Thank you for participating in the 2017 CUMU Annual Conference: The Urban Advantage. Take some time to explore the program and create a customized schedule. Use the search and filter functions to view presentations by date, presentation type, keyword, presenter, and home institution. You can also save a seat for yourself in limited-occupancy sessions.
At Marquette University, the Latina/o Well-Being Research Initiative (LWRI) was developed to deepen community engagement and advance academic scholarship pertaining to the promotion of well-being among Latina/o youth and adults living in Milwaukee. This initiative focused on bringing together community stakeholders and researchers to identify and develop culturally-relevant research projects specific to pressing issues within Milwaukee. Together with key community partners, administrators and other faculty and staff, the LWRI co-directors have embarked on the process of creating an effective and enduring research partnership across several organizations and entities, a process which has not been done before at this level within the community. Over the past years LWRI has reached several key milestones, including: the development of an Action Group comprised of community and academics, the articulation of a collaboration model, the compilation of existing data about well-being among Latina/os in the community, and the development of the infrastructure (e.g., business plan, promotion plan) needed to sustain and grow the work of the initiative. This presentation will provide a description of effective strategies, both within the university and in the community, that have enabled growth over the past years. In addition, valuable lessons learned about collaboration models and styles will be discussed.