Sudents in the Public Scholarship Certificate program collaborate with community members through Salt City Harvest Farm, an initiative which cultivates culturally appropriate foods for New Americans, helping them preserve their cultural identity and heritage.
Public Scholarship Certificate Fuels Career Momentum, Collaboration Across Campus
Today’s challenges, ranging from public health crises to social inequities, don’t fit neatly into single disciplines. When scholars collaborate across fields, they combine complementary knowledge, methods and perspectives to create solutions no one researcher could achieve alone.
This approach is central to the (A&S) Â (EHN), where scholars, teachers, students, artists and community partners work together to serve the public good and build relationships of trust.
EHN advances participatory research through programs like Engaged Courses, which provides funding and cohort-based support for faculty integrating community engaged learning into their curriculum, and Engaged Communities, which fosters research, programming and creative projects with mutual benefit.
In collaboration with the , EHN has launched a new offering called the (PSC). Open to graduate students and postdoctoral scholars in any program at Íø±¬ÃÅ or the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, along with community collaborators, the PSC recognizes commitments to ethical, publicly engaged research, creative work, teaching and programming.
The PSC Advantage
The PSC was created in part to formally recognize the meaningful community-centered work of graduate students and postdocs, says , associate professor of writing and rhetoric, Dean’s Professor of Community Engagement and founding director of EHN in A&S.
After recognizing that numerous graduate students across the University were interested in this type of work, Nordquist and his colleagues developed the certificate program. Since its launch in Fall 2025, more than 50 people from a range of disciplines have signed on to participate, demonstrating both the demand and necessity of this initiative.
“The certificate provides formal recognition for the engaged work grad students and postdocs are doing,” says Glenn Wright, executive director of professional and career development in the Graduate School. “It says, this is academic research, not just something co-curricular they’re doing on the side. And as a certificate, it’s very quickly and clearly legible on a CV. You don’t have to make a long argument that what you’re doing is scholarly.”
A Collaborative Framework
The success of the PSC relies on a strong partnership between the EHN and the Graduate School. “The EHN provides content expertise and much of the required programming for the certificate,” Wright says. “The Graduate School provides outreach and a bigger tent across disciplines and programs. Both are involved in setting the overall direction. It’s a great collaboration.”
This interdisciplinary approach has proven particularly valuable. “The brilliant aspect of this certificate is that all graduate students and postdocs benefit from participating,” says Ava Breitbeck, a Ph.D. candidate in science teaching and graduate assistant in the Graduate School. “We currently have participants from across the academic spectrum, including history, English, composition and cultural rhetoric, linguistics, cultural foundations of education, science teaching and mathematics.”
Breitbeck, who works alongside Wright and the Graduate School professional development team, emphasizes the importance of public engagement in today’s academic climate.
“It is more vital than ever that scholars be thoughtfully engaging the public in their scholarly efforts. Even more so, the certificate leverages the expertise of community partners in helping address key questions and solve important issues in the community,” Breitbeck says. “This work breaks down traditional barriers between academia and the public, which can go a long way in forging productive reciprocal relationships.”
