2014 Community Based Undergraduate Research Grants Recipients

Student Researchers: Alexis Chaet and Bijan Morshedi
Faculty Advisor: Rupa Valdez
Community Partner: Blue Ridge Medical Center
We will explore patterns of technology access and usage within the Latino Migrant Farmworker (LMFW) community. Such patterns must be accounted for in the design of population-specific health Information Techonlogy (IT). Health IT provides a means of delivering health-related education, empowering patients to improve their health, and equipping them with tools to combat existing healthcare access barriers. This study will lay the foundation for creating health education and other technology interventions for the LMFW community in the subsequent academic year.

Student Researchers: Jacqueline Cieslak and Alexia Koch
Faculty Advisor: Richard Handler
Community Partner: Sulabh International
This research will involve 10 weeks of ethnographic fieldwork with a prominent Indian NGO and a selection of their employees (toilet attendants) in Delhi, India. As the basis of a development program in sanitation, this research aims to determine how people differentially draw on notions of purity and/or hygiene to produce and articulate ideas of cleanliness.

Student Researchers: Joshua Hadley-Goggin and Stephen Grotz
Faculty Advisor: Anselmo Canfora
Community Partner: Young Life
A team of two architecture students will conduct research to assist in the expansion of a youth camp in Jinotega, Matagalpa, Nicaragua. Focusing on issues of overall capacity, health quality, and topography, this research will result in the design of a new 64-person housing structure.

Student Researchers: Priya Khanna and Ishaan Dharia
Faculty Advisor: Rae Blumberg
Community Partner: Social Outreach Foundation
Working with the Social Outreach Foundation, a school for underprivileged children from the slums of Delhi, this team will create a culturally- and regionally- customized general health course module to be incorporated into the school's curriculum. The course content will be based upon pre-departure research of prevalent health-related issues in the area. The effect of the course on improving awareness of such topics will be measured through pre- and post-evaluations.

Student Researchers: Chrissie Monaghan and Rosa Waters
Faculty Advisor: Carol Anne Spreen
Community Partner: Charlottesville High School
This case study explores how high school students experience critical pedagogy and community-based service learning in a global citizenship course comprised of UVA graduate and undergraduate students as well as students from Charlottesville High School.