{"id":75027,"date":"2013-04-02T09:25:35","date_gmt":"2013-04-02T13:25:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=75027"},"modified":"2013-04-04T12:14:36","modified_gmt":"2013-04-04T16:14:36","slug":"symposium-highlights-uconns-ties-to-urban-connecticut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2013\/04\/symposium-highlights-uconns-ties-to-urban-connecticut\/","title":{"rendered":"Symposium Highlights UConn\u2019s Ties to Urban Connecticut"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Courtney<\/a>
Courtney Beyers ’13 (NUR) with her poster about UConn’s partnerships with the health care system, which earned her an Award for Excellence in Public Engagement and Outreach. (Ariel Dowski ’14 (CLAS)\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For Honors student Courtney Beyers \u201913 (NUR), taking her work outside the boundaries of the UConn campus was an easy decision: the graduating senior and UConn Health Center intern has been working with patients in the Hartford area who have sickle cell disease on a project she plans to continue after graduating.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople with sickle cell disease tend to be from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds and face all kinds of challenges when it comes to their health,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was hugely important to me to want to reach out locally and help this vulnerable and underserved patient population.\u201d<\/p>\n

That spirit will be showcased on Wednesday, April 3, during a symposium at the Rome Commons Ballroom convened by the Office of Public Engagement and the Connecticut Cooperative Extension System, at which faculty members, staff, and students from disciplines that run the gamut from agriculture to puppetry will present aspects of their work with urban communities throughout the state.<\/p>\n

The multidisciplinary array of speakers and presentations on the schedule underscores the diversity of ways in which UConn serves the community, from work on health issues among Cambodian Americans to landscape architecture plans for cities to programs designed for children in military families.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is really a great demonstration of how we\u2019re fulfilling our mission as a Land Grant university,\u201d says Michael O\u2019Neill, associate dean of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources and associate director of the Connecticut Cooperative Extension System, who will deliver the keynote address at the symposium.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people here and the leadership here are really focused on serving Connecticut, and I think public engagement is the most obvious way we meet that responsibility,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Neill says the extension system is a good example of how University programs are working with urban communities in ways that people might not always realize. While many people think of cooperative extensions as solely rural, O\u2019Neill lists off initiatives ranging from high-tech urban agriculture to the development of green spaces in cities as elements of the system\u2019s mission.<\/p>\n

Most notably, he says the extension system has an important role to play as Americans become increasingly aware of, and concerned about, what goes into making the food on their table.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are interested in having a food-secure nation, where everyone has access to affordable, healthy food, and that really begins at the local level,\u201d he says. \u201cIn Connecticut urban areas, there are both food deserts (areas where families live far from grocery stores) and also food swamps (areas where food is available, but it\u2019s not high quality food).\u201d<\/p>\n

Katie Martin, assistant research professor in the Department of Allied Health Sciences, has provided opportunities for students to become engaged in research focusing on the availability, price, and quality of healthy food in grocery stores in greater Hartford. \u201cUnderstanding the food environment is really important if we want to help reduce health disparities,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

For Beyers, the engagement she cultivated with the community beyond the campus borders has formed an integral part of her education. Working with patients for her research augmented the lessons she learned in the classroom, and better prepared her for a career as a clinician, she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI learned that you really need to listen to people, that you need to sit down with them and have conversations about their needs,\u201d she says. \u201cThere\u2019s more to nursing than just what needs to be done during your shift.\u201d<\/p>\n

The symposium will run from 12:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Rome Commons Ballroom. The event is free and open to the public, but registration is encouraged by emailing rsvp@uconn.edu<\/a> or calling 860-486-1038.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From nursing to agriculture, UConn faculty, staff, and students make a difference in cities across the state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":75033,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1715,179,1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[131],"class_list":["post-75027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-impact","category-uconn-health","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-22 05:41:39","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75027"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75268,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75027\/revisions\/75268"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/75033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75027"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=75027"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=75027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}