Awards & Recognitions

Cindy Vincent is associate professor of Media and Communication at Salem State University. Her research focuses on critically engaged civic learning, civic media engagement within historically marginalized populations, and the use of dissent in digital democracy for negotiation of political power and social change. Her work appears in Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, The Journal of Alternative and Community Media, and The International Journal of Game-Based Learning. Vincent has received funding from the National Communication Association, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, MA Department of Higher Education, and Salem State University for her community-engaged initiatives. She has also received recognition from the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Secretary of Defense, U.S. Secretary of Army, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for her community relations initiatives.

Joseph Krupczynski is a Professor in the Department of Architecture and the Director of Civic Engagement & Service-Learning at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is also one of the founding directors of the Center for Design Engagement (CDE), a non-profit community art/design resource center in Holyoke MA that is dedicated to bringing participatory design, public art and civic engagement strategies to local communities and community-based organizations in Western Massachusetts. A first-generation college student from a Puerto Rican and Polish family, Krupczynski’s work is founded on cross-cultural investigations that bridge ideas and places. As an educator, university administrator, and public artist/designer, his scholarship and creative work explores spatial justice, Latinx identity, and restorative creative place-making/keeping as he builds participatory platforms for meaningful engagement — especially in collaboration with underrepresented communities. As the director of Civic Engagement and Service Learning (CESL) at UMass Amherst Krupczynski supports programs and courses that allow students, faculty and staff to work collectively with communities for a more just world. He is the co-editor (in collaboration with Mari Castañeda) of Learning from Diverse Latinx Communities: Social Justice Approaches to Civic Engagement (2017). 

Cynthia Lynch, a veteran of over 25 years in higher education, is the Executive Director of the Center for Civic Engagement and the Frederick E. Berry Institute for Politics at Salem State University. Lynch provides the strategic vision and leadership for the university’s public engagement initiatives. She also oversees the development of programs that support faculty using anti-racist community-engaged pedagogies and students developing the skills necessary to engage in all spheres of civic life and think critically and work creatively to address injustices facing our communities. Most recently, Lynch served as the Vice-Chair of the university’s strategic planning committee and is now leading the strategic plan implementation process for academic affairs. Lynch presents at national and regional conferences about the intersection of civic engagement, equity, and student and community success. Her research focuses on critically engaged civic learning, a social change framework that restructures service-learning approaches to achieve more equitable and just engagement with the community. Her work appears in AAC&U’s Diversity and Democracy and the Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning. Her co-edited book, Anti-Racist Community Engagement: Principles and Practices, was released in September, 2023.  Lynch is a co-founder of the New England Equity and Engagement Consortium (N3EC) and is an Equity and Engagement Fellow for Campus Compact (2023-2024).

Roopika Risam is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies and of Comparative Literature in the Digital Humanities and Social Engagement cluster at Dartmouth College. Previously, she spent nine years at Salem State University. Her research focuses on digital and public humanities, with an emphasis on facilitating equitable collaboration with communities. Risam’s research has been supported by over $4.3 million in grant funding. Her first monograph, New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial Digital Humanities in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy, was published by Northwestern University Press in 2018. Her current book project, “Insurgent Academics: A Radical Account of Public Humanities,” which traces a new history of public humanities through the emergence of ethnic studies, is under contract with Johns Hopkins University Press. Through her work with the Modern Language Association and her journal Reviews in Digital Humanities, Risam has been working to change faculty evaluation structures for digital and public humanities scholarship.

Christina Santana is an Associate Professor English at Worcester State University. Dr. Santana’s teaching has largely focused on capacity-building for professional writing and includes courses on community writing, writing consultancy, persuasive writing about public issues, professional writing, and business communication. Dr. Santana’s scholarship has explored innovative, collaborative structures and frameworks in several contexts, including connecting composition mega courses, facilitating the work of writing groups/teams across difference, networking writing centers and organizations within a city, and advancing anti-racist community engagement in and around higher education. Dr. Santana enjoys working collaboratively – especially across experience and expertise – and on projects that enable/empower others to contribute to the common good.

Elaine Ward is an associate professor and chair of the higher education department in the Winston School of Education and Social Policy at Merrimack College. She currently serves as a Special Assistant to the President for Civic and Community Engagement, where she helps the College harness existing resources and create new opportunities for increasing community impact aligned with the College’s institutional strategic plan. Ward has served multiple regional, statewide, and national networks and consortia to advance community engagement and impact including the Regional Advisory Board, United Way Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley; the New England Equity and Engagement Consortium in partnership with the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education to ensure equity and inclusion are cornerstones of community engagement efforts; the Merrimack Valley Regional Food Security Network; the Lawrence Mayor’s Health Task Force; and the One Haverhill Fund.  Nationally, she currently serves on the National Advisory Committee for the Elective Carnegie Community Engagement Classification now housed at the American Council for Education and was the co-PI on the first international pilot for the Carnegie community engagement classification. 

Aldo Garcia Guevara is Professor of History at Worcester State University (WSU), teaching classes on Latin American and LatinX history and society. In his teaching, he focuses on inter- and multi-disciplinary approaches in campus-centered as well as local and global community- and civic-engaged courses. In addition, he focuses on how world history approaches and methods can address big questions. He served as Chair of WSU’s Sociology Department, was a two-term Director of the university’s Center for the Study of Human Rights, and is currently Chair of the Interdisciplinary Studies Department. Garcia Guevara is a member of the Latino History Project of Worcester (LHPW) Steering Committee, preparing for an exhibit, “Somos Worcester,” at the Worcester Historical Museum in 2024. He is currently working on a co-authored textbook with Tracey Rizzo entitled Revolutionaries, on gender in modern revolutions.

John Reiff has worked with civic engagement and service-learning in higher education since 1980 — as a college teacher, as director of service-learning/civic engagement offices, then since 2015 as Director of Civic Learning and Engagement for the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education, where he works with the state’s 29 public colleges and universities to make civic learning an “expected outcome” for their undergraduates and to build racial equity into their approaches to civic engagement.  His scholarship, most often written with colleagues, appears in various journals and edited books on the engaged campus, service-learning and community engagement, and the Carnegie community engagement classification. Reiff consults with colleges and universities across the U.S. and served as project director for the two projects that led to the creation of the New England Equity and Engagement Consortium. His recent work focuses on faculty development designed to help faculty build anti-racist approaches into community-engaged teaching.