them.
Hillie Teller, CTAC & Student Advisory Board
“Youth who are wrapped up in the juvenile justice system need supportive and safe residential settings that prioritize their wellbeing, health, and education. Working alongside Michigan Center for Youth Justice on this effort has deepened my understanding of Michigan’s unique setting, barriers, and opportunities to achieve this. It is so important to listen and act promptly on community stakeholder feedback, requests, and ideas. I also came to appreciate that as students, prioritizing regular and responsive communication with our community stakeholders and each other is essential for accountability and quality work, especially through times of academic stress or periods of limited team resources.”
Sarah Gallagher, CTAC & AmeriCorps VISTA, Alum
“My work with AmeriCorps was my introduction to community engagement and service learning that extended beyond a one-day activity. Learning about and working on the root causes of social issues impacted my worldview, and was part of what led me to apply to a master’s program in public health. CTAC was my introduction to program evaluation and all of the benefits it has for society. My newfound love of evaluation led me to apply for an Evaluation Fellowship at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and I began my post-grad life in Atlanta working on a variety of evaluation projects, all with a special equity focus, for the Division of Violence Prevention at CDC. I recently talked on a panel about community-engaged participatory research and its application to military communities, where I definitely drew on my Ginsberg roots.”
Storytelling for Social Change
Storytelling for Social Change partnerships focus on supporting nonprofits, schools and governmental organizations in sharing stories that illustrate the heart of their work while creating opportunities for students to build skills in storytelling and content creation.
Brittany Hicks, Community Engagement Consultant & Storytelling for Social Change Pilot Program, Alum
“I believe in the power of community and collective action. By contributing to the work of community partners, I am able to exercise skills in empathy and collaboration that allow me to be a better scholar and human. True leadership is accompaniment. It is walking alongside others in the same direction. Leadership, for me, is seeking clarity through curiosity by asking questions. Questions make space for active listening and shared understanding.“