Projects

Here is a sampling of current or recent projects conducted by CHE researchers:

Also, please visit our Research Sub-Groups.

• Interrupting Place-based Inequality: Building Sustainable Communities through Shared-Equity Homeownership. This National Science Foundation project surveys changes in economic, social, and cultural capital associated with residence in Community Land Trust housing. CLT housing, which is becoming more widespread in the US, may provide an advantageous alternative form of homeownership for low-income households. 
  -- Housing Environments Research Group: Prof. Susan Saegert, PI; Prof. Mary Clare Lennon, Co-PI

• New to the Public Science Project as of July, 2020: a Participatory Action Research collaboration with Communities United for Police Reform (CPR) to study community safety and policing in New York City. This project is funded by Trinity Wall Street, with GC Prof. Brett Stoudt as its Principal Investigator. CPR is a coalition of community-based organizations dedicated to advocating for changes in policy that will promote community safety while ensuring that the NYPD protects and serves all New Yorkers. It began in 2011 to fight discriminatory and abusive policing practices in NYC through policy, lawsuits, education, organizing, and research. Since 2012, there have been important legal and policy victories in NYC directed towards reforming the NYPD. However, New Yorkers of Color are still waiting for substantial changes to occur in their neighborhoods. This study - using both qualitative and quantitative methods in five neighborhoods across the boroughs - will be an essential part of CPR’s ongoing efforts to document the realities of current NYPD practices, while also recording expanded versions of what community safety means to those actually living in heavily policed neighborhoods.. 
  -- Public Science Project: Prof. Brett Stoudt

• Testimonios of Family Separation. Funded by Borealis Philanthropies, this project is assembling a group of researchers, community advisors, and individuals affected by current US immigration policies that separate family members. The goal is to document the effect of these policies on individuals and communities.
  -- Public Science Project: Dr. Maria Torre, Director

• Child Friendly Communities. The goal of this long-term international project has been to devise an approach for integrating children’s rights into local development initiatives and educational programs through a participatory, intergenerational and child-friendly assessment and planning methodology. The result of five years of funded research and development, the Child Friendly Communities resource has been made available online as an open-source toolkit and guide (see the CERG section of this website).  Piloted in 9 countries with UNICEF's Child Friendly Cities and Communities initiative in 2008, the methods and tools have since been adapted, scaled, and implemented in more than 27 countries by a range of organizations and government entities interested in children’s rights.
  -- Children's Environments Research Group: Prof. Roger Hart, Director

• College Access: Research and Action (CARA).  In 2019 CARA started its second five-year "Multiple Task Award Contract" with the NYC Dept. of Education, which allows schools throughout the NYC public system to engage the services of this innovative college access program. The award is the centerpiece in the decade-long development of CARA's peer and near-to-peer college counseling and college retention model. As CARA has gained recognition for its innovative program for increasing college application, college enrollment, and college retention for low-income and first-generation-to-college students, it has also attracted further support from a large portfolio of private foundations, including Pinkerton, Heckscher, Altman, Booth Ferris and others, as well as from the New York Community Trust and the Brooklyn Community Foundation.
  -- College Access: Research & Action: Dr. Janice Bloom and Dr. Lori Chajet, Co-Directors


• Moving the Dial on Inequality Challenges: Broadening Student Access and Success and Transforming Institutions through Campus-Community Engagement. This four-year grant from the US Dept. of Education is part of a $2.8 million package awarded to the University of Minnesota and a consortium of five partner institutions across the US. The joint project centers on bridging campus-community cultural divides in order to bring a wider representation of the US population into higher education.
  -- Public Science Project: Prof. Michelle Fine, PI


• Database of Literature on Public Places. This project selects and annotates environmental psychology literature from the last 50 years on the topic of public places and public space. The goal is to provide a database useful to practitioners, including planners, designers, architects, and urbanists. Funding derives from the Centre for the Future of Places at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.
  -- Public Space Research Group: Prof. Setha Low, Director


• Residential Mobility and Children's Well-Being. Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) of the UK, this project uses UK and US datasets to assess the effects over time of household moves on the well-being of children. Findings of this study have been presented in the US, the UK, and at the Society for Longitudinal and Life Course Studies, an international association of social scientists.
  -- Health and Society Research Group: Prof. Mary Clare Lennon, PI


• The community college as an agent of change in the 21st century immigration crisis. The Spencer Foundation funded this study of the Obama Administration's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (commonly known as the "Dream Act") as it has been received by community college students and other stakeholders at these institutions, which are often important focal points for young immigrants' entry into US society.
  -- Narrating Change Research Group: Prof. Colette Daiute, PI