Preconference

What does it mean to do research with urgency? This preconference session takes up that question in response to the newly released Global Research Agenda for Service-Learning and Community Engagement, a framework designed to focus and energize scholarly inquiry at a critical moment for the field.

Open to scholars at every stage of the academic journey, this session creates a platform for engaged, collaborative scholarship to take root across generations. Participants will engage the priorities and possibilities of the Global Research Agenda through interactive dialogue and structured networking, connect with potential collaborators across institutional and national contexts, and learn about pathways for involvement. The cross-generational connections that form in sessions like this one are often among the most generative a scholar can make. Now is not the time to work in isolation. Come ready to meet your next co-author, your next collaborator, and your next community of practice.

Facilitated by Nicole Webster, IARSLCE Scholar-in-Residence and Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and Faculty Affairs in the College of Health and Human Development at Pennsylvania State University,

Artificial intelligence holds the potential to benefit society in numerous areas, including health, the economy, education, and public safety. However, ensuring that the benefits of AI are shared equitably among society and reducing any potential harmful effects is of critical importance given the concentration of technical capacities into the hands of a few, often highly educated practitioners; long-standing socio-technical challenges of algorithmic discrimination, transparency, and accountability that underpin all AI systems; leading to a pervasive mistrust of AI technology by the public.

At Tulane University we’ve established the Center for Community Engaged Artificial Intelligence in order to place community co-creation at the center of how we do research and build computational systems. Our close partnerships with various New Orleans based non-profits and the Tulane Center for Public Service allows us to bring together our community, students, and researchers to learn and work together. As part of this workshop we will cover both best practices from the broader research community as well as what we have done and what we have learned about how to build systems in partnership with the community to address their critical needs, and work with them to deliver positive impact.

Facilitated by:

• Nicholas Mattei, Associate Professor of Computer Science at Tulane University and Co-Director of the Tulane Center for Community Engaged AI

• Saad Hassan, Assistant Professor in the School of Science and Engineering at Tulane University

While great work has been done in SLCE student assessment, less attention has been directed to the needs, goals, desires and perspectives of community partners. We offer this pre-conference session to a range of practitioners and scholars along the scale of new-to-the-field to advanced. To cover this range of interest, we acknowledge existing measures that capture impact of, by and with community partners and weave these into hands-on activities that allow for reflection and action specific to each participant's context. We are interested in participants realizing that protocols already exist, that they have lived experiences to share that might not yet be captured in the academic literature, and that they should feel empowered to go through a process of choosing what works best for them.

Facilitated by the members and core staff of Community-Based Global Learning Collaborative:

• Amanda Wittman, Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Global and Integrative Studies at Worcester Polytechnic Institute

• Mat Gendle, Faculty Director for the Odyssey Program and the Center for Access and Success, and Professor of Psychology at Elon University

• Sarah Stanlick, Associate Dean of the Global School and Associate Professor, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

• Mike Bishop, Managing Director of the Community-Based Global Learning Collaborative

• Additional presenters to be added, including both university- and community-based educators