We spoke with Dr. Chelsea Kilimnik, Assistant Professor and Faculty Fellow at the Crown Institute, to discuss the development, successes, and future aspirations of the "Also Our Campus" project. This community-engaged research program focuses on amplifying the voices and lived experiences of individuals with minoritized identities on the CU 麻豆影院 campus.
The "Also Our Campus" team has been conducting focus groups and surveys with undergraduate students from diverse identities to understand their experiences as new students in the college environment. The research examines their sense of belonging among peers, friends, and within the university, and how this sense of belonging relates to experiences of safety and harm on campus.
What are your hopes for this program?听听
In partnership with a student advisory board, we鈥檒l engage in a lot of community mobilization conversations around the results of our different studies. Our community partners will work with us to review results and identify targets for system wide and community-based prevention programming. From that, we鈥檇 like to build a web-based intervention program that allows for a virtual space for fostering belonging amongst folks from different identities on campus and provide access to resources like education modules, community building opportunities, and connection to campus and community resources.听听听
Did anything surprise you with the focus groups?听听听
I knew the people who did engage with the study would be passionate because if you鈥檙e doing something centered on social justice, equity, or violence, the people who want to share their stories or engage are the people who want to make a difference. We get to hear authentic voices and stories opposed to feeling like students are just answering questions or doing what they need to do to get their compensation. They are fully engaged and passionate and want to see change and that has been inspiring; more inspiring than I thought it would be.听
Could you elaborate on the听Interdisciplinary Approach?听听
A lot of the systems of education that are going on in a project like this historically are oppressive. In psychology, as a field, we don鈥檛 have a great track record of working with folks from minoritized identities, despite the field now trying to do a lot to combat that.听 Being able to bring in disciplines in an ongoing way has honored different ways of knowing, learning, and sharing information because it doesn鈥檛 feel as top-down in how we are doing the work. It allows for a lot more flexibility. We are trying to find ways to approach this differently, such as with my collaborator Professor Donna Mejia bringing a more arts-based lens to our work or involving the voices of students from disciplines like public health, social justice, education, and policy-oriented work. We also pull a lot of theories from different disciplines like intersectionality theory and critical race theory which has allowed the work to be richer.听听
Is there anything you鈥檇 like people to know about this program?听听
Our research program in and of itself seems to be having an intervention effect on offering something to students. For instance, with the focus groups, we get these students coming in and engaging in rich meaning making conversations about experiences 鈥� some are positive, and some are heavy, and we process and debrief these experiences. Once students leave, they now have this group of people they鈥檝e connected with about these experiences that are tied to who they are and the campus they are situated in. A lot of them are exchanging numbers and walking back to campus together and they鈥檙e building a community within the focus groups.听 A lot of the feedback we鈥檝e gotten is appreciation for a space to connect in a meaningful way. They get to have these conversations there isn鈥檛 a lot of room for normally. That has been a wonderful, happy accident of the project.听
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If you are interested in听getting听involved as a participant, check out our听听