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An architect’s lens on societal wellbeing

Mardelle Shepley
Every day in the United States, it seems, there’s another gun-related crime in the news. While politicians and activists argue about the issue, Mardelle McCusky Shepley, Design and Environmental Analysis, is tackling it through the lens of architectural design.
“We have a horrific problem with guns in this country,” she says. “At the same time, there have been a number of studies that have shown when there’s more green space, violent crime goes down.”
Collaborating with Naomi A. Sachs, Design and Environmental Analysis postdoctoral associate, Christine T. Fournier, life sciences librarian at the Cornell Mann Library, and Hessam Sadatsafavi, University of Virginia School of Medicine, Shepley initially surveyed 15,000 titles on the impact of nature on the human physiological and psychological state. “There’s a huge body of literature on the subject,” she says. “But few have looked at the urban scale in very much detail.”
Allison Arteaga ’21 receives Create Change Fellowship

April 2, 2019 — Allison Arteaga ’21, a fine arts major and a Latina/o Studies minor, was awarded the highly competitive Create Change Fellowship through The Laundromat Project. The project champions the voices, cultures, imaginations, knowledge, and leadership of people of color (POC). While supporting public art projects tackling issues like gentrification, food injustice, climate change, and community safety, the project advances artists and neighbors as change agents in their own communities.
Read the full article on the College of Arts & Sciences website.
‘Explore’ Engaged Cornell with new online database
April 1, 2019 — Community-engaged learning, leadership and research are happening all across Cornell. Now, thanks to a new feature on the Engaged Cornell website, information on this activity is easier than ever to find.
Explore includes projects and teams supported by grants and awards, as well as Engaged Faculty Fellows, current Engaged Ambassadors and students who have earned or are pursuing the Certificate in Engaged Leadership. Filters allow users to narrow entries down by topic area, college or school, location and specific grant, award and program.
Looking for food and agriculture projects in New York state? What about international work focused on sustainability topics? Or Engaged Curriculum Grant projects from the College of Engineering? Explore can help.
Engaged Cornell should be a mantra, not just an initiative
March 24, 2019 — Last semester, my friend Evelyn Torres ’21 woke up at 6:30 a.m. every Wednesday to go to Belle Sherman Elementary School. There, she was a student teacher in a third-grade classroom for three hours as field work for Prof. Jeffrey Perry’s, developmental sociology, EDUC 2410: The Art of Teaching. Although I thought of the experience that prompted her tiredness later that day as a unique one among Cornell students, it turns out that there is a wide array of classes taught far above Cayuga’s waters that include in their curricula engagement in communities close to and far from the lake’s shores.
Podcast explores role of identity in youth engagement

Anthony Burrow, associate professor of human development, center, joined “Extension Out Loud” podcast hosts Paul Treadwell and Katie Baildon for a conversation about self-purpose and how it can impact youth programming. Photo Credit: R.J. Anderson.
March 14, 2019 — How can exploring identity and sense of purpose help young people get more out of programs such as 4-H?
In the latest episode of Cornell Cooperative Extension’s “Extension Out Loud” podcast, Anthony Burrow, associate professor of human development in the College of Human Ecology, shares his research on the benefits of helping youth think about long-term personal goals and self-identifying “their why” prior to introducing programming.
Burrow, co-director of the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research’s Program for Research on Youth Development and Engagement (PRYDE), suggested that before program leaders kick off activities, they lead youth participants through a series of exercises designed to identify long-term goals and prompt them to examine their future selves. Tapping into this perspective can give programming more meaning and help youth stay focused.