A letter from our Director
Kicking off another great year!
Friends of IPCE,
I hope everyone has had a great start to their fall semesters. As always, I'm excited to share what we here at the Institute have been working on this past year, and to look forward to what's next this year.
We had a busy summer of data collection, analysis, and writing, as we produced reports for the Knight Foundation exploring national On the Table initiatives in ten U.S. cities and regions. These cities and regions span Lake County, Indiana, to Silicon Valley, and each presented a rich set of civic engagement from very different urban environments across the country. The national report is available on our Research page, under "Knight Foundation On the Table National Report."
Our institute was pleased to be invited by the Illinois Attorney General this past year to produce a report summarizing community input on the Chicago Police Consent Decree. After facilitating 14 community roundtables, the IPCE team compiled and synthesized public comments and suggestions in a document presented to the Attorney General's Office. You can read our full report on our Research page, under "Consent Decree Public Engagement Report."
IPCE was excited to be part of another UIC Urban Forum. The Forum this year took place on September 17 with the topic, "The People's Money: Pensions, Debt, and Government Services." The forum included panels on city budgeting, what happens when a city goes bankrupt, and government pensions.
We will host two Civic Engagement Lunch Talks this year. Dr. Dalal Katsiaficas of the Education Department will present her research on civic engagement within immigrant-origin student communities on November 14. For more information about this lunch talk, see our Events on our homepage. We will also host Dr. Therese Quinn from Architecture, Design, and the Arts to present her Illinois Deaths in Custody Project in the spring semester. Stay tuned for more details on Dr. Quinn's talk!
We welcomed 24 undergraduate students in the Urban Public Policy Fellowship program for the 2018-2019 academic year in August, and they are already hard at work at their internship sites. 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 throughout the academic year.
In terms of events, IPCE has partnered with other UIC units and research centers to host Speaker Series, a Student National Issues Convention, the UIC Urban Forum, and others. We will launch a new series focusing on community voices within different Chicago neighborhoods, and are pleased to welcome activist Robert Douglas from Roseland to UIC on November 8.
I'm also happy to announce that a number of IPCE staff will be traveling to Denver in November to attend the National Conference on Dialogue and Deliberation. This conference is a great opportunity for us to reconnect with old friends and colleagues, make new connections, and develop new ideas. We have always reaped a lot of new knowledge about our field from these conferences, and I know this one will be no different!
Please keep us on your radar as we continue to announce upcoming IPCE and IPCE-sponsored events and initiatives, and bookmark our newly refreshed website for updates on all things about the Institute!
I hope to see you at one of our upcoming events,
Joseph K. Hoereth, PhD