The students in Janel Benson’s Community-Based Research course present their work to staff members of Community Action.

Colgate students in Professor Janel Benson’s Community-Based Participatory Research course partnered with Community Action Partnership (CAP) in spring 2016 to evaluate their now 10-year youth mentoring program. This important program provides Madison County youth who face adversity with up-to 18 months of weekly mentoring with an experienced adult. Before beginning the evaluation, students did an onsite visit at CAP to talk with program coordinators about their goals. Students then worked as a team to construct a detailed electronic database from nearly 10 years of program records containing student outcome information collected at several time points throughout the mentoring experience.They then analyzed these data using statistical software and presented their results to CAP program coordinators.  The results of the evaluation reveal that youth who participated in the mentoring program showed positive growth in resiliency, planfulness, and aspirations toward the future, with these patterns most pronounced for youth who developed a strong relationship with their mentor.

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Written by Holly Mascolo ’17

Holly Mascolo ’17 enjoying a peanut butter and jelly lunch party with co-workers

Growing up in a suburban community on Long Island, I never had to think twice about grocery shopping. I would wake up to a refrigerator full of fresh vegetables, meat, and milk. If we ever needed any more food, or to pick up something quickly, my parents would drive less than five minutes away to one of the three grocery stores within a five-minute drive from our house. I never stopped to consider a scenario different from this or to think about how fortunate I really was.

The first time I heard the phrase “food security” was my sophomore year at Colgate. Lots of communities– and in particular, low-income communities– lack access to fresh grocery items in their area. This often leaves individuals with no choice but to shop at nearby convenience stores for the quick items that they need, or to travel far distances out of their communities to shop. However, leaving the immediate area is not always a viable option for individuals, especially the elderly or those who do not have access to a car or other means of transportation. These communities where individuals lack access to fresh food and a variety of groceries are thus considered food insecure. According to the USDA (2015), food deserts are typically defined as communities that are low-income and have low-access to fresh foods, normally located one mile away from a supermarket in urban areas and ten miles in rural areas. ¹ Living in a food secure area my entire life left me fairly oblivious to this issue until I began to learn about it in my environmental studies classes at Colgate.

The issue of food insecurity can be found right in Madison County. In May of last year, the only grocery store in Morrisville closed its doors, leaving residents in the area to travel seven or more miles to the nearest grocery store in Hamilton, or further to other neighboring grocery stores. While Morrisville is not technically considered a food desert, this lack of a grocery store is seen as a problem within the community. It is especially a challenge for individuals who lack access to transportation, which means mainly the elderly, students at the nearby college, or those who struggle to travel far in the winter weather. There is a certain irony to the fact that Morrisville is nearly classified as a food desert, as there are so many farms in the local area and so many opportunities for fresh food to be purchased during the growing season in Upstate NY. However, without the retail infrastructure in place to bring food to individuals in Morrisville, it is difficult for people to access the foods that they need to lead a healthy lifestyle without leaving the community. Read more

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Written by Erin Burke, ’18

Erin Burke ’18 with part of her finished exhibit at the Society

When you walk into a museum, the exhibits are neatly finished, cleanly executed, and seem almost timeless. The narrative presented to you speaks with the authority of fact. Blockaded behind glass cases and signs that say, “Please do not touch,” the artifacts take on a certain mysticism that often accompanies things that are “forbidden.” So how do those objects get there? Who chooses them? This summer, Erin Burke ’18 got to explore what happens behind-the-scenes at the Oneida County Historical Society. Read more

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Contributed by Jeffrey Marr, ’18

Jeffrey Marr ’18 at Hudson Headwaters Health Network, Warrensburg, NY

This summer I had the opportunity to work as an intern with Hudson Headwaters Health Network through the Upstate Institute’s Field School. Hudson Headwaters is a large non-profit health network in the Adirondack region that covers an area of around 5,000 square miles and serves a population of around 80,000 people. Hudson Headwaters provides comprehensive and coordinated healthcare services to this population including primary care, urgent care and specialty services. In doing so, it seeks to provide each person with access to quality preventative care to ensure that they, and the population as a whole, are as healthy as possible. Hudson Headwaters serves a rural area that is at risk of being under-served by the healthcare system. While Hudson Headwaters serves a heterogeneous patient population, many of its patients are low-income and are at risk of falling through the cracks. To combat this, Hudson Headwaters provides millions of dollars worth of uncompensated care and pharmacy discounts every year. Read more

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Contributed by Ashlea Raemer ’18

Ashlea Raemer ’18

Madison County is home to one of the strongest agricultural communities in New York with agriculture being the base of the county’s economy. In 2005 this community created the Madison County Agriculture and Farmland Protection Plan that cited four main goals, one of which was agriculture economic development. This led to the creation of the Agriculture Economic Development (AED) program in 2006 when the county funded the AED specialist position, housed out of Madison County Cornell Cooperative Extension, and created the Agriculture Advisory Committee to serve as directors for the AED program. The AED program focuses on marketing Madison County agriculture, assisting farmers, and attracting new farmers to the area.

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Contributed by Luke Felty, ’18

Luke Felty ’18 and the Partnership for Community Development in Hamilton

According to the 2012 Census of Agriculture, there are over 800 farms in Madison County. Dairy, beef, eggs, and produce; ­­there’s a huge supply of food being grown right here, but how much of that food gets consumed here? Direct to consumer sales, like farmers markets, offer an important outlet for small farms, but why aren’t there more restaurants featuring products from some of these 800 farms? Working alongside the Partnership for Community Development (PCD), I set out to help identify the barriers to local food access that make local food systems more difficult to interact with than traditional systems of distribution. The PCD is a not for profit economic development agency, but what does local food have to do with economic development? Why should we want local food in our area restaurants anyway?

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Dr. Andrew Pattison, Visiting Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, has been named the Gretchen Hoadley Burke ’81 Endowed Chair in Regional Studies for the 2016-17 academic year. Pattison is coming to Colgate from California Lutheran University, and had degrees from Skidmore College and the University of Colorado Denver (UCD) School of Public Affairs.

Pattison was awarded a National Science Foundation IGERT grant to pursue a PhD at UCD’s School of Public Affairs through the interdisciplinary Sustainable Urban Infrastructure program. He completed a dissertation, “An Examination of Policy and Political Learning: A Study of Colorado Climate and Energy Policy Actors” and completed a Ph.D in Public Affairs in 2015. His research interests include: public policy, sustainability, climate change, policy process theories, the role of science and technical information in policy-making, and issues of urban social equity. His articles have appeared in Society & Natural Resources, Policy Studies Journal, Environmental Science & Policy, Journal of Industrial Ecology, and the Canadian Political Science Review.

At Colgate, Pattison will be teaching ENST 241: Sustainability and Climate Action, and a seminar in Environmental Studies (ENST 490).

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This post was written by Lydia Ulrich ’16

Lydia Ulrich ’16 in front of Bassett Hospital

When Professor Ellen Kraly approached me last fall and asked if I would be interested in producing geographic information systems (GIS) maps for Dr. Richard Brown, a psychiatrist at Bassett Medical Center, I had no idea that nearly a year later this independent study would turn in to the opportunity to work directly with Bassett Research Institute. My field school fellowship arose as an opportunity to continue the efforts of this independent study project with Dr. Brown and Professor Kraly as my advisors and Bassett Research Institute as my community partner for the summer. Bassett Research Institute is part of the Bassett Healthcare Network and is located at Bassett Medical Center, an acute care inpatient teaching facility in Cooperstown, New York. Bassett Healthcare Network is an integrated health care system that includes six corporate affiliated hospitals and a regional network that provides preventive, primary and specialty outpatient care at 28 rural health clinics and 19 school-based health centers in nine counties across Upstate New York.

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This post was written by Jackie Hanrahan ’18

Jackie Hanrahan ’18 at the IRT

Despite the recent political activity surrounding health care in the United States, many people continue to struggle finding affordable and accessible health insurance. In particular, those in rural areas – including much of Central New York – are unable to see a doctor regularly, and have little to no access to dental, vision, and other
specialty health fields. This summer, Jackie Hanrahan ’18 has been working with the Chenango United Way to help bring medical services to the Greater Chenango County area.
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This post was written by Catherine Quirion ’17

The Madison County Council on Alcoholism and Substance Abuse’s mission is to improve the quality of life of Madison county residents by providing much-needed services for individuals and families affected with problems regarding substance abuse.

Cat Quirion ’17 participating in one of the Hamilton Area Community Coalition events

Within their Oneida office, BRiDGES covers an impressive realm of services, including tobacco use, alcoholism, different illicit substances use, as well as suicide prevention and overall physical and mental health.

The different programs within BRiDGES better the community through both the delivery of prevention as well as intervention programs. These programs have played a significant role in creating and promoting a healthy environment for our community ever since their start in 1985.

One big issue that is extremely relevant nowadays for the organization is the increase in marijuana use due to different societal factors, namely, that marijuana is starting to become legal in more and more states. This is where my work at BRiDGES begins. For this summer, my main task is to gather data on marijuana in the county, data that involves both use and opinions on the topic of marijuana use and potential legalization. Through speaking with different health professionals in the county, as well as many residents, I have been able to get a better understanding of the ways in which marijuana use is perceived by the population in Madison County. By the end of the summer, my task will be to compile the data I have gathered into a short report, in order to make the data more readily available to anyone interested in the topic of marijuana use.

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