Community Care & Outreach

Our ever deepening partnerships with the neighbors in our community serves to enhance the quality of life and economic development of Chicago's South Side, the city of Chicago more broadly, and beyond to the national and international levels. The following are just a few examples of our impact on our surrounding communities:

• Jens Ludwig, McCormick Foundation Professor of Social Service, Law, and Public Policy and Harold Pollack, Helen Ross Professor established the University of Chicago Crime Lab in an effort to reduce youth violence in Chicago and nationally;
• Charles Payne, Frank P. Hixon Distinguished Service Professor is collaborating with community leaders to develop the Woodlawn Children's Promise Community, and is influencing national education policy;
• Melissa Roderick Hermon Dunlap Smith Professor leads research at the Consortium for Chicago School Research, a think-tank to inform and assess policy and practice in the Chicago Public Schools; she also leads the Network for College Success, a professional learning community for Chicago Public School leaders and partners who are working to prepare students for college;
• Colleen Grogan, Professor and the Co-Director of the Resource Mapping Project and Waldo E. Johnson Jr., Associate Professor and the community engagement chair for the South Side Health and Vitality Studies, collaborate with University researchers and community leaders on the Resource Mapping Project.
• This year, SSA launched a new initiative that will take its multidisciplinary problem-solving approach to a new level. The new Interdisciplinary Scholar Network initiative will bring together scholars across disciplinary and professional lines to generate innovative and more comprehensive knowledge aimed at addressing some of society's most intractable social problems. Two networks have been established:
• Susan Lambert, Associate Professor and Heather Hill, Assistant Professor created the Employment Instability, Family Well-being and Social Policy Network. This research network will enhance the capacity of the field to study employment instability at the lower end of the labor market and to develop and evaluate interventions aimed at reducing employment instability and its effects on children and families.
• Dexter Voisin, Associate Professor and Alida Bouris, Assistant Professor, created the STI and HIV Intervention Network (SHINE) to conduct research on the biological, behavioral and structural factors that heighten vulnerability to sexually transmitted infections and HIV among ethnic minority communities in the U.S. The Network will develop and evaluate interventions to alleviate existing STI/HIV disparities.
• SSA has relationships with more than 600 agencies and programs throughout the Chicago area for its field placement program. Annually, SSA students provide more than 250,000 hours of service in the field. Students are guided by seasoned practitioners who provide hands-on professional mentoring in the field.