jshefner@utk.edu
Jon Shefner
Director
Jon serves as director of the Community-University Research Collaboration Initiative (CURCI) and is a Professor of Sociology at UT. He proposed the creation of CURCI after research with Dr. Lisa East revealed two important findings: the Knoxville community has a variety of needs, and they are interested in working with UT faculty to resolve those needs; and UT faculty are interested in working in the Knoxville community but there is little university infrastructure and few incentives to facilitate that work.
Jon’s vision is that CURCI will establish meaningful and enduring collaborations between UT and the Knoxville community and help address the needs of community members, especially from disadvantaged communities. Jon also hopes CURCI will help move the university into new roles in Knoxville, and continue to fulfill the duties of a flagship, land-grant university in an increasingly urban state. Jon has written and taught about social movement and labor organizing, the informal economy, immigration, globalization and austerity, and civil society.
eeast2@vols.utk.edu
Lisa East
Associate Director
Lisa serves as associate director of the Community-University Research Collaboration Initiative (CURCI). Lisa was instrumental in CURCI’s development, working closely with Dr. Jon Shefner to conduct evidence-based research that revealed the need for more community collaborative research at UT. Through CURCI, she works with local organizations to find faculty on campus to conduct research projects on pressing community-defined issues and needs. CURCI is a project that blends many of Lisa’s passions: organizational development, bringing people together, and utilizing research for social change.
Lisa considers herself a practical sociologist, working to connect theory to praxis with her students, colleagues, and collaborators. Throughout her education and career, she has been active in social movement organizations. She credits that activity as an anchor for shaping and sharpening her research trajectory, which focuses on organizational development, change, and decline and the internal and external contexts that encourage these processes. Her mind is always on and in the minutia as much as it is in the big picture of social change. She teaches social movements, gender in society, introduction to sociology, and internship in sociology.