A Fall Welcome from IPCE Director Joseph Hoereth

Our Director Dr. Joe Hoereth welcomes back friends of IPCE to the fall 2024 semester at UIC.

Friends of IPCE,

I hope everyone had a great and smooth start to the fall semester. I am happy to share that the Institute for Civic and Policy Engagement celebrated a full summer of research and community impact with our partners. Heading into this academic year, we have an incredible lineup of programming, collaborations, and research to build on this momentum.

We are excited to announce the research projects that the Institute will help to fund this year as part of our Civic Engagement Research Awards. The awardees are: Dr. Kate Albrecht, “Empowering Purpose-Oriented Network Leaders and Funders for Sustainable Community Engagement”, Jenna Prochaska, “Engaging Communities in Enforcing the Fair Housing Act's "Affirmatively Furthering" Mandate”, Dr. Barbara Sostaita, “Undocumented Knowledges”, and Dr. Tanja Aitamurto, “Augmented Reality for Informing and Engaging the Public: Combating Environmental Pollution in Chicago's Industrial Corridors”.

We will be hosting multiple Civic Engagement Lunch Talks this upcoming academic year. These presentations will feature research from Dr. Phillip A. Boda, Dr. Andy Clarno, Dr. Delphinne Labbe, Thea Crum, and Dr. April Jackson. We will be announcing specifics on these events in the coming weeks!

We are also proud to welcome 18 undergraduate students in the Urban Public Policy Fellowship Program (UPPF) for the 2024-2025 academic year. This cohort represents a large array of policy and research interests, and I am excited to see their progression as leaders as they navigate their internships and research projects. You can learn more about the cohort here.

We had a busy summer with our continued work on the third Community Survey report for the Independent Monitoring Team. This survey asked about overall police services, effectiveness, community engagement, responsiveness, trustworthiness, and procedural justice, contact and interactions with the CPD, misconduct complaints and investigations, and confidence in reform. The final report will be completed and published later in the Fall. You can view previous reports here.

Please keep in touch with us either through our website and social media to make sure you’re always in the know when we announce events, awards, or newly published research. I hope to see you at one of our events this semester, and wish you all an invigorating season ahead.

Joseph K. Hoereth, PhD