by Deborah Fagan, Communication Director, The Milwaukee Idea
Two collaborative projects that bring the community together with UW–Milwaukee were recently named winners of the 2003 Milwaukee Idea Awards. The annual tribute recognizes outstanding accomplishment in sustained community/university partnership, creative approaches to partnership building and work that contributes to the vitality of the community and to UWM as an urban research university. They are awarded by the UWM Alumni Association’s Emeritus Trustees Board.
This year’s winners were Project Ujima and the UWM Center for Technology Innovation in the School of Business Administration.
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Faculty members Bonita Klein-Tasman
(center) and Hobart Davies (far right) of the Psychology Department
lead UWM students in the Ujima counseling effort, and also collect
data for research.
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Project Ujima offers a wide array of services to adolescents treated at the Children’s Hospital Emergency Room for assault-related injuries. The project is a collaboration among Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, the Kujichagulia Lutheran Center, UWM’s Department of Psychology and the Medical College of Wisconsin to provide medical and psychological services to children and their families. Through research led by UWM faculty, it also seeks to understand why a disproportionate number of children with such injuries are repeatedly seen for emergency services and to reduce that number.
The UWM Center for Technology Innovation keeps Wisconsin businesses, industries and nonprofit organizations connected in the rapidly changing world of information technology. The center offers workshops on state-of-the-art information technology, on-site training programs and roundtables where metro Milwaukee companies share their best practices. It works with more than 18 industrial and community partners, among them the Brady Corporation, Briggs and Stratton, Johnson Controls, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Northwest Side Community Development Corporation and We Energies.
“These two outstanding collaborations strongly embody the goals and spirit of The Milwaukee Idea,” said Theodore J. LaTour, president of the Alumni Association’s Emeritus Board of Trustees. “Both are multidisciplinary in their approach and bring the community and university together in projects where energy and expertise are freely shared and the benefits are far-reaching.”