Graduate fellows
Center Graduate Fellowships enable graduate students to participate in collaborative research projects with community-based organizations, social service agencies, health care providers, businesses, and government in Chicago's city and suburbs. Through their research and teaching projects, fellows are active participants in Loyola University Chicago's efforts to improve the quality of life for all members of the Chicago metropolitan community.
The Graduate Fellows are selected from a pool of applicants and matched to team projectsbased on skills and interest. The Fellows serve in a facilitation role for the projects and act as the link between Loyola faculty and undergraduates and community researchers to keep projects on track. Fellows are supported in part by funds from McCormick Tribune Foundation and individual projects.
CURRENT GRADUATE FELLOWS
| Name | ||
|---|---|---|
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Kellee Athens |
Kellee has a B.S. in Finance from Indiana University and is currently pursuing her M.P.H. in Epidemiology from Loyola University Chicago’s Medical Center. Her primary interest is monitoring distribution and mitigation of risk factors associated with the transmission of zoonotic disease. At CURL, she is involved in the GIS mapping project to support Community Economic Development efforts underway in the Austin/Garfield Park communities. | |
|
Kimberlee Guenther |
Kimberlee is a Ph.D. student in Sociology at Loyola University Chicago. Her primary interests are housing, public space, and collaborative research with community partners. Her work at CURL focuses on factors that produce stable racially and ethnically diverse neighborhoods, as well as the experiences of tenant organizers that have worked to preserve affordable housing in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood. | |
|
Mary Kleinman |
Mary is a Doctoral student in Sociology at Loyola University Chicago. She has an extensive background in women’s health; including, developing women’s health curricula for medical education, creating a multidisciplinary graduate concentration in women’s health, and training physicians about various women’s health issues. Mary is also working with the American Medical Women’s Association to create a digital resource library of women’s health curricular materials for medical education. Her research interests include women veterans’ health, medical education, and institutional change. At CURL, she is working on the “Evaluation of Chicago’s Plan to End Homelessness.” | |
|
Teresa Neumann |
Teresa is in the process of completing her Master’s degree in Sociology at Loyola University Chicago. Having had previous experience as a community organizer, she is interested in community-based research approaches that focus on urban issues. Specifically, Teresa is interested in education and health care issues. At CURL, she is involved with collecting data for the project, “Finding Racially and Ethnically Diverse Neighborhoods: Exploring America’s Future.” Furthermore, she is also helping to systematize the research and evaluation publications library within the CURL website. | |
|
Niloufar Safaei Nili |
Niloufar has a B.S. in Applied Mathematics from Iran and is currently working towards her M.P.H. in Epidemiology at Loyola University Chicago. She has worked at UCLA as an assistant biostatistician in the Medicine-Geriatrics department. She is interested in public and global health, and the causes of health disparities within and between societies. Her work at CURL involves mapping the impacts of CURL’s project from a local Chicago viewpoint, as well as, a much broader national and international viewpoint. | |
|
Travis O'Rear |
Travis is a Master's student in Sociology at Loyola University Chicago. He received his B.A. in History and Sociology from Rice University. His research interests include urban sociology, social inequality and the societal impact of technological change. Currently, he is working on the “Mapping Human Relations Assets for the City of Evanston” project at CURL. The project aims to create an interactive map of the different social service organizations in the city of Evanston for the community to utilize. | |
|
Whitney Rodriguez |
Whitney is a second year Master’s student in Sociology at Loyola University Chicago. She is interested in social inequalities, education, knowledge, as well as science and technology; particularly, how social inequalities affect access to formal education. Her interest in education also includes informal learning experiences and alternative knowledge making processes, such as citizen science and community-based collaborative research. At CURL, she is involved in a new project that looks at a Restorative Justice program in a Chicago Public School. | |
|
Adrian Segura |
Adrian is a Graduate student at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine pursuing a M.P.H. in Epidemiology. Having previously worked through Steans Center for Community-based Service Learning at DePaul University ('07), he is interested in community-based research that focuses on health and health care issues in more urban, ethnically diverse neighborhoods in Chicago and the Chicagoland area. Currently, Adrian is working on the "Evanston Community Assets" project at CURL, specifically aiding in collecting data on local community assets as well as working with ArcGIS to create an interactive map for the Evanston Township website. | |
|
Julie Shevrin |
Julie is currently a Graduate student in Social Work at Loyola University Chicago. She is interested in how structural inequality affects rates of mental illness in communities. Currently, she is working on the “Evaluation of Chicago’s Plan to End Homelessness” project at CURL. Julie is specifically looking at the experience of homeless youth in the Chicago homeless system. | |
|
Catherine Turco |
Catherine is a Graduate student in the Public Policy program at Loyola University Chicago. Her current focus is health care policy and strategic message framing. She is currently working on a mapping effort that will help to support the work of Bethel New Life's "Community Economic Development" project with CURL. | |
|
Carina Turner |
Carina is a Graduate student in the School of Psychology at Loyola University Chicago. Her interests lie in the importance home-school-community collaborations and the enhancement of strong communities. Her work with CURL centers on studying the impact of the proposed extension of the CTA Red Line train on Chicago's far South Side communities. | |
|
Ashley Velchek |
Ashley is graduating this May with a Master’s in Public Policy (M.P.P.) at Loyola University Chicago. Her interests revolve around social welfare policy, in particular criminal justice, education, and poverty issues. Currently, Ashley is interning with the Cook County Sheriff’s Office, Department of Reentry and Diversion Programs. Currently, her focus is in program evaluation of its Virtual High School program. CURL and the CCSO are in the process of devising a collaborative research project. | |
|
Michelle Vos |
Michelle is pursuing her Master’s Degree in Sociology at Loyola University Chicago. Michelle comes from years of experience in non-profit management having worked in a community center for the homeless, a medical clinic for the uninsured, and currently with the nationally designated communication system for runaway and at-risk youth. What Michelle enjoys most about her work with CURL is the opportunity to marry her academic pursuits with practical application, which benefits community organizations. | |
|
Kyle Woolley |
Kyle is a Ph.D. student in Sociology at Loyola University Chicago. His interests include immigration, social movements, and urban sociology with a focus on Latin America. He is currently studying the impact that remittances have on both the sender and receiver, following several remittance sending immigrants from Latin America that live and work in Chicago. Additionally, Kyle is looking at similar occurrences in major metropolitan areas of South America. | |
|
Xinyi Zhang |
Xinyi is pursuing her Graduate degree in Accounting at Loyola University Chicago. She has a diverse set of accounting experience from various sectors: including a nonprofit agency, food industry, international software company, and an accounting firm. At CURL, she works on a variety of tasks including: producing yearly projections, monthly financial statements and reports for salaries, researching project accounts, monitoring and reconciling expenditure and salaries of grants as well as endowment and research project accounts, reviewing account balances and account statuses, managing research project account folders and related documents, and creating specialized budget reports based on the needs of CURL. | |
