Phone: (303) 492-4633Email: debbieflanders@yahoo.com
Debra Flanders Cushing is a PhD student in Design and Planning at CU. Her research areas include: involving diverse youth in the design of community environments; using youth-created digital stories as pathways to community engagement; and evaluating different formats for youth governance to create child- and youth-friendly communities. She has lived in Boulder for nine years.
Debra received her Bachelor's from Penn State and her Master's from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Landscape Architecture . She worked as a design practitioner, using participatory planning approaches to design community parks, trail systems, and outdoor learning environments and has extensive experience coordinating, implementing, and evaluating service learning courses and outreach projects connecting university students to the local community. Debra currently teaches an undergraduate course in the Environmental Design Program at CU Boulder," Immigrant Integration through Community Planning" and previously taught Sustainable Planning and Participatory Community Planning.
She received the 2009 Equity and Excellence Award from the Office of Diversity Equity and Community Engagement at CU Boulder for her work with diverse youth, including immigrants. The Institute for Ethical and Civic Engagement, CU Boulder, gave her the 2009 Annual Serving Communities Award for her work with service learning and community outreach.
Phone: (303) 492-4633Email: emilylovecu@gmail.com
Emily Wexler Love, PhD candidate in the School of Education, focuses her research and teaching interests on immigrant education and education policy. Her writing has examined youth engagement in protest related to immigrant issues; state level special education response to intervention (RtI) initiatives; and she recently authored a chapter about the DREAM Act in Current Issues in Educational Policy and the Law (2008). During her doctorate work at the University of Colorado Boulder she has co-instructed three service-learning courses bridging the disciplines of education and community planning. She also co-created Youth FACE IT (Fostering Active Community Engagement for Integration and Transformation), a program that uses multimedia methods to engage youth in critically examining their environment to develop recommendations for a more inclusive community. She received her B.A. in Spanish and English from Tulane University in New Orleans. After attending university in Valparaíso, Chile and Guadalajara, Mexico she worked for an educational nonprofit in the Bay Area where she created and administered GirlForward, a program designed to increase adolescent girls' self esteem through community engagement and dialogue activities. Her career plans include teaching at the university level, engaging in interdisciplinary projects and research, and working closely with her local community on issues related to immigration and immigrant integration.
Phone: (303) 492-4633Email: Laura.Malinin@colorado.edu
Laura Healey Malinin is a licensed architect and instructor in the College of Architecture and Planning at the University of Colorado where she is also pursuing a joint PhD in Cognitive Science and Design and Planning. Her areas of interest include cognitive studies of creativity and design processes; visual-spatial representation and reasoning; architecture and cognition, human/ social factors and the environment, and technology-supported environments for collaborative design/social creativity. Laura holds a MEd from the University of Texas and BA in Architecture/ Art and Art History from Rice University. Prior to working at the University of Colorado, she was a Design Architect/ Project Manager with two Houston architectural firms and has had her own practice since 1990. Laura previously taught at Houston Community College and the Art Institute of Houston and developed the curriculum for a public high school architectural program in Texas.
Phone: (303) 492-4633Email: selena.paulsen@colorado.edu
Selena R. Paulsen is a second year PhD student in Design and Planning. Her focus is the design of public spaces for children, in particular schools, parks, and playgrounds. She is currently working on the design of a study of school location and design as it relates to sense of community. Selena has a Bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Colorado, a Master’s degree in Public Administration from the University of New Mexico, and is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP). She spent ten years working in both the private and public sectors as an urban planner specializing in long-range comprehensive community planning and participatory planning. In 2008 she was a co-presenter of a session on Designing Child-friendly Neighborhoods at the International Livable Cities conference with Dr. Louise Chawla, and in 2009 she co-authored the report, Public Policies for Intergenerational Cities: Background Trends and a Case Study of Denver, Colorado with Dr. Willem vanVliet.
Phone: (303) 492-4633Email: Illene.Pevec@colorado.edu
Illène Pevec facilitates children and youth to develop gardens. She investigates the sensory and emotional responses of adolescents to gardening and the influence of gardening on their eating habits, ability to focus and environmental attitudes.
In 1998 in Vancouver, BC Illène began her work in this field by initiating a large school and community garden at Grandview Elementary. This participatory action research project served as the learning grounds for her MA thesis in Curriculum Studies at the University of British Columbia in 2000. The garden and programs have won national and regional awards for creating healthy environments for children.
In 2001, Illène founded and continues to direct A Child’s Garden of Peace, a community development project in Santo Ângelo, RS, Brazil based in school and community gardens, recycling and micro-enterprise.
With a CU Boulder Outreach grant Illène currently assists Yampah Mountain High school with their horticultural program and Roaring Fork High School in Carbondale, CO to establish a large greenhouse and organic farming program.
Phone: (303) 492-4633Email: Severcan.Yucel@colorado.edu
Yucel Severcan graduated from Middle East Technical University with a bachelor’s degree from City and Regional Planning and a master’s degree from Urban Design. In 2006, he finalized his master’s study with a dissertation on regeneration of industrial landscapes. After working as a planner and architect for several years, Yucel continued his academic studies as PhD student at the College of Architecture and Planning, University of Colorado. Yucel’s current research interests include children’s perception and use of public spaces, privatization of the public realm, urban regeneration, and healthy community development. In the past years, he was a section instructor in Introduction to Environmental Design, and Design and Media. With his advisor Fahriye Sancar, he was involved in several research projects that targeted children, youth and their environments in Turkey, and physical activity master plans in Colorado. Since 2006, Yucel C. Severcan has been continuing his education in the PhD Program in Planning and Design, as well as working as a Teaching and Research Assistant.
Phone: (303) 492-4633Email: Barbara.Stuart@colorado.edu
Barbara Stuart's research interests include CYE, participatory planning, and conflict resolution. She has a Masters (UCD) in Planning and Community Development and a Certificate in Cognitive Science from the Institute in Boulder. She was a Fulbright Scholar to Russia (Muslim dominated Kazan, Tatarstan) and has completed many international project management engagements, most recently a year in Pakistan. In the summer of 2008, she was visiting professor at the Caucasus School of Business in Tbilisi, Georgia and she is currently full time faculty at the University of Denver, Daniels College of Business in the Management Department. Most recently, she taught Managing Community Partnerships, a new course she designed to examine service learning (she is a Service Learning Scholar) and community engagement. She also teaches NGOs and Business, Organizational Behavior/Design, Principles of Management, Disaster Capitalism: Public Good? Qualitative Research Methods (the Joseph Korbel School of International Studies, DU), Qualitative Research Methods, and Research Methods (Planning). She is a recovering TED.com junkie.
Phone: (303) 492-4633Email: melissa.surratt@colorado.edu
Melissa Surratt received a Bachelors in Environmental Design in 2003. After attending Cornell University for her Masters in Human-Environment Relations, in October 2008, Melissa joined CYE working as an Administrative Assistant. In January 2009 she began the PhD Program in Planning and Design. Melissa’s graduate research has focused on urban community gardens. She first became interested in this area when she realized the setting was the perfect nexus of her interests in both community design and social justice. She plans to continue delving in to this topic, by examining effects of urban greenspace on the health and well-being of children. Melissa was drawn to CYE mainly for their strong emphasis on participatory action research; giving children a voice in the shaping of their world. Melissa is a Colorado native, and is thrilled to be back working in the communities where she grew up.