In Detroit, Assistant Professor of Music Michael Gould used drums to introduce schoolchildren to foreign cultures.

In the Traverse City area, Professor of Nursing Nancy Reame worked to improve breast cancer screening among Native American women.

“I saw it as a way to encourage and enable continuing connections between the Road Scholars and the state.” —Earl Lewis

And in a southwest Michigan community, Professor of Social Work Kathleen Faller examined an innovative approach to prosecuting child sexual abuse cases effectively.

All three participated in a Michigan Road Scholars tour and subsequently were awarded Road Scholars seed grants to help conduct these outreach initiatives.

Faculty who participate in the annual tour are invited to submit grant proposals to develop ideas for community-based research, service projects, creative activities and educational programs in Michigan.

The seed grant program began with the 1999 inaugural tour. It was conceived by Earl Lewis, dean of the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies and, until this fall, chair of the Michigan Road Scholars Faculty Advisory Committee.

“I saw it as a way to encourage and enable continuing connections between the Road Scholars and the state,” Lewis says. From 1999-2002, he awarded more than $146,000 to 21 projects, with the money coming from his own Rackham budget. Proposals from 2003 tour participants are due this month. Future support for the seed grant program will be explored during the next year.

Nine of the projects are completed while nine others still are in progress, according to a report by the Office of Government Relations, whose State Outreach staff conducts the Road Scholars tour. The remaining three projects did not materialize beyond the preliminary stage.

Project beneficiaries have included public school students and teachers in several districts; neighborhood block clubs and community health workers in four southeast Michigan communities; a Native American tribe in northern Michigan; the arts community in southeast Michigan; Asian-Americans in Detroit; urban planners; small businesses in mid-Michigan; and a Kalamazoo museum.

For the report, faculty were asked about their objectives. A sampling:

In examining the innovations leading to “effective criminal prosecution of [child] sexual abuse cases” in St. Joseph County and comparing the results of a nearby county, Faller says, “our long-term goal is to publicize the results to professional and community audiences and encourage other communities to adopt the approach used in St. Joseph County.”

George Cooper, a lecturer at the Sweetland Writing Center and in English Language and Literature, led a project to develop a curriculum portfolio for the Saginaw Public Schools’ Career Complex that is compatible with admissions requirements at U-M and other institutions of higher education. He says the objective was to achieve a “better understanding of what colleges expect from high school training. This will lead to higher placements of these technically educated students in colleges.”

The faculty note there are benefits to the University and their scholarship.

“[It] offered an occasion to expand our work in Detroit, to link historical exploration with performance,” says David Scobey, director of the Arts of Citizenship Program, regarding a project to explore history and social issues in southeast Michigan through life-story narrative and dance performance.

“I think this study is the most important of my work,” Faller says. “The Road Scholars seed grant has allowed us to make progress on this project, which not only has enabled us to publish some results but has strengthened proposals for larger grants.”

Thanks to a seed grant awarded to Professor Norman Yoffee, a graduate student in Near Eastern Studies has been transliterating and translating Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets that had been donated to the Kalamazoo Valley Museum and placed in storage. She soon will publish her findings in a scholarly journal, Yoffee says.

The comments of community partners suggest these projects are having a positive impact on U-M’s state relations.

“I was happy to have the U-M faculty and students exposed to the real world’ of criminal sexual conduct, as we experienced it in St. Joseph County,” says the Honorable Jeffrey Middleton, District Court judge (and former prosecutor), St. Joseph County. “I am pleased that you provide funding for this opportunity. I feel it is very important.”

Nancy Renko, a language arts teacher at the Saginaw Career Complex, says of the Cooper-led project to develop a curriculum portfolio for the center: “Through this [Road Scholars] program, the teachers and staff at the Career Complex met many wonderful people at the University who initiated some professional conversations with us regarding the academic progress of our vocational students. We believe that this dialogue has enabled us to more fully understand the complexity of issues facing the vocational/technical centers in the state of Michigan with regard to our college-bound students.”