Senior Community Engaged Faculty Fellows
Advancing Community Engagement Through Faculty Leadership
The Senior Community Engaged Faculty Fellows provide faculty leadership to strengthen and advance community engagement across the University of Mississippi. Serving in 12-month administrative leadership roles, the Fellows work with faculty, departments, and institutional partners to build durable systems that support community-engaged teaching, research, and creative achievement.
Through faculty mentorship, workshops, departmental consultation, and institutional collaboration, the Senior Fellows help faculty develop and document community-engaged work, strengthen the integration of community engagement into faculty development and tenure and promotion processes, and improve the visibility and tracking of engaged teaching and scholarship.
The two Senior Fellows lead complementary areas of focus: Community-Engaged Teaching & Learning and Community-Engaged Research & Creative Achievement. Together, they help ensure that community engagement is not episodic or dependent on individual faculty members, but is supported through sustainable structures, practices, and resources across the University.
Senior Community Engaged Fellow - Research and Creative Achievement
Courtney Roper
Associate Professor of Environmental Toxicology and Research Associate Professor in the Research Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences
Senior Community Engaged Fellow - Teaching and Learning
“Community-engaged teaching transforms learning by connecting what transpires in the classroom with the people, communities, and real-world challenges beyond it.”
As the Senior Community-Engaged Fellow for Teaching and Learning, Dr. Alicia Stapp seeks to engage and support faculty and staff at all levels of experience in deepening their understanding and practice of community-engaged teaching and learning across the University of Mississippi. Her work will provide faculty and staff with the knowledge, mentorship, tools, and resources needed to design meaningful community-engaged courses, cultivate sustainable partnerships, and strengthen their teaching practices through professional development, collaborative course design, and cross-campus collaboration. She will also work with campus partners to build sustainable infrastructure for documenting community-engaged teaching and learning, tracking participation and partnerships, and gathering meaningful evidence of student, faculty, and community impact. Collectively, these efforts are designed to advance a university-wide culture in which community-engaged teaching and learning is intentionally supported, academically valued, visible through evidence of impact, and sustainably integrated into faculty practice at the University of Mississippi.
Alicia Stapp
Professor of Health and Physical Education