Community Partners in Residence (CPR) Program – Meeting 2

On Tuesday, December 5, 2023, The NSF Center for Smart StreetScapes (CS3) held its second Community Partners in Residence (CPR) Program workshop. Ester Fuchs, Chief Social Impact Officer of the CS3 and Professor of International and Public Affairs and Political Science at Columbia University convened the workshop and moderated the discussion. She opened the conversation with an overview of the role of CPRs at the Center and invited everyone to introduce themselves. Lynda Hamilton, the CPR Community Engagement Manager organized the workshop and has been working closely with community partners to ensure that the CPR program has effective community representation. As a result, since the first meeting, the CPR list has grown to include 2 more members of the Harlem community.

After introductions, Andrew Smyth, Center Director & Principal Investigator, kicked off presentations by providing an overview of the research being conducted at the Center. He highlighted that the mission is to create livable, safe, and inclusive communities through real time, hyper-local streetscape applications. As opposed to macro-level research, the Center focuses on local level innovation built through partnerships to improve live on streetscape for all. There are five current focus areas including, road safety, public safety, assistive technology, the future of outdoor
work, and hyper-local environmental sensing. The community engagement fostered within the CPR program will serve as the mechanism for inspiration to influence these focus areas.

Following Andrew was a presentation by Jennifer Laird, Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Lehman College and Deputy Director of Inclusive Education. Jennifer outlined the workforce development and K-12 education programs that CS3 has developed including the Research Experience for Teachers (RET) program which gives local high school teachers the opportunity to do research over the summer and bring that experience back into the classroom during the school year. Additionally, CS3’s My Streetscape Summer Research Institute gives local high school juniors and undergraduate students mentoring opportunities in engineering research as well as the social sciences by offering hands-on training in the lab and social science research in the community. Both programs offer participants a stipend as part of the process. CS3 hopes that the CPR program can facilitate recruitment for these programs from their networks, fostering a virtuous, and immediate, cycle of impact. Registration and more information about opportunities found through these links:

Teachers – https://cs3-erc.org/research-experience-for-teachers/
High School Students – https://cs3-erc.org/my-streetscape-summer-research-institute/
Undergrad Students – https://cs3-erc.org/research-experiences-for-undergraduates/

Next, Sharon Sputz, Industry Outreach Lead of CS3 and Executive Director of Strategic Programs at Columbia’s Data Science Institute provided background on CS3’s business partnerships, the value it provides to CS3’s research, and opportunities & memberships available for participants.

Lastly, Barbara Askins, President & CEO, 125th Business Improvement District, and Senior Advisor for CS3 offered an overview and goals of the partnership with the community. She emphasized the need to be able to educate the community, bringing together the technology and the community. She also noted that there is immense potential for harnessing the energy of Harlem, to think differently about how to engage with the community, how to bring in their perspective, and how to apply the technology to the real world. There are great opportunities to learn from both sides, so the partnership isn’t just a one way street. Ideally, by the end of the experience the researchers will be able to incorporate Harlem’s identity into the tech, not just the tech into Harlem.

After presentations concluded, the CPRs had an opportunity to offer their own insights. First by filling out a one-page survey about what such a partnership might look like; and then by breaking into 3 groups of 4 people each to discuss what the program will have to do to ensure the partnership is impactful. From the breakout groups, the insights were shared with the larger group. CPRs connected with one another, offering perspectives from the slice of the community they represented and filled several white boards with ideas. The activity was insightful, engaging, and fun! Themes from the discussion that were shared by each group included: having a safe place to express fears and concern, meeting the community where they are at, listening and building trust, transparency, and developing ongoing communication. A deeper review of the ideas, initial thoughts, and hopes expressed by the CPRs in the survey will be conducted by the CS3 team and shared in a future meeting.

CPR workshops are invite-only. If you are interested in attending a workshop or learning more about CS3’s community engagement process, please contact our team at streetscapes@columbia.edu.