Research Project Information

Vibrant Communities: Community Wealth

Siena has partnered with AVillage, Inc. and other key community stakeholders to gather community input for various AVillage initiatives. While this partnership started to advance a grocery store initiative, it quickly moved to more general wealth building support leading to the expansion of the South End Night Market (SENM) and the creation of the Nascent Black Entrepreneur Fellows Program.

The four-pillar approach to building community wealth is a culmination of best practice and academic research, pop-up and traditional focus groups, review of community documents, and interviews with community thought leaders.

Summer 2021 Accomplishments:

• Creation of a community garden table that partially sources from community gardeners to bring fresh fruit and vegetables to the South End Night Market
• Completion of a feasibility study for the implementation of a Community Investment Trust in Albany
• Piloted an online purchasing system for the South End Night Market
• Increased social media engagement on the SENM pages

Next Steps:

• Build the cultural elements of the South End Night Market
• Further develop connections to community gardeners for the Market table
• Purchase a CIT building and implement the Albany CIT

Contacts: Ruth Kassel

Apothecary Gardening 

The medicinal plant and apothecary garden project focuses on building community partnerships around a deep connection with the earth, human health, and well-being. Community organizations that are already involved in gardening tend to focus on culinary and aesthetic properties of plants. Our mission is to learn from, share with, and work alongside communities which are interested in the medicinal properties of plants that grow abundantly in our region. By building apothecary gardens and sharing knowledge freely, we hope to inspire others to look closely at their own health and well-being as well the health and well-being of the community around them.

Summer 2021 Accomplishments:

• Installation of two apothecary gardens: Interfaith Garden Cooperative in Saratoga and Albany Victory Gardens in Albany
• Creation of 40 monograph entries with information about the qualities, taxonomy, uses, and research on 40 different plant species
• Creation of 20 plant tags for use in the new gardens
• Held two educational herbarium sessions for the AmeriCorps team and the Saratoga partner

Next Steps:

• Further extend this project with more garden installations next summer with additional community partners; build partnerships and gaining trust for further collaboration
• Offer more educational sessions and community building activities centered on healing medicinal gardens and to study the impact of this work

Contacts: Dan White or Donnean Thrall

Just Urban Transitions: food, climate and justice

The partnership builds on the existing community resilience and need for justice in the South End of Albany. Amidst ongoing challenges of systemic racism, inequality, climate change and the ongoing pandemic, the aim is to increase local food security and mutual support networks.

Teams apply a social justice analysis to urban ecology and, using a sociological framework, explore the emergent concept of “urban ecosystem justice.” They examine the material needs of city residents and possible ways to regenerate urban socio- ecological health through their research. The team also assists the Radix EcoJustice summer youth employment program. Using the youth participatory action research (YPAR) method, fellows engage youth in documenting ecological conditions in the South End, culminating in the creation and presentation of visual, recorded and written information to benefit the local community and create positive social change.

Summer 2021 Accomplishments:

• Organized applied activities including urban gardening, composting, food distribution, beekeeping, agroforestry management, construction, and street tree planting
• Conducted community-based research, sociological field note-taking, youth engagement and education, and group reading and discussion
• Held an open-house event where the public was invited into the Radix space to learn about the activities and accomplishments of the group. 

Next Steps:

• Host weekly open houses that draw upon visitors to the weekly South End Night Market
• Continue the community-based interviews related to the Innovation Blocks Program as well as the Pandemic Resilience and EcoSystem Justice Project
• Advance the IRB-approved data collection involving Participatory Action Research (PAR), conduct data analysis and final write-up for eventual publication

Contacts: Scott Kellogg or Griffin R. Lacy 

Refugee Voice: Asset Mapping and Social Cohesion in West Hill

The goal of asset mapping in Albany’s West Hill neighborhood is to heal socioeconomic fractures by engaging directly with local residents. These mapping activities involve community-based research, civic engagement and critical refugee studies. Through this process, the community strengths and needs articulated by diverse West Hill residents will be collected to create a narrative map. 

Asset mapping is a research methodology that addresses sites of contention in local communities. Trust is built by offering educational community activities for local residents such as college access workshops, neighborhood gardening, mural painting, English language classes, health and wellness events, and organized team sports such as soccer, running, dance and taekwondo. This enables the SPIn team to create, engage and collaborate with a wide variety of community members of all ages. The SPIn team will then invite community members to discuss what specific resources are needed in their particular block and immediate neighborhood.

Summer 2021 Accomplishments:

• Extensive youth engagement activities 
• Offered several well attended workshops to educate young students about College Access opportunities. 
• Initiated an extensive community engaged research project. 
• English Language courses offered on Wednesday nights (initiated in July and will continue all fall/winter 2021).
• Women's Health and Pregnancy Workshops 
• West Hill Asset Mapping in process; continuation fall 2021.
• Eid Celebration with the 518Snug anti-violence team 

Next Steps:

• Increase in year-round programming.
• Refugee Voices Art Exhibit at the Opalka Gallery.
• Publication of our 3-year SPIn project.
• Hiring of Vista
• Hiring of Program Director for the Center

Contacts: Vera Eccarius-Kelly or Ali Schaeffing 

Informal STEM Learning

This research focuses on helping to build the Connect Center as a leader in informal learning in multiple ways. The project aims to add a STEM informal learning program to already existing arts and music programming, and to use assessments to better understand what the Cohoes youth are looking for in STEM programming. In addition, the team looks for ways to apply lessons learned from previous research and programming to help the Connect Center create assessments and collect the data and stories necessary for increased funding and improved learning outcomes for Cohoes youth.

Summer 2021 Accomplishments:

• Built connection with the community this summer; made Connect Center t-shirts, created signs and flyers and canvased Cohoes speaking to community members to increase awareness of the Center and the summer programming.
• Created an asset database for the Connect Center
• Contributed to the 6-week steam camp programs by running stations and creating engaging activities around robotics, Turing Tumble, button making, free drawing, art collage, painting and coloring, measuring wind speed, minetest, scratch, 7 Billion Humans, Dungeons & Dragons, and video game battles.
• Conducted a one-week FLOSS STEAM camp. In this camp, the Vistas facilitated the children in their exploration of and engagement with computers and coding. 
• Began a research project examining student behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement as well as their sense of community at the FLOSS camp. The research project was approved, and the analyses are underway.

Next Steps:

• Further develop analyses and write up of the research project conducted this summer
• Create a follow-up project for next summer
• Continue and expand upon the community outreach and STEAM programming for next summer utilizing what was learned this summer.

Contact: Michele McColgan or Megan Kelly  

Urban Farming: Community Voice

Urban Farmers Project uses photographs by community members to reflect everyday social and political realities that impact people’s lives. This project promotes participant empowerment and engagement and has the ability to inform policy makers to bring about change.

Summer 2021 Accomplishments:

• Got to know our community partner, Albany Victory Gardens, and the urban farmers quite well
• Built trust with community members, including members of the Garden Committee
• Helped with farm care and special events for our community partner
• Helped transform a lot on 1st and Quail into a pollinator-attracting garden and community tabling space
• Facilitated the Apothecary Garden Partnership 
• Hosted an event showcasing photographs from the summer work, which served as a networking event for the community partner
• Conducted research on plants and their ecological and medicinal value

Next Steps:

• Continue to develop the Apothecary Garden Partnership
• Recruit faculty mentors from anthropology, sociology, nursing, environmental studies, and/or business
• Analyze the data from the Photovoice project and publish that work
• After analyzing the data from the Photovoice interviews, determine with the partner and garden committee what the next steps in the project will be

Contact: Sarah Toledano or Nora Boyd

Living Museum Project 

This interdisciplinary project used theater, dramaturgy, visual arts, and virtual reality to explore and interpret a unique slice of American history through the lens of Historic Cherry Hill and the van Rensselaer-Rankin family. Using the museum’s extensive collection of the family’s possessions and documents, the team researched the changing physical, societal and familial landscapes of Albany as experienced by the van Rensselaer-Rankin family who occupied it for five generations.

Summer 2021 Accomplishments:

• Completed a guided virtual reality tour of the site. This will allow people of limited mobility to access floors of the site as well as making the historic site accessible to people in different geographic locations. 
• Created a "Murder at Cherry Hill" tour. This will allow more people to access this interesting story, and provide a new fundraising opportunity for Cherry Hill. 
• Worked on editing the full-length stage play "Tell Me That You'll Not Forget Me," about Minnie and Jimmy Knapp, detailing their unique experience as African American wards of the Van Rensselaer family. 
• Led a well-attended calligraphy workshop at Cherry Hill using ink made from the walnut trees onsite. 

 Next Steps:

• The students will showcase their virtual "Murder at Cherry Hill" tour at Siena in October- dates TBD 
• "Tell Me That You'll Not Forget Me" will be performed in June of 2022 at Siena as part of a broader celebration and exploration of the lives of Jimmy and Minnie Knapp in the Capital Region. It will be directed by Jean-Remy Monnay of the Black Theatre Troupe of Upstate NY, our partner on the project. We are currently seeking funding for this production via a Humanities NY Grant. 

Contact: Krysta Dennis, Scott Foster or Robin Flatland

Siena Beverage Institute

The newly formed Siena College Beverage Institute is a research project that aims to serve the craft beverage community in the Capital Region by providing assistance in marketing, social media, design, photography, video, data tracking, and other areas of interest. As the institute grows, it will offer additional services, including scientific analysis, and the SPIn team will research other needs of the Capital Region craft beverage producers, to see how the institute can serve them best.

Summer 2021 Accomplishments:

• Established relationship with Craft Beverage trail and assisted with Craft Beverage passport launch 
• Starting a 3 year plan for partnership with president of Craft Beverage Trail / Upper Hudson Wine Trail
• Established relationships with community partners 
• Made mead from “hive to glass” 
• Learned to blend cocktail bitters 
• Engaged in a series of tastings culminating in blind tastings
• Brough various community members together for tasting, education, and brainstorming about the future of the SCBI
• Created logos for the SCBI
• Purchased video equipment for the SCBI and taught students how to properly capture images and video with it; created a great deal of media for students to learn to edit and present finished work to community partners.

Next Steps:

• Establishing SCBI as a year-round research entity 
• Bring additional faculty and students into the SCBI
• Continuing to work with established partners
• Continue to bring community members together to learn more about the beverage industry and how Siena College can help promote it locally

Contact: Dan Moriarty or Br. Tito