CURCI is a UTK endeavor charged with making a greater contribution to addressing social problems in the Knoxville community through community-defined collaborative research projects. CURCI works to join community expertise with the research excellence of UTK through funded collaborative research projects.
CURCI was established following research Dr. Jon Shefner and Dr. Lisa East completed in 2020 and 2021 with community organization leaders and UTK faculty and staff. Their research with community leaders showed that: community members want to work with UTK, but few opportunities exist; community members sometimes find collaborations insufficiently benefit the community; and, community members have no centralized way to contact interested researchers. Their research with UTK faculty and staff showed that: many faculty want to work with the Knoxville community, but feel overwhelmed and overworked by other duties; faculty who pursue engagement often feel that work isn’t recognized or rewarded by the university; and, faculty who want to pursue engagement have no centralized way to contact interested community organizations. CURCI’s establishment was born from these results as an effort to address these desires and concerns through programming, institutional change, and funding of community-defined research projects.
Read the Reports
Shefner and East (2020) found that community organizations in Knoxville wanted to work with UTK but there was no accessible avenue to figure out how.
Shefner and East (2021) found that UTK faculty and staff want to work with community but many do not know how to get in connect with community members to collaborate.