Today on GridgeFridge, we’re thrilled to welcome Laura Livingston, the Morgridge Center’s Community-Engaged Scholarship graduate fellow.

Laura is a fourth-year PhD student in the Environment and Resources Program within the Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies. With a background as an Agricultural Adviser in Ghana in the Peace Corps, Laura has a lot of experience working in community development and agricultural education.

She supports community-engaged learning and Community-based Research across different programs at the Morgridge Center, including the Wisconsin Idea Fellowship. The Wisconsin Idea Fellowship provides funding for undergraduate student projects working toward addressing a challenge identified with a local or global community partner.

Today on GridgeFridge, we’re excited to welcome Isa Hernandez-White and Bertha Gonzalez, two of four Community-based learning interns at the Morgridge Center.

Isa is a sophomore at UW–Madison majoring in psychology and Bertha is a junior majoring in human development and family studies and psychology. As Community-based Learning interns, Isa and Bertha help facilitate Community-based learning classes, also called CBL courses.

CBL courses incorporate at least 25 hours of meaningful community engagement with course content so you can get real-world experience as part of a for-credit class.

In this episode, we’ll talk with Isa and Bertha about how CBL courses work, the benefits of CBL courses, and how students can find a CBL course that is a perfect fit for them.

Today on GridgeFridge, we’re so excited to welcome Kathy Cramer, a UW–Madison political science faculty member and former faculty director of the Morgridge Center for Public Service. She started working at UW–Madison in 2000 and served as the Morgridge Center faculty director for three years. Kathy is well-known in the academic community for her research on individuals’ perception of their place in politics. Kathy helped develop the BadgersVote Coalition, which unites individuals and departments across the city of Madison to promote civic engagement on campus.

In this episode, we’ll catch up with Kathy about her research, her achievements during her time at the Morgridge Center, and different ways students can stay civically engaged on campus.

In this episode of GridgeFridge, we’re thrilled to welcome Francesca Hong, the state assembly representative for the greater Madison area. Before she was elected to office in 2020, Hong was an entrepreneur and restaurant owner. Hong opened up her first restaurant, Morris Ramen, in 2016 near the capitol.

As Hong’s network within the culinary world grew, she went on to found a network of female chefs and other professionals in the industry called the Culinary Ladies Collective. After watching social issues she cared about become exacerbated by the pandemic, Hong decided to run for assembly in hopes to spur change.

We’ll dive into Hong’s intertwined culinary and community work, her path to public service and how students can serve their communities with the unique talents they bring to the table.

In our second episode this season, we're thrilled to welcome Associated Students of Madison (ASM) Vice-Chair Lennox Owino.

Lennox is a junior at UW–Madison studying finance and actuarial sciences. An international student from Nairobi, Kenya, Lennox is a recipient of the prestigious King-Morgridge Scholarship, which is awarded to six international students every year. Lennox became involved in ASM on campus his freshman year, working his way up from an intern to the elected vice-chair of student council.

He is also a Wisconsin Idea Fellowship recipient, through which he will launch a portable library project in his hometown Nairobi to help make literacy materials accessible to lower-income communities in the city.

Today on GridgeFridge, we'll dig into Lennox’s work to tackle issues on ASM, his endeavors to start a portable library in Nairobi and ways students can get connected to community, whether they are on campus or thousands of miles away from Madison.

To kick off the first episode of our second season, we're ecstatic to welcome the City of Madison’s Deputy Mayor Reuben Sanon. Reuben interned at the Morgridge Center as a campus outreach intern during his undergrad at UW-Madison. After graduating from UW–Madison with degrees in journalism and political science, Reuben worked in the nonprofit sector in Michigan for a few years before returning to the Morgridge Center as the Badger Volunteers Coordinator.

In 2019, he went on to work for the City of Sun Prairie as the communications and diversity coordinator before he was selected by Mayor Sayta Rhodes-Conway to be one of her deputy mayors. Today on GridgeFridge, we'll dive into Reuben’s time at the Morgridge Center, his work across Madison fostering community-based partnerships and ways students can prepare themselves to pursue careers in public service.

On this episode of GridgeFridge, we'll be speaking with Anya Piotrowski, the Morgridge Center's Badger Volunteers Coordinator. Although Anya has only been at the center for a year, she has spent the past decade engaging in community-based work across the country, including working as an AmeriCorps VISTA member.

Now as the Badger Volunteers Coordinator, she oversees the semester-long program that pairs teams of students with community organizations to volunteer one to four hours each week to foster meaningful and consistent connections between communities, partners and students.

On today's episode, we'll be welcoming F.H King. F.H King is a student organization on the UW–Madison campus committed to sustainable agriculture. Run by a student directors board, F.H. King grows and harvests produce on a two-acre organic farm in the Eagle Heights area. They run a variety of virtual and in-person programs surrounding growing and harvesting, programming, community projects and activism.

In this episode, we’ll be learning about the Perspectives Project, which was awarded a 2021-22 Wisconsin Idea Fellowships. Wisconsin Idea Fellowships (WIF) are awarded annually to UW–Madison undergraduate projects working to address issues identified by local or global communities. 

Fellowships are awarded to semester-long or year-long projects designed by an undergraduate student or group of students in collaboration with a community organization and a UW faculty or staff member.

The Perspectives Project will collaborate with the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Dane County to provide a culturally sensitive mental health workshop series and social media campaign specific to Asian Americans and people of color as a mental health resource at UW–Madison. Today, we are here with Amita Doiphode, Anusha Ray Dey and Vaishnavi Gundamraj, the founders of the project.

In our final episode for the spring 2021 semester, we're ecstatic to welcome Millennial Action Project Founder Steven Olikara. Steven graduated from UW–Madison as a Truman Scholar in 2012 and went on to found Millennial Action Project — also known as MAP, for short. 

MAP is the largest nonpartisan organization of young lawmakers in the US working with over 1600 elected officials in Congress and state legislatures to encourage post-partisanship and innovative policy solutions across party lines. Steven has also worked for two multi-platinum recording artists on Global Youth Empowerment and sustainable energy.

Today on GridgeFridge, we'll dive into Steven's work in public service.