Lender Center Fellowship Offers Students an Opportunity to ‘Work Locally, Think Globally’

About three years in the past, Seyeon Lee was invited by CenterState CEO, an financial improvement group in Syracuse, to assist design a ladies’s wellness middle on the North Side of town.
Lee, an affiliate professor of environmental and inside design within the School of Design within the College of Visual and Performing Arts (VPA), met with northside residents to conduct what is named a design charrette—a wide-ranging dialogue to decide if the design of the constructing matches the wants of the people who find themselves going to use it.
The Northside Women’s Wellness Center, which is run by the Central New York YMCA, opened within the fall of 2020 as “a welcoming and accessible area within the coronary heart of the North Side, the place ladies from all socio-economic backgrounds, ages, and ethnicities can purse wellness,” in accordance to the middle’s web site.
That was the objective, however is that the truth? Is the middle being utilized as supposed, and if not, what else could be executed to maximize its use? And what classes from that constructing could be utilized to different areas within the metropolis which are out there to residents however not essentially accessible?
Those are the questions that can be requested and answered by Lee and a gaggle of Syracuse University college students who can be chosen to take part within the 2021-23 Lender Center for Social Justice Fellowship. This is the Lender Center’s third fellowship and Lee will observe Casarae Lavada Abdul-Ghani and Jonnell Robinson as school fellows for this system that was created to critically discover modern social points and develop sustainable options to urgent issues.
Seyeon Lee, an affiliate professor of environmental and inside design within the School of Design, is the 2021-23 Lender Center for Social Justice Faculty Fellow.
“The core thought of that is, how can we use this area as a hub and join it with different elements of the neighborhood?” says Lee, who can be the George Miller Quasi Endowed Professor within the School of Design. “There is a ton of neighborhood area that’s underutilized, loads of pockets of alternatives which are misplaced, and that’s the place I’d look to interact with the scholars with their completely different views and backgrounds.”
Kendall Phillips, co-director of the Lender Center, says the two-year timetable for the fellowships is to permit for the school fellow and scholar fellows to spend a 12 months figuring out an issue and the subsequent 12 months attempting to repair it. He stated Lee’s challenge suits properly with the earlier fellowships that targeted on justice messages on social media, and designing extra equitable meals methods.
“This new deal with well being and wellness for girls demonstrates how widespread problems with social justice are in our modern world,” says Phillips, a communication and rhetorical research professor in VPA. “This new challenge will discover these points of worldwide significance right here in Syracuse, which is a good instance of working domestically whereas considering globally.”
The fellowship is open to any Syracuse University undergraduate or graduate scholar who can commit to the two-year challenge, and chosen college students will obtain a stipend of $500 per 12 months. For college students, or school and employees who know college students who’re captivated with social justice, extra info is accessible on the Lender Center Fellowship software web page. Five college students can be chosen, and the appliance deadline is Oct. 15.
Emily Stokes-Rees, director of the School of Design and an affiliate professor within the Museum Studies Graduate Program in VPA, says Lee is smitten by educating and mentoring college students concerning the some ways design can have far-reaching results by working for a social good.
“Perhaps an important factor to learn about Seyeon’s analysis is that underpinning all of her work is a ardour and dedication to social justice and sustainability,” Stokes-Rees says. “It is a part of who she is—her core values—and it infuses each side of her educational life.”
Lee says that whereas the title of her analysis that led to this fellowship is “Access to Women’s Wellness,” she desires to emphasize that the fellowship isn’t about ladies’s health. Lee encourages college students of any gender identification from throughout the University to apply as a result of the challenge would require many abilities and viewpoints.
“It’s all-around wellness: bodily wellness, psychological wellness, what’s occurring within the household, what’s occurring exterior of the household, baby care, does the kid have entry to higher training and extracurricular actions?” Lee says. “With the dynamics and traits of the North Side neighborhood, we’ve got discovered it’s the ladies, the mothers, who really want this sort of entry.”
The scholar fellows will observe wellness and well being alternatives within the North Side neighborhoods, discuss to residents and work in partnership with native nonprofits YMCA, YWCA and Hopeprint, a household empowerment group, to determine and assist shut the gaps between wellness and well being alternatives out there in that neighborhood.
Lee (standing) led a design charrette with northside residents to talk about the design of the Northside Women’s Wellness Center in Syracuse.
Stokes-Rees says Lee has a historical past of involving her college students in each side of her work and exposing them to community-based tasks. Over the previous 4 years, these tasks have ranged from researching and designing sustainable low-income housing to creating a totally accessible neighborhood backyard to enhancing entry to well being and wellness companies for low-income, ethnically numerous ladies.
“One particular instance of it is a challenge she undertook along with her EDI 451 Community Design Project class, through which Seyeon and her college students remodeled vacant homes into transitional refugee properties for an area group, Interfaith Works, studying concerning the impression of deserted properties on the native economic system and the lives of refugee households,” Stokes-Rees says. “Having the chance to domesticate empathy and relatedness are indispensable values in a college training that prepares college students to be professionals in addition to civic-minded international residents.”
For Lee, the school fellowship connects her love of design along with her ardour for social justice. A former architectural and inside designer and challenge supervisor, her skilled portfolio consists of residential, business, retail, hospitality and concrete planning tasks within the United States, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.
While engaged on a Ph.D. at Texas A&M University, Lee studied methods to enhance the standard of residing for low-income households. And she spent a lot of her skilled design profession on reasonably priced housing improvement.
But usually, Lee says, the lacking piece in design and architectural work is the voice of the individuals who can be using these areas. The 2021-23 Lender Center Faculty Fellowship will give her and the scholar fellows an alternative to pay attention to these voices and impression these lives.
“As I used to be continuing with this challenge, I happened loads of areas that I didn’t learn about–loads of social points, loads of political points, loads of about social justice and fairness points which are all wrapped on this subject,” Lee says. “The Lender Fellowship permits me to discover social fairness and entry from a design standpoint and interact college students via participatory studying in order that they actually perceive what’s occurring in our yard.”
Informational Session
An informational assembly for any scholar—undergraduate or graduate—who’s fascinated by studying extra concerning the 2021-2023 Lender Center for Social Justice Fellowship can be held from 4 to 5:30 p.m. Sept. 27 in Sims Hall 123. For extra info on the informational session or to apply for a fellowship, go to the Lender Center web site.

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