Masters of Professional Studies in Civic Engagement, Final Projects
Persistent link for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/11299/250153
Search within Masters of Professional Studies in Civic Engagement, Final Projects
Browse
Recent Submissions
Item Community Playgroups as a Platform for Civic Engagement(2025) Kane, KaliThis study explores community playgroups' multifaceted role in creating stronger, healthier, and more resilient families and communities through research data and a case study of Tod Pod in Bloomington, Minnesota. In addition to the research, the project includes the creation of a toolkit for parents interested in forming a playgroup. Results show that community playgroups can support young children's developmental needs by providing a safe space to engage in play and opportunities for social activities. Playgroups can mitigate mental health issues in parents and caregivers by cultivating social connections and offering emotional support. Playgroups can also be credited with creating more civically engaged families by connecting them with their local communities. By improving developmental growth in children and parental well-being, community playgroups can be credited with long-term economic benefits for society by reducing government spending.Item How do Women's Organizations and Their Networks Foster Greater Women's Candidacies in Minnesota?(2024-12-11) Kashiwagi, AkikoThis study builds upon existing work on the role of campaign training programs offered by women’s organizations in the United States and is based on interviews with female state legislators and candidates in Minnesota. It examines the workings of these organizations broadly and how they foster an increasing number of women’s candidacies. Regarding nonpartisan liberal-leaning women’s organizations in the state, this project illustrates that their influence extends beyond individual-level empowerment. It suggests that these organizations nurture greater women’s candidacies not only by providing campaign training and recruiting candidates, but also by concurrently cultivating informal networks of individuals, including candidates, elected officials, and supporters, and conducting outreach and events to identify and encourage more women to run. This approach helps broaden the base of the potential candidate pool and bring more women into the political arena. This study also identifies a distinct role of relatively new nonpartisan conservative women’s organizations, which seek to address their disadvantages relative to liberal-leaning women, in contributing to candidate emergence. Partly reflecting changing demographics, interviews also reveal an emerging pathway, driven less by gender and more by candidates’ communities. Taken together, this project provides valuable insights for further research into the role of women’s organizations, particularly from a civic and political infrastructure perspective.Item Challenges to Starting a Cannabis Retail Dispensary in Minnesota(2024-12-11) Madden, JulieThis project investigates the best practices for Minnesota to adopt for its new Cannabis Retail Dispensary law. Retail Cannabis was legalized in 2023, and the Office of Cannabis Management developed operating procedures based on the experiences in other states. The research focuses on how Minnesota and Minneapolis can effectively support and assist license holders to help them succeed. I examined the other states' laws and identified the successful approaches. Given that the IRS currently regulates Cannabis as a dangerous, illegal drug, every state must work around those federal limitations. Minnesota chose to prioritize licenses first to disadvantaged, social equity applicants and those who had been harmed by past unfair marijuana arrests. My analysis shows that without previous business experience or technical training, most license applicants benefit from state-supported technical and business education programs. The neighborhood's support and community engagement with other local companies also enhanced the likelihood of cannabis business success.Item Walking United: Refugee Belonging through Social Exercise Platforms(2024-12-11) Moen, AnnieFederal refugee resettlement programs in the United States were inconsistent and insufficient to meet the social needs of refugees between 2016-2024. Because of this, much of the resettlement experience was dependent on the social welcome refugees received by their host communities, outside of mandated federal programs. I explored how discrimination, interpersonal communicative competence, and group walking influence refugees' perceived sense of belonging. I also coined the term “social exercise platform” to refer to spaces where people engage in both physical activity and community building. In this paper I sought to answer the following question: In what ways can participation in walking groups promote a sense of belonging for newly arrived refugees who are integrating into the Twin Cities community? I hypothesized that walking groups had the potential to foster belonging by providing spaces for multicultural human connections. Through a comparative case study of 10 social exercise platforms including my own participatory action, I found that social exercise platforms increased participants' sense of belonging, self-efficacy, and social networks. I identified barriers of financial burdens and childcare named considerations of religion, walking routes, recruitment, social events, and intercultural communication that affect participant retention and sense of fulfillment in these groups. Using the results of these data I created a set of design considerations for social exercise platforms to optimize refugees' sense of belonging in the resettlement process. Specifically, I crafted a startup plan for a group walking program called United Walkers Collective that puts the recommendations into practice.Item An Opportunity in Educational Engagement(2023-12) Block, Sequoia Baobab S. LarsonThis capstone focuses on both civic engagement and educational justice and has multiple components. One component includes an analysis of the Read Act legislation designed to guide reading instruction in Minnesota schools, enacted by the Minnesota State Legislature in 2023. I assert the Read Act places too much emphasis on evidence-based research and largely ignores student experience, motivation, and cultural diversity. Another component of the capstone includes me becoming a subject of the research by participating as a volunteer at a local school. In this role, I explore my positionality as a white man as well as the dominant role whiteness plays in educational spaces. I facilitated a cross-age tutoring experience in which students in grades four and five taught reading lessons to students in pre-kindergarten and kindergarten. I explore both academic and civic engagement aspects of these interactions and recognize potential benefits that cross-age tutoring has for both tutors and tutees.Item If “Context-onaries” Existed, How Might They be Used to Increase ‘Civic’ Engagement?(2022-12) Kafka, NanWords have no meaning without context. This paper explores, through literature review, observation and attendance at community meetings, development of a conceptual model of a personal context-onary, how a better understanding of a personal context could lead to increased civic participation. Civic is used in its broadest sense, meaning any activity that a person does (engages in) to assist another, is included in the context of civic. The paper did not include any survey or testing of the usefulness or applicability of a personal context-onary, or what would be different (benefits) if a community context-onary were created. The paper does provide a preliminary conceptual model that proposes a deeper embrace of the fullness of the context from which an individual emerges. The paper also includes a critical comparison of four district council websites from the perspective of how those websites encourage or discourage participation by looking at seven distinct elements, noting that only one website provides choice of language in which to view the website and states that it is open to the public.Item Holistic Healthcare: Recognizing traditional practices of the American Indian community(2022-12) Phan, Tia MyThe American Indian community has had traditional healing practices, herbs, and medicines to cure their people long before Western medicine dominated the landscape. This holistic approach to healthcare including these traditional practices and medicines were not included in what we see offered at Western clinics nor are they covered by health insurance companies in the United States. The purpose of this work was to personally observe to understand the marriage of traditional healing and spiritual care in a Western clinic setting. In order to increase the number of people being served in this holistic manner, I name a few recommendations including: adding traditional healing and/or spiritual care service components to other clinics and perhaps hospitals; creating a formal referral network for physicians, nurse practitioners, nurses, and other healthcare providers to use; creating a database of available traditional healing and spiritual care services in a geographic area for community members and organizations to use; and expanding the post-event participant surveys to collect more identifiable information and potential barriers to service their participants face to better serve the community.Item Sowing the Seeds of Peace in the Public-Schools via Esports Gaming with Gamers For Peace(2022-12) Shain, Kenneth S.Organized online computer gaming, now referred to as Esports, is rapidly gaining popularity in public schools across the nation. Though touted for its many useful benefits to special student populations hitherto excluded from more conventional athletic team sports, Esports also includes games of war and violence that are of great concern to parents, teachers, and administrators who are rightfully concerned about their impact on our culture, students’ academic performance, attendance, and social behavior. Moreover, with the violence in games, comes the incursion of the US military into the public-school classroom space taking maximum advantage of this wave of interest in what are called “first-person-shooter” (FPS) games to recruit young players into the military. This paper explores the kinds of strategies educators need to adopt to maintain a culture of peace in the school and classroom and minimize the use, promotion, or exploitation of violence by the military.