Indiana University Southeast receives grant from Sustaining Hoosier Communities for sociology student research experience

Indiana University Southeast sociology professor Dr. Veronica Medina has received a course planning grant from Sustaining Hoosier Communities for the course Social Research/Qualitative Research. The $2,000 grant will go toward helping the non-profit Team Peace increase its abilities to assist Orange and Crawford counties, while also providing a research opportunity for sociology students in the Social Research/Qualitative Research course.

According to an article on Indiana University Southeast’s website, Medina said, “I’m really excited about the partnership, and so are the students. The program’s mission really resonated with them. Students are applying what they’re learning about evaluation and applied research; building data-handling skills including data cleaning, coding, analysis and visualization; and enhancing career-readiness through project-based assignments. They’re leveraging teamwork, communication, and technology to accomplish project goals.”

Team Peace is, according to its website, a non-profit organization designed to “support schools & families in integrating trauma-responsive practices into their daily routines & relationships, by providing accessible nervous system education & resilience-building tools to youth & adults.” Through the project in Medina’s course, students will work with the data Team Peace accumulated in the past year to analyze the program’s effectiveness.

Using this data and the students’ interpretations, Medina said, the students are “learning how to clean, code, interpret, and visualize quantitative and quantitative datasets; we’ll present our results and recommendations to the Team Peace Board of Directors in December.”

Medina’s students will be visiting a classroom in East Crawford Elementary School in Milltown, Indiana, to observe Team Peace while they work.

Speaking of the Sustaining Hoosier Communities program, Medina said, “Participation in SHC gives students a chance to see how sociology and social science research skills make a tangible difference for local partners and the communities they serve. I encourage more faculty to imagine their own courses as engines of meaningful community partnership and to check out the impactful community-identified projects you and your students can engage with through SHC.”

For more information about Indiana University Southeast, visit the school’s website.