Projects
Active Projects
The UW-Whitewater Disability Justice Collective (DJC)
In early 2022, three University of Wisconsin–Whitewater undergraduate students (McKenna Meyer, Ashley Peterson, and Maggie Tienor) began an action research collective to improve disability services and supports on campus by exploring the experiences of college students with disabilities.
Completed Projects
Classroom-Based Participatory Action Research
This study is the research practicum component of a course taught by Matthew Wolfgram in the Department of Education Policy Studies at UW–Madison. With Wolfgram’s research mentorship, students engaged with advocates from the refugee communities in Madison to conduct a PAR project to identify ways to better support the resettlement and flourishing of refugees in our community. The first iteration of the course and PAR practicum was conducted in 2023 with refugee resettlement service providers with refugee backgrounds, and the second in 2024 with Palestinian immigrant community organizers.
Muslim American Experiences at Northeastern Illinois University
Researchers Matthew Wolfram and Brian Vivona are partnering with a group of four students who are members of the Muslim American Student Association at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago. The study will use semi-structured qualitative interviews to investigate the college and career preparation experiences of Muslim American students with different racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. The goals of the study are to identify the sociocultural and institutional factors that affect the success of Muslim American college students; these factors may include religious minoritization on campus, gender and other social dynamics in the Muslim community, and historical factors such as the post-9/11 War on Terror and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Documenting the Aims of Higher Education
This community-based participatory action research project was conducted in 2018 by a group of undergraduate students at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, mentored by researchers Bailey B. Smolarek and Matthew Wolfgram, to examine and document how Wisconsin residents view the aims of higher education in the state.
SEPARC is being funded by the racial equity grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed here are those of the UW-Madison Paj Ntaub research team and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation
