Feminist & Gender Studies is proud to announce Dr. Rushaan Kumar, Assistant Professor, recently received the Exemplary Achievement in Community-Engaged Research Award from CC's Collaborative for Community Engagement (CCE) during this year's Community Engagement Recognition Night (CERN).

The CCE "seeks to advance the public purpose of liberal arts education" and co-creates "community-engaged learning experiences to develop students into engaged citizens who invest their liberal arts education in the public good." CERN honors faculty, staff, students, and community partners who engage in "community-based work, democratically invests in shared futures, and develops our students into engaged citizens." 

The Exemplary Achievement in Community-Engaged Research Award "honors a faculty member who has applied the knowledge of their discipline and their own expertise to the public good through community-engaged research." Dr. Kumar received the award due to his Colorado Springs LGBTQ+ Oral History Project on which he collaborated with students in FG416 Senior Seminar this fall. As Dr. Naomi Wood, Director and Associate Professo of Spanish & Portuguese, noted in her nomination,

Students found this project inspiring on many levels: getting to work with community, getting to better understand the methods and impact that oral histories have in revising the archive that we usually study, and reflecting how over the last several decades language and notions of 'LGBTQ' 'community' have both changed. Having only lived in the city a few years himself, this was an important project for his own development and for the continued project to form a sense of place here. He intends to include these narratives in the local library, available to the public, as well as the CC library as a resource for future research. And, with the long list of references he has enough future interviewees to continue this project for many years to come.