2002 Kaplan Family Distinguished Faculty Fellows
Michael Lounsbury
Assistant Professor, School of Industrial and Labor Relations
No longer at Cornell
Professor Lounsbury's exemplary teaching and connection of his teaching activity with community outreach led to his selection as Kaplan Family Distinguished Faculty Fellow. His strives to encourage undergraduate students to become active knowledge creators through a teaching and learning process of continuous reflection, innovation and passion. Professor Lounsbury’s excellence in teaching and impressive connection with the local human service community through his very popular LIROB 322/SOC 323 course on “Work & Organization” earned him the distinction of the 2001 General Mills Award for Innovation in Teaching. He used his Kaplan Family Distinguished Faculty Fellowship Award to further expand his course and institutionalize it as the ILROB 322/SOC 323 “Service-Learning” course in both the School of Industrial and Labor Relations and the Department of Sociology.
Ken Reardon
Associate Professor, City and Regional Planning
No longer at Cornell
Professor Kenneth Reardon is a nationally recognized faculty member in the field of service-learning and civic engagement. In the year 2000, he received the Ernest A. Lynton Award for Faculty Professional Service & Academic Outreach from NERCHE—the New England Resource Center for Higher Education—for his lasting contribution to community development, as well as the impact he has had on the institutions of which he has been a part through courses and curricula he has developed, and the collaborative action research activities in which he has engaged colleagues, students and communities. In 2001, Professor Reardon was asked by Ithaca Mayor Alan Cohen and City Common Council to work with the City Planning and Development Department in developing a neighborhood–based planning program for the older residential neighborhoods. As a result of this collaboration, Professor Reardon organized a Neighborhood Planning Workshop as a Special Topics Course in the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning to involve students in this grassroots community-building effort. Thirty-one students enrolled in the course, which used participatory action research methods to develop a 5-year revitalization plan for Ithaca’s poorest and most diverse residential community.
The strong continuing interest of students maintained the course for a second semester, where the focus was to devise a strategy for implementing the “Northside-Turning the Corner Plan.” The students of this workshop presented a proposal for plan implementation to the JP Morgan Chase Community Development Competition in New York City, securing a third-place finish in this prestigious competition. Professor Reardon used his Kaplan Family Distinguished Faculty Fellowship Award to develop two new service-learning courses in the Department of City and Regional Planning to introduce to and prepare students for participatory approaches to community problem-solving planning and design, with appropriate pre-field preparation for such activities.