Brief Elaborations of
Faculty Statements Regarding
Significant Accomplishments
In Public Outreach

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Michael Angrosino

My community activities largely involve working with religious organizations that have a strong social justice component in their programs. On behalf of these agencies, I regularly conduct workshops and training sessions on cultural diversity issues and have worked with advocacy groups concerned with a variety of health policy initiatives, particularly in the area of disability and mental health/mental retardation services. I have also been involved as an oral historian with civic and social groups; with my students I have conducted a number of oral history projects, and have also trained local people in the methods of oral history.

Roberta Baer

For over 22 years, I have been involved in community outreach activities in the areas of hunger and nutritional issues, as well as migrant farm worker health. With respect to hunger and nutrition, I have served on a number of local organizations, including a county Task Force on Hunger, as well as the Nutrition Advisory Committee of the county extension service. With my graduate students I have carried out a number of evaluation projects to determine optimal approaches to progams designed to address these issues, including a community cannery and the SHARE program. In the area of farmworker health, I serve on the health advisory committee of a local organization which operates childcare and Headstart programs for farmworker children. I also have conducted in-service trainings for health professionals who serve farmworkers.

Elizabeth Bird

In addition to speaking regularly to media on a variety of issues, I developed a semi-regular radio program, Anthroscope, which has aired several times on 88.5 FM WMNF Radio in Tampa. It has featured local and national anthropologists speaking and answering call-in questions about public interest issues like evolution/creation, nutrition and obesity, international human rights, gender roles, and local housing issues. With my graduate visual anthropology class, I have also worked with a local community organization to research and document a children's community arts program, and create a video and photo bank for their use. And I have done several community-based research projects in partnership with a Pasco County School, the Boys and Girls Club, and the Museum of Science and Industry. I am an active member of the USF's Committee on Community Engagement, and have spoken at local schools and community organizations.

Susan Greenbaum

I have been involved in community based research and advocacy in Tampa, Florida for the past 25 years. Particularly, I have worked with the Marti-Maceo Society, a 106 year old mutual aid society founded by Afro-Cuban cigarworkers, to overcome racial discrimination by public officials in the historic district in which it is located. We have worked together to gain visibility and formal status (including 501c3). I have also done advocacy work on behalf of public housing residents relocated by the HOPE VI program. This has involved extensive community development work in two neighborhoods where relocatees are concentrated. Finally, I have taken a leadership position in my university as President of the Faculty Senate to organize a university-wide effort to promote and strengthen community engagement and service learning. I sit on several local boards and advise the Children's Board on after school programs and the Housing Authority on social services for relocated families.

David Himmelgreen

I have been involved in community-based research for more than 10 years, focusing on topics ranging from HIV/AIDS prevention to nutrition education and health promotion. My students and I have worked with local agencies and churches in an effort to improve nutrition knowledge and reduce food insecurity among recently arrived Latino immigrants in Tampa, FL.
I have been interviewed by local radio stations regarding the growing obesity epidemic. In 2004, I was interviewed for an article that was published as part of a special issue on obesity in Time magazine. In 2005, I was interviewed for an article on culinary history and preservation that was published in Today's Dietitian, and more recently, this magazine ran an article that included a segment on the revision of a bilingual Puerto Rican Food Guide Pyramid that I helped to develop. My current research is focusing on globalization and dietary change in Costa Rica and HIV/AIDS prevention and food security in Lesotho, Africa.

Jacqueline Messing

My community involvement in Tampa has been with with the training of local teachers who enroll in my graduate classes at the University of South Florida and with Latinos Por la Causa. My research specialty is linguistic anthropology and applied linguistics, and I have been involved in community-based, collaborative research in Tlaxcala, Mexico for seven years, forging connections between local teachers interested in promoting the local use of Nahuatl there (both in and out of the school system) and scholars in Mexico’s capital. Prior to that I was involved in community bilingual research in the Latino community in Tucson, Arizona.

Nancy Romero-Daza

My community involvement revolves around HIV education efforts both in Tampa and in Monteverde, Costa Rica, where I conduct research and co-coordinate a summer field school with my colleague David Himmelgreen. Specifically, my students and I participate in World AIDS Day activities and in other educational and outreach efforts throughout the year. In addition, I have provided training on cultural competence to two main groups of providers: those who offer services to homeless Latino families and those who provide social and medical services to HIV positive African Americans living in four Florida counties. The latter group included a total of 266 individuals of different positions such as clerical personnel, outreach workers, case managers, counselors, medical doctors, nurses, and administrators. Finally, every summer as part of the Costa Rica field school we organize a community health assessment day in which we and our students work together with medical personnel and community leaders to offer health screenings and health education to rural families living in Monteverde.

Linda Whiteford

My public outreach activities focus on issues surrounding child and maternal health. In particular, I was a member of the Board of Directors and then later the President of the Board for the Florida Center for Children and Youth (FCCY). FCCY is a state-wide non-governmental advocacy and information agency that tracks policy changes and their consequences for childern and youth in the state of Florida.I also directed the local arm of Child Watch, a program to monitor changes in state and federal policies around children. Child Watch was developed by the Children's Defense Fund in Washington D.C. In addition to state and national advocacy, I was the President of the Society for Applied Anthropology, an international professional association of social scientists. During my tenure as President I established the "Scholarly Outreach and Professional Activities Committee" to develop and maintain professional connections between academic organizations, practitioners, and the public.

Christian Wells

My academic research and applied research overlap in significant ways. This conjunctive research considers the seemingly “nonrational” ways in which scarce resources are sometimes allocated. The scarce resource that I am particularly interested in is agriculturally productive land in Central America. I work with rural agrarian communities in Honduras to collaboratively confront how competing local and global worldviews shape resource scarcity. This work is inescapably public and applied. Dissemination of my research findings plays a major role in this work, and I engage public domains in a variety of ways. I present public lectures at high schools and through continuing education programs, provide archaeological tours, participate in urban planning meetings, and informally train local farmers in cultural resources management.

Nancy Marie White

With archaeology graduate and undergraduate students, I give annual public "archaeology day" programs in various parts of Florida, including at the Florida Panhandle Birding and Wildflower Festival, and on the USF campus in conjunction with excavation programs. We speak in elementary and secondary school classrooms, identify artifacts for weekly callers, and write to the news media concerning latest finds and how they are explained. I have given cultural resources management workshops for rangers and park personnel and other land managers and eco-tourism concerns. All archaeological projects, survey and excavation, are done in conjunction with community outreach and education efforts, including obtaining oral histories to learn more of early twentieth-century historic sites in Florida.

Kevin Yelvington

My efforts in public outreach have centered on teacher education. Since starting at USF in 1994, I have done a number of workshops for area social studies teachers on Latin America and the Caribbean. Prior to coming to USF, I was at Florida International University, where I was part of similar workshops through the Latin American and Caribbean Center there. In the summer of 2006, I will be involved in "The Humanities in Latin American and Caribbean Studies…A Key to the Past, Present, and Future," a summer institute held at USF for teachers, established with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The purpose of the 12-session workshop is to to train secondary school teachers of social studies and foreign language about the humanities-related content, issues, and cultures of Latin America and the Caribbean. In addition, I often speak on anthropology, African American issues, and on Latin America and the Caribbean in my daughters' elementary school classes.