Engaged Cornell Faculty Fellowship Supports Plans for Nature Preserve in Redlined Cleveland Community

by Patti Witten

Visiting Lecturer Mitch Glass, CRP, is among the recent recipients of a Cornell Faculty Fellowships in Engaged Learning award in the area of "Access, Equity, and Justice; Economic Vitality and Entrepreneurship; Energy, Environment, and Sustainability."

Glass's project, Kingsbury Run Nature Reserve, Cleveland, Ohio: Partnership, Engagement, Programming + Design, brings students and community partners together in designing a two-semester project to advance plans for a community-based nature reserve in the city. The 90-acre parcel of land, known as Kingsbury Run, is situated in the middle of long-neglected and redlined communities of color on Cleveland's south side with a history of industrial pollution and the burning of a displaced-persons encampment "shantytown" in the 1930s. The area is adjacent to the under-construction Opportunity Corridor, a 500-million-dollar infrastructure investment by the State of Ohio and City of Cleveland.

Partnering with the CDC, Burton Bell Carr Development Inc., and multiple other stakeholders in Cleveland, Glass and his students will research the needs and interests of the community and come up with design approaches for the nature reserve.

The Cornell Engaged Faculty Fellowship Program is a yearlong cohort program in which faculty dive deep into the theory and practice of community-engaged learning; meet monthly to discuss readings, share projects and workshop challenges; and help transform what it means to teach at Cornell.