Meet the 26-27 Mid-Career Learning Community cohort

Ben Belz (he/him) has over a decade of experience working in civic learning and democratic engagement, community-based course development, student development, community capacity building, and campus-community partnership development within both academic and student affairs.

Ben’s work aims to find deep community impact through mutually beneficial, reciprocal partnership between campus and the surrounding Baltimore community that engage faculty and students in transformational learning opportunities that elevate and recognize the expertise of community members. Ben believes it is important to welcome community members into academic spaces as co-educators as well as create opportunities for students to explore their own learning and growth within a community context.

Ben holds a bachelor’s in environmental studies and a master’s in higher education and student affairs, both from Baylor University. He has also served as an AmeriCorps VISTA and AmeriCorps HealthCorps volunteer.

Heather Craigie (she/her) is Associate Director of John Carroll University’s Center for Service and Social Action, where she coordinates an advocacy-focused internship program and works with student leaders who facilitate community engagement activities across greater Cleveland. She also teaches a course on Social Justice Research for the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights program. Prior to her current role, Heather often worked at the intersections of higher education and community work, from Campus Compact in her home state of Maine, to a decade working in experiential education and advocacy on the U.S.-Mexico border. Heather recently completed an Ed.D in Education from Northeastern University, where her dissertation examined critical consciousness development in community-engaged student leaders. She also holds an M.A. in Latin American Studies from the University of Arizona and a B.A. in Peace & Global Studies from Earlham College. Heather and her family live in Shaker Heights, Ohio.

Jeannine East is the director of community engagement impact in the Division of Outreach, Engagement and Regional Development at Northern Illinois University. Jeannine also oversees the division’s Marketing & Messaging team.

In this role, Jeannine helps elevate and celebrate the community engagement work happening on campus through several initiatives including creating and maintaining the NIU Partnership Map, showcasing over 200 community partnerships of NIU faculty and staff. She was project manager for NIU’s collaborative community engagement self-study resulting in NIU’s 2026 Carnegie Elective Classification for Community Engagement. Jeannine also served as a 2026 Cycle Tier One Peer Reviewer for the Carnegie Elective Classification for Community Engagement. She was a member of NIU’s Community Engagement Task Force in 2022, helped shape the Centering Engagement, Driving Impact Action Plan and is a member of the Community Engagement Roundtable.

In 2017, Jeannine took on a unique student engagement and recruitment project, coordinating the growth of esports on NIU’s campus. She opened four esports centers, two serving NIU students and two serving regional community members from 2018-2021. Working with student leaders, she launched a varsity esports program and increased the role of esports in student recruitment and retention. She was a founding member of the Esports Collegiate (ESC) Competition Committee and collaborated with community members to help build competitive esports programs that support healthy gaming practices. She built strategic community partnerships to promote healthy gaming practices, support middle school and high school esports programs, and champion the benefits of organized competitive and casual play. In 2024, oversight of the esports program was transferred to another OERD manager to ensure Jeannine’s single focus on community engagement impact.

Before joining OERD, Jeannine worked in NIU’s Enrollment Management, Marketing and Communications division, managing the web team, project managing and editing large design projects for Creative Services, and writing and coordinating email communication for prospective students.

Jeannine is a Certified Project Management Professional (PMP). She holds a bachelor’s degree in English and Graduate Certificate in technical writing from NIU and a Certificate in esports management from University of California Irvine.

Anna-Margaret Goldman, Ph.D. is the Director for the Center for Educational Outreach and Engagement in Auburn University Outreach whose mission is to transform underserved K-12 communities through programs and partnerships in the classroom and beyond. She graduated from Miami University of Ohio with a degree in Organizational Communication and has a master’s and PhD in Higher Education Administration from the University of Alabama. She currently teaching Service in Schools for the Honors College and Teaching in Rural Places for the College of Education at Auburn University. She previously was the Director and Principal Investigator of TRIO Upward Bound at the University of Montana helping low-income and first-generation high school students attend college and the Director of MonTECH, the federally funded Assistive Technology Act Program of Montana.

Jennifer Groce is the director of community-engaged partnerships in the Division of Outreach, Engagement and Regional Development at Northern Illinois University (NIU). She has been with the division since 2004. In her current role, Jennifer acts as a connector between the university, local governments, businesses and nonprofits to foster and promote collaborative engagement. She is particularly focused on facilitating community-engaged scholarship that addresses critical societal issues, serves the public good, and enriches research and teaching.

Jennifer holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and a master’s degree in public administration, both from NIU. With over 20 years of experience in the DeKalb area, she has worked as a community relations and economic development professional, leading initiatives and facilitating engagement with higher education institutions, local government, private sector partners and nonprofit organizations.

Throughout her career, Jennifer has received numerous awards for her contributions to the local community, including the Athena Award from the DeKalb Chamber of Commerce. Jennifer is highly regarded for her ability to lead impactful initiatives, her collaborative approach and her talent for bringing diverse perspectives together to achieve common goals. She is fiercely dedicated to ensuring that community voices are heard in all her efforts.

Teresa Holt (she/her) is the director for the Center for Community Engaged Learning (CCEL) at Weber State University (UT). She has been at Weber State for 18 years working in the Center for Multicultural Excellence, Center for Diversity and Unity, and CCEL. Her focus has been on student leadership development in community engagement and high-impact programs, centering wellness as a pedagogical tool, providing workshops on community engagement and social action, and reimagining civic learning through collective care and social justice lenses.

Currently, she is working on her Ph.D. in education, culture, and society at the University of Utah and exploring interests in community engagement and social justice in higher education, decolonizing educational experiences, and centering love and collective care in student programs and interactions. She holds a master's degree in healthcare administration and a bachelor's degree in health promotion. Teresa has also taught courses in first-year experience, public speaking, social issues in higher education, and organizing for social change.

Derek’s work focuses on supporting students to be engaged in community in meaningful ways during their time at Macalester. He is the lead staff person supporting community engaged learning courses at Macalester, working directly with faculty at the interface of community engagement. He also leads the Off Campus Student Employment Program, which allows students to work 8-10 hours per week in meaningful ways with a wide variety of local nonprofits and government agencies. Similarly, Derek supports our Bonner scholars in their community engagement leadership work. One area of specialization is his work supporting a myriad of conversation groups off campus with a wide array of community partners.

Derek also oversees CEC data and evaluation efforts to help Macalester to tell its community engagement story and improve our practices. Finally, he organizes events and workshops for various audiences about community engagement, and he leads outreach efforts to expand the breadth of Macalester students building meaningful relationships in the community, developing civic skills and habits, and impacting public issues that are important to them.

Derek has worked in the Twin Cities since 2001, and he describes his work as taking place at the intersection of higher education and community. While he has worked and collaborated in many fields, he has worked most deeply with immigrants and refugees and in the field of youth development. He enjoys partnering with organizations and projects to make an impact, and he is always looking for ways to deepen his knowledge and understanding of local neighborhoods.

As the Director for Community Engagement at Whitman College, Abby Juhasz works to build and support sustainable, mutually-beneficial relationships with community partners, creating opportunities for students to come alongside members of the Walla Walla community to contribute to projects and initiatives that positively impact the community. Abby oversees several co-curricular community engagement programs, including the Community Engagement Leadership Development program and the Community Fellow program. Additionally, she works to support faculty in exploring partnerships for community-engaged learning and research. Abby joined the Career and Community Engagement Center at Whitman College in 2012 and finds this work to be a great blend of her experiences over two decades of work in community engagement and education.

Her professional experiences prior to working at Whitman include coordinating a two-county AmeriCorps*VISTA program in Pennsylvania that partnered with four regional colleges and universities, teaching at an elementary school in Maine, and working in various roles within residence life in California.

With a B.A. in Education and an M.A. in Educational Psychology, the experiences she draws upon most come from relationships formed through community engagement. Abby believes that there are many forms of knowledge, or ways of knowing, and by learning and engaging in the community, students can add powerful and transformative depth to their knowledge, while contributing positively to the work of community partners.

Natalie Ooi is a Teaching Professor and the Director of the Masters of the Environment (MENV) program. Within this, she leads the Sustainability in the Outdoor Industry (SOI) Specialization. She is also a faculty member in the online Master of Science in the Outdoor Recreation Economy (ORE) where she leads the Building Resilient Communities through the Outdoor Recreation Economy certificate. She is an educator and researcher who specializes in sustainable tourism and recreation, and her passion lies in partnering with communities to develop their outdoor recreation economy to enhance community resiliency, economic vitality and quality of life.

Prior to joining MORE, Natalie was the Director of Tourism Enterprise Programs and Program Director for the Ski Area Management graduate program at Colorado State University. There, she worked closely with the U.S ski industry building collaborative relationships to provide the first-of-its-kind, professional education program for current and future ski area employees.

Natalie’s research interests include the sustainability and resilience of tourism destinations, with particular interest in the complexities of tourism-community and other stakeholder relationships within mountain resort communities. Natalie has also worked on research projects that examine key management challenges within public spaces utilized for recreation, barriers to access and use of open space by diverse communities, the sustainability of backpacker tourism and volunteer tourism, and the use of climate change and drought data within the ski industry and how it can help improve business decision-making into the future.

Prior to joining academia, Natalie combined her passion for travel and the outdoors through her work as a youth Outdoor Education Leader, Special Projects Officer at a backpacker hostel, outdoor retail employee and ski rental technician. Originally from Melbourne, Australia, Natalie permanently moved to Colorado in 2013 after having spent much of the previous five years working and traveling through the American West. Natalie enjoys time with her family hiking, camping, skiing and exploring the world.

Natalie holds a Ph.D in Business and Economics, and a double bachelor’s degree in Sport and Outdoor Recreation/Business and Commerce (major in tourism management) (Hons) from Monash University, Australia.

Dr. Christina Santana is Associate Professor of English at Worcester State University and a nationally recognized leader in civic and community engagement. She served as lead editor and project manager of Anti-Racist Community Engagement: Principles and Practices and co-led Massachusetts’ statewide revision of the Civic Learning Framework for public higher education. Her career bridges teaching, scholarship, and institutional leadership, advancing equity, collaboration, and public purpose across higher education. Alongside her civic and policy work, she integrates coaching-informed practices into student retention and faculty development efforts—linking individual growth with the collective aim of building more responsive, inclusive institutions. She brings more than a decade of experience translating mission into practice through partnerships that strengthen both campus and community.

Emily Seru began serving as the Associate Director for Academic Civic Engagement and scholarship in Carleton’s Center for Community and Civic Engagement (CCCE) in 2022.

Before coming to Carleton Emily worked in academic civic engagement at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, where she advised faculty on academic civic engagement course design and community partnerships. For over a decade Emily worked with the Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs (HECUA) where she led a number of academic- community engagement initiatives including internships for all Twin Cities HECUA off campus semester-long programs, a summer community-engaged college internship program that spanned Minnesota, North Dakota and Wisconsin, a philanthropy fellowship for BIPOC graduate students, and a four-year intensive Central Corridor Internship program that imbedded undergraduate studnets in neighborhood and housing development nonprofits along St. Paul’s central corridor during the LRT construction.

Emily holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Lewis and Clark College and a masters degree in experiential education from Minnesota State University, Mankato.

Rochelle Smarr, Ed.D. is the Director of Experiential Learning at UC San Diego. Dr. Smarr oversees academic internships and the co-curricular record, a transcript of campus student leadership activities. Since 2013 she has held roles in the field of community engagement with Students First - New York, City College of New York, Cornell University, University of Pennsylvania and California State University, San Marcos. Dr. Smarr earned her B.A in English from San José State University, and M.A. from New York University in Educational Leadership, Politics and Advocacy.

Nationally, she has been a member of the International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE) since 2017. She rose through the membership ranks to join the general board, ultimately serving as chair in 2025, during the organization's 25th anniversary year and stewarding the milestone conference in Durban, South Africa. She received the 2022 LEAD California Richard E. Cone Award for Emerging Leaders in Community Engagement. Locally, she is an active member of Greater Woodlawn Park COGIC and involved in the San Diego Organizing Project.

Rochelle earned her B.A. in English from San José State University, and M.A. from New York University in Educational Leadership, Politics and Advocacy. Dr. Smarr earned her educational doctorate E.d.D in Educational Leadership from the University of California, San Diego and California State University San Marcos, a joint doctoral program. Her dissertation examined Black student experiences in service-learning courses. She is the host of the HyphenatEdD Leader Podcast, where she shares her experiences of being a mulit-hyphnated education leader. When not engaged in all things academia, she spends time with family, friends, and her dog, Joe Biden.

Michael directs CITL's Service-Learning Program, where he partners with faculty to develop pedagogically sound, community-responsive courses and provides ongoing support for instructors integrating service-learning into their teaching. In this role, he works across IU's community and civic engagement ecosystem—consulting with faculty, assessing community needs, and collaborating with campus programs and initiatives to build deliberate relationships that foster quality service and community-engaged learning.

Michael's work extends beyond his program to influence campus-wide engagement practices. He developed and facilitated a Faculty Learning Community on Community Engaged Career Advancement that directly supported participating faculty in receiving tenure or promotion and created informed advocates who continue advancing policy change around community engagement recognition. He served on leadership and steering committees for two successful applications to the Carnegie Foundation's Elective Classification for Community Engagement. For the past two years, he has represented IU Bloomington at TRUCEN, working to deepen the university's participation with Campus Compact.

Before joining IU, Michael directed Giving Back to Africa (now Malembe Rise), a community-engaged learning program in the peri-urban communities of Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, that centered local knowledge and agency in addressing community-identified needs.

Michael holds a BA in Conflict and Peacemaking from Northland College and an MA in Sustainable Tourism from Indiana University Bloomington, where his thesis examined sustainable tourism's contributions to conservation, community development, and economic growth in Nicaraguan private reserves.

Sarah Warren is Executive Director of Community Partnerships and Associate Professor of Sociology at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR. Sarah has conducted research in Latin America with indigenous peoples, looking at how urban indigenous groups advocate for collective rights. Her recent research looks at short-term rental regulations and how they intersect with housing affordability and accessibility. In her new role, she is building reciprocal relationships with community partners that both help solve local challenges and provide students with real world experiences making change that matters.

Amber West, MFA, PhD, is a working-class author, educator, and community-engaged arts and humanities practitioner whose career spans nonprofit service and both public and higher education. She is a UCLA faculty member in Writing Programs and leads efforts to expand their community-engaged writing courses and develop sustainable partnerships that connect students with community organizations across Los Angeles and beyond.

A longtime teaching artist and cultural organizer, she co-founded and directed Alphabet Arts, an interdisciplinary collective whose Puppets & Poets program brought together writers, theatremakers, and low-income children to create original works blending poetry and puppetry. Her community-based work has also included creating and producing Whitmania, the West Coast’s largest commemoration of Walt Whitman’s bicentennial, and serving as Board Chair of Oye Group, an Obie-winning NYC arts organization dedicated to uplifting marginalized artists and communities.

West’s poems and scholarship have appeared in journals and anthologies including Calyx, The Feminist Wire, Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, Puppetry International, Furies: A Poetry Anthology of Women Warriors, and The Routledge Companion to Puppetry & Material Performance. She is the author of two poetry collections: Hen & God (The Word Works, 2017) and Daughter Eraser (Finishing Line Press, 2015), and her “puppet poems” have been performed nationally. Her community-engaged research and creative work have been supported by Brooklyn Arts Council, the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship Program, and Poets & Writers, among others.

Originally from California’s Central Coast and with sharecropping roots in Tennessee and Oklahoma, West earned her BA from UC Santa Cruz, MFA from New York University, and PhD from the University of Connecticut. She lives with her family in North Hollywood and spends as much time as possible in pools and the ocean.

Christine Hegel received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the CUNY Graduate Center and is Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Department of Social Sciences at Western Connecticut State University. She has conducted field research primarily in Egypt and New York City, and worked on team-based projects in Finland, southern California, and Geneva.

Since 2018, her field research has centered on informal recyclers and their emergent worker movement for recognition as part of the waste management infrastructure of New York City. As an engaged anthropologist, Hegel collaborates on research, advocacy, education, and organizing projects with a non-profit sustainability organization and seeks to make space for co-designing solutions to the challenges that recyclers face. At WCSU, she teaches courses on labor, waste, globalization, the Middle East, and research design and qualitative methods. As founder of the Connecticut Futures Lab, Hegel is building partnerships between WCSU and organizations in the region to facilitate community-engaged experiential learning.