While it is important to make changes in our communities, it is just as important to learn what is and is not effective, and why.
Community-based research. Isles staff, along with student interns and analysts from local colleges and universities, assess community health, evaluate Isles’ impact, and find cost-effective ways to help Isles meet its mission. Because Isles’ research process deals in real-life scenarios and partners with community residents and other stakeholders, it opens up opportunities for on-the-ground research and training by faculty and students from Princeton University, The College of New Jersey, The University of Penn, Rutgers University, and Rider University.
College courses. Princeton University has created three university classes related to:
- A 2007 semester-long workshop on Isles at the Woodrow Wilson School.
- A fall 2008 course in sustainable strategies (CEE 477); it was offered by the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department to address energy opportunities and challenges presented by Isles’ renovation of Mill One.
- A course on Isles’ efforts to reduce energy use in older neighborhoods, offered by Princeton’s Engineering Projects in Community Service.
Research on sustainable development. Isles is also strengthening research in the broader field of sustainable development. In 1996 Martin Johnson, Isles’ President, co-founded the Success Measures Project (SMP), a national effort to build the capacity of community organizations to better measure their impact. Success Measures is now a national pilot program, under the NeighborWorks® America umbrella.
Community Action Research and Design (CARD) Center. This center bolsters Isles’ capacity for community and regional research by engaging colleges and universities, government agencies, and community groups to design and implement research projects and educational opportunities. This community-based classroom balances the interests of educators and researchers with the information needs of community groups like Isles.
The CARD Center will:
- Strengthen community research efforts that help groups like Isles make informed decisions and educate the public.
- Serve as a satellite community classroom and laboratory for universities that seek research and training opportunities for students and faculty.
- Enable Isles and other community groups to link up with higher education resources to meet their research needs.
- Design and develop projects in the public interest, such as parks, green buildings, community facilities, and neighborhood master plans.
- Serve as a conference and teaching center, bringing ideas and information to enable learning beyond our borders.
CARD research projects will:
- Investigate the distribution of affordable housing and its relation to social and economic opportunity.
- Explore the relationship between substandard housing and a city’s carbon footprint, looking at what energy investments would be most cost-effective.
- Analyze longitudinally the impact of Isles’ YouthBuild Institute.
- Develop indicators of regional equity: trends in employment and population, tax base per capita, homeownership rates, per capita income, median income, affordable housing distribution, racial segregation, neighborhood opportunity indices, and school poverty.
- Analyze the sustainability features of the Mill One conversion.
- Refine departmental and organization-wide indicators of Isles’ success.