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Past CTP Fellows Leadership Laboratory
Each year, CTP Fellows participate in the "leadership laboratory." The leadership laboratory provides participants with an opportunity to explore their leadership skills. We seek to address issues of moral concern that cross the professions. This past year, we worked on issues of homelessness and poverty in Nashville, the role of the church & economic recovery, nutrition for at risk teens, the immigration and refugee population, and interpersonal violence. The leadership laboratories demand at least 30 hours of involvement, in partnership with other students to address significant social problems, by utilizing both leadership skills and professional expertise. Below you will find reflection papers written by our Fellows describing their projects.
2011-2012 Projects
2010-2011 Projects
2009-2010 Projects
2011-2012 Fellows Projects
Immigration and Refugee Support
CT Fellows: Melissa Skinner, Richard Clews, Asa Briggs, Eryka Gayle, Allyn Steele, Denny Nie
CT Alumni Fellow: Mikel Cole
Faculty Fellows: Carol Etherington and Alfredo Vergara
Project Proposal
Reflection Paper #1
Reflection Paper #2
Reflection Paper #3
Reflection Paper #4
Nashville Housing Trust
CT Fellows: Emily Rowell, Dan Angius, Meghan Rowland, Karishma Merchant, Billy Sullivan, Rachel Ruiz, Todd Lagus
CT Alumni Fellows: Katie Knies, Lindsey Krinks, Geraldine Young
Faculty Fellow: Claire Smrekar
Building on last year's Cal-Turner Fellows project, which examined Housing Trust Funds in Charlotte, NC and Indianapolis, IN, this year's team seeks to build on best practices in order to address Nashville's shortage of low-income housing. Over the course of the year, fellows will target key leaders in the Nashville community and city government to examine the political and financial climate in an effort to determine the strongest course of action. Through this process of working with neighborhood and housing advocacy organizations, established housing commissions, entrepreneurs, and government officials, we will create a solidified proposal for the Nashville city council. It is our intention that this proposal will serve as the framework for consideration of a Nashville Housing Trust Fund in the fiscal year of 2012-2013.
Project Proposal
Reflection Paper #1
Reflection Paper #2
Reflection Paper #3
Reflection Paper #4
Reflection Paper #5
Reflection Paper #6
New Transitions
CT Fellows: Valisa Berber-Thayer, Courtnee Reid, and Joseph Ojibway
Faculty Fellow: Graham Reside
Our group of Cal Turner Fellows is partnered with a new Nashville non-profit called New Transitions. The goal of this organization is to provide a living situation and assistance to individuals who have aged out of the foster care system in the hopes of providing a support network and getting them on their feet. To aid them in this endeavor, our group is putting together a series of modules in partnership with the different Vanderbilt graduate schools. These will include an extension of the Vanderbilt Legal Aid Society’s Street Law program to teach the residents about their legal rights in various contexts; a series of workshops on personal finance topics; workshops on sex education, nutrition, and fitness; math tutoring; and journaling workshops, to name a few. The workshops will be implemented, with feedback from the program participants, in Spring of 2012.
Reflection Paper #1
Reflection Paper #2
Reflection Paper #3
Social Entrepreneurship
CT Fellows: Zac Carmichael, Samuel Frank, Shaka Dickerson, Elizabeth Ehly, Mario Avila, Daniel Horwitz
Faculty Fellow: Bart Victor
This CTP fellows group seeks to integrate support for social enterprises within the existing framework of Nashville's Entrepreneur Center. By forming relationships with the leaders of the Center and interviewing experts in social enterprises throughout Nashville and other cities, we hope to form a definition of social entrepreneurship that will enable and promote entrepreneurs to creatively develop business models that focus on social welfare. We not only seek to produce publishable material but also to establish a foundation for future CTP groups to develop their own social enterprises through the Center.
Project Proposal
Reflection Paper #1
Response Paper #2
Response Paper #3
Response Paper #4
2010-2011 Fellows Projects
Interpersonal Violence
CT Fellows: Elizabeth Morse, Courtney Massaro, Courtney Williams, Kristin Ware, Kelley Frances Fenelon
Knowing the role that the professions represented by the Cal Turner Fellows have in preventing and responding to interpersonal violence, this fellows group created an opportunity for members of the Vanderbilt and Nashville community to gather with representatives from each of the graduate schools at Vanderbilt who can speak from experience. The event initiated a conversation about how each profession has a unique role to play in preventing and responding to power-based interpersonal violence and worked to discover how we can complement each others' efforts. Professors and professionals in each field led our discussion by recounting their view of their professional role in addressing interpersonal violence and then by responding to a case study.
Interpersonal Violence Paper Response 1
Interpersonal Violence Paper Response 2
Interpersonal Violence Paper Response 3
Interpersonal Violence Paper Response 4
Church and Economic Recovery
CT Fellows: Timothy Lessler, Shane Magee, Logan Van Meter, Jimmy Squibb
Our group of CTP Fellows brought together experts from a variety of disciplines, including business, law, and ministry, for a roundtable discussion. At the roundtable, we worked to answer how the church can intercept, intervene, interrupt, and intercede in the public economy. Using Grace Church in Cape Coral, Florida as a model, our experts identified ideas for supporting mission and ministry through socially beneficial and innovative roles of the church in the local economy, along with the risks, benefits, and mechanics of running such programs.
Church and Economic Recovery Paper Response 1
Church and Economic Recovery Paper Response 2
Church and Economic Recovery Paper Response 3
Oasis Center Nutrition Project
CT Fellows: Amrita Dutta-Gupta, Tonya Ogden, Matt Kynes, Elizabeth Coyle
The Cal Turner Program acknowledges lack of food access and nutrition education in urban Nashville, which contribute to the concentrate of health risks in lower-income residential areas. Thus, the Oasis Center Nutrition Project is designed to be an on-going educational and experiential program, developed collaboratively by Cal Turner Fellows and the Oasis Center’s Emergency Center for at-risk youth. Over the course of the year, Fellows have developed replicable, informal curricula based on the films King Corn and Supersize Me. They have worked with teenage residents to shop for local, sustainable food and then prepare a community meal. They have helped implement and maintain a community garden. In these and other ways, the Cal Turner program is providing youth with informal nutrition education and instilling in Oasis residents an interest in food production and consumption to the betterment of their minds and bodies.
Oasis Center Nutrition Paper Response 1
Oasis Center Nutrition Paper Response 2
Oasis Center Nutrition Paper Response 3
Oasis Center Nutrition Paper Response 4
Nashville Housing Trust
CT Fellows: Israel Ovalle, Geraldine Young, Katie Knies, Lindsey Krinks
In order to address Nashville’s shortage of low-income housing, our group worked with city leaders toward the goal of establishing a Housing Trust Fund (HTF) here. HTFs provide a dedicated source of funding for the development and construction of desperately needed low-income housing units. There are over 600 HTFs in the United States, and as a part of our project, we visited Charlotte and Indianapolis and interviewed city leaders about their HTFs. Working on this project has been a wonderful experience and we hope that another group of fellows will work with this project in the fall!
Nashville Housing Trust Paper Response 1
Nashville Housing Trust Paper Response 2
Nashville Housing Trust Paper Response 3
Nashville Housing Trust Paper Response 4
Connecting New Nashvillians
CT Fellows: Heather Graham, Jack Arnold, Christopher Keyes, Daniel Robbins
This particular project consists of a directory that was predominantly organized by last year's CTP fellows. This year, we worked on ways to make the directory more presentable and user friendly, while speaking with various organizations working within the immigrant community to increase awareness of the directory, and to pass the directory on to another organization to sustain well into the future.
2009-2010 Fellows Projects
Women in Leadership Project
- Women in Leadership Paper Response 1
- Women in Leadership Paper Response 2
- Women in Leadership Paper Response 3
- Women in Leadership Paper Response 4
Connect with the Cal Turner Program