Morgridge Honors Distinguished Community Partners
Morgridge College recognized the innovative service of community partners at this year’s Appreciation Breakfast held in the MCE Commons. This annual event seeks to honor this group that inspires, mentors, and partners with MCE to provide enriching opportunities for students while bringing about social impact in a variety of community and educational settings.
Learn more about the 2018 Honorees:
Department of Counseling Psychology: Denver Jails Correctional Psychology Program
The Denver Jails support opportunities for our students to provide individual and group therapy to incarcerated men and women. In addition to this unique clinical placement, with a myriad of diagnoses, presenting problems and intersecting traumas, the Denver Jails correctional psychology team is dedicated to providing outstanding individual and group supervision. Our students have opportunities not only to learn about the intricacies of counseling with an underserved population, but also to learn about the dynamics of intersecting a system of criminal justice and health care that impacts the mental health and well-being of their clients. We appreciate and acknowledge the efforts of the psychology team in their support of the professional development of these emerging clinicians.
Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies: Amy Keltner, Deputy Chief of Schools, Denver Public Schools
The goal of the Tiered School Supports team is to accelerate improvement in the highest needs schools in order to increase the number of students with access to high performing schools in Denver Public Schools. The team does this through alignment of supports, resources, and interventions to a school’s unique needs, and through partnering with the community to design new or innovative high performing district schools. They partner with schools, district departments, network teams, communities, and other partners to develop and implement improvement strategies that will result in dramatic gains for all students.
Department of Higher Education: Campus Compact of the Mountain West
>Campus Compact of the Mountain West is a membership organization of college and university presidents devoted to promoting civic learning. They have served as an invaluable resource to Higher Education students by acting as an important link to the national Campus Compact and the Colorado Civic Health Network, as well as providing opportunities, such as AmeriCorps leadership jobs. The initiatives of the Compact align well with Morgridge’s overall goal to investigate how institutions embed civic and democratic commitments.
Department of Research Methods and Information Science: Museo de las Americas
Museo de las Americas is a fine arts museum in Denver, Colorado. It is dedicated to educating the community through collecting, preserving, interpreting, and exhibiting the diverse arts and cultures of the Americas, from ancient to contemporary. The Museo offers cultural workshops, professional development for educators, and summer camps for children. The Museo was selected as one of the honorees this year because of their close alliance with Dr. Bruce Uhrmacher’s work in the arts and aesthetics. Since 2005, the Museo provided Bruce’s classes with special tours of the museum, offered space for seminars, and hosted Morgridge internships.
Department of Teaching and Learning Sciences: Colorado African Organization
The Colorado African Organization is a nonprofit agency located in Denver whose mission is to “support Colorado’s migrant – refugee, immigrant, and asylum-seeking – populations in their pursuit of integration, self-sufficiency, and freedom.” From its inception, CAO has been at the forefront in promoting the role of Community Navigators – who are former refugees with a deep appreciation of the resiliency displayed and the challenges faced by newcomer families and students, as they adjust to new systems in our country, including our public education policies, practices, and expectations. This award reflects our sincere gratitude and appreciation of the insights willingly provided by the Community Navigators at CAO over the last nine years and their help arranging meaningful preservice, social-bridging experiences between our students and newcomer families.