Knowlton faculty Beth Blostein, Associate Professor of Architecture, and Kimberly Burton, Assistant Professor of City and Regional Planning, have been awarded Ohio State University 2014 Engagement Impact Grants. The university’s Office of Outreach and Engagement Impact Grant program supports the application of innovative and creative scholarship to address important societal challenges, and fulfills Ohio State’s land-grant university commitment to public service by partnering with communities to address challenges of local, national and global significance. This year, seven programs received Engagement Impact Grant funding totaling $300,000.

Blostein’s proposal, “Bold Booths: A New Strategy to Engage Columbus and its Infrastructures,” was awarded an Impact Grant of $60,000, while Burton’s proposal, developed with  CRP Professor and Associate Dean Jennifer Evans-Cowley, “Ghana Sustainable Change Program,” was awarded a $45,000 grant. CRP Lecturer and program alumnus Jason Reece, Director of Research at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, also received an impact grant for his project “Inclusive and Equitable Neighborhood Revitalization on Columbus' Southside: A University and Community Partnership to Assure Diversity and Inclusion in the Neighborhood's Renaissance.”

Below are summaries of the Blostein and Burton projects:

Bold Booths: A New Strategy to Engage Columbus and its Infrastructures

The project interjects thought-provoking and functional architectural installations in downtown Columbus' more banal spaces: surface parking lots. It involves collaboration between faculty and students from the university with other organizations supporting ColumbusPublicArt, as well as leading professional designers. These new booths, once valued merely for their ability to watch over vehicles in exchange for dollar bills and credit card swipes, will become exchange points in the city for exploration of public art.

Partners:

OSU Austin E. Knowlton School of Architecture
OSU College of Engineering
OSU College of Arts and Sciences
Capital Crossroads Special Improvement District

Ghana Sustainable Change Program

This is an interdisciplinary service-learning study abroad program that provides culturally sensitive, localized district planning to assist the Offinso North District in meeting the challenges of population growth. The program focuses on working hand-in-hand with the community, that includes a pre-travel, interdisciplinary group of undergraduate and graduate OSU students to determine a series of focus projects including housing, mapping and land use planning, water, sanitation, public health, agriculture, and more. In May session, students travel to the Offinso North District to implement these projects in collaboration with local teams of District staff and university students from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology.

Partners:

OSU College of Engineering
OSU Austin E. Knowlton School of Architecture
OSU College of Public Health
OSU Center for African Studies
OSU School of Environmental and Natural Resources
OSU Fisher College of Business
OSU Office of International Affairs