Each year, UNC’s Graduate School honors nominated graduate students with the Impact Award for their research addressing issues faced by North Carolinians. This year, 13 students were recognized with Impact Awards for their work toward community-centered programs.
The Impact Award is given for graduate research that aims to provide benefits to the people and communities of North Carolina. Julie Montaigne, director of fellowships at the Graduate School, said students are selected by a faculty council after being nominated by their department and submitting an application.
“We typically receive about 20 to 30 nominations and award between 10 and 15,” Montaigne said. “This year, we received 21 nominations and made 13 awards.”
Sarah Blanton, a doctoral candidate in romance languages, is one of these awardees. Her research focuses on agricultural communities, inspired by her experience living in Tazewell County, Ill. Here, she became familiar with the Latino community.
Blanton’s dissertation, which is currently in the works, tells the narrative of migrant farmworkers on H-2A visas, who she said were coming from Latin America and Mexico to work during peak agricultural periods. She said the goal of her dissertation is to share the stories and materials from these groups with the public.
“I'm trying to kind of bring those stories into the conversation because they are part of our community, and they nurture the crops in the field, but they also nurture the community that we exist in,” Blanton said.
Another Impact Award recipient, Jeremy Fine, is an MD-PhD candidate at UNC. In his research, he evaluated the effects of law enforcement in transporting people between mental health facilities and how a new program aims to reform these practices. Currently, when patients must be transported to another facility, he said they are escorted by law enforcement in handcuffs. Through his work in assessing an upcoming program from the Department of Health and Human Services, Fine said he plans to work closely with police departments and health care facilities.
The program is expected to begin this summer, during which Fine will gather quantitative data including changes in cost and voluntary commitments. Fine plans to listen to the people involved in the system, such as patients, community members, doctors and police officers, to analyze the effectiveness of the program and identify where improvements can be made.
“Our work is going to help determine if it goes well or it doesn't go well,” Fine said. “What would it take to bring this to the whole state of North Carolina?”
