Welcome...

...to my electronic professional portfolio, or "e-folio."  Here you can learn something about my background, my interests, and the kinds of work that I do.  You will find links on this site to courses I teach, things I have written, talks I have given, and software I use. Please note that links will open in new windows.

Please feel welcomed to contact me about anything that interests you in these pages.  I  can be reached by e-mail at rstoecker@wisc.edu, or at the following office:

Department of Community and Environmental Sociology, 350 Agricultural Hall, 1450 Linden Drive, Madison, Wisconsin  53706.

     phone:  608-890-0764
     fax: 608-262-6022

A Brief Biography:

Raised in a small town called Mukwonago, Wisconsin, after being born at the end of the post-WWII baby boom in 1959, I was both too young and too geographically isolated to have much direct experience with social movement and social change activities.  But somehow I still became infected with the culture of the time.  And I set out to find ways of promoting progressive social change.

As an undergraduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, I gravitated to an alternative first-year program called Integrated Liberal Studies, which focused on issue-oriented education rather than disciplinary-focused education.  We didn't learn about physics, and political science, and chemistry, and history.  Instead we took courses like "Energy" where we learned about the laws of thermodynamics, 1970s government energy policy, changes in the forms of energy usage over time, and other things that taught us the lessons of those disciplines in the context of a real issue.  The experience forever ruined my ability to think in terms of a single discipline, and I consequently ended up designing my own major that integrated a variety of social sciences.

Partly because I was looking for an excuse to stay in town while my life partner finished her undergraduate degree, and partly because I was still looking for the best way to support social change, I then enrolled in a Masters program in Counseling.  I learned half of the communication skills I practice today from my mentors in that program.

When we graduated and moved to the University of Minnesota where I began work as a Ph.D. student in Sociology (changing the world one person at a time using counseling was too slow for me so I decided it would be more efficient to work on entire societies instead), I began to receive the other half of my training in communication skills.  The training came outside of the academy, however, as I got caught up with a most amazing set of neighborhood activists in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis who had not only saved their community from the wrecking ball, but had gone on to rehabilitate their neighborhood housing that was left to rot by absentee owners. I finally found my niche for working with social change--the neighborhood community--and received my Ph.D. in 1988.

I then became an Assistant Professor at the University of Toledo, where  I was involved in working with neighborhood organizations--helping them do strategic planning, conduct needs assessments, and evaluate their impact.  We now have a model for this kind of work--where academics partner with community-based social change efforts--called community-based research or CBR. You can read more about CBR in the research section of this e-folio.  I have also continued to work with the neighborhood in Minneapolis that started it all, and have even had a number of opportunities to work with community projects in Melbourne, Australia.

I am now a Professor in the Department of Community and Environmental Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, with a joint appointment in the Center for Community and Economic Development, beginning July 2005.  This position has taken me into expanded work in academy-community partnerships and community leadership development. I am continuing work trying to amplify the community voice in service learning, and provide strong information technology support for nonprofit organizations.

Research Interests:

It is important to me that you not think of my "research" work as something that is designed mostly to fit on a shelf.  Nearly all of the research I do these days is part of the work of community organizations striving for social change.  The three most recent books I've worked on are focused on building the capacity of the community sector.  You can click on the book graphics to find out more.

 

Consequently, all of my research, teaching, and community work these days starts with the word "community."  The three main topics I work on are called community organizing and development, community-based research, and community information technology.  

For those of you who want to know more, you can view my full vita (for those not familiar with the term, a vita is a very long resume)

Teaching Interests:

Similar to my research interests, my teaching interests also start with the concept of community.  I have recently taught a variety of face to face courses, including:

Community Development

Community Organizing

Research Design and Practice in Sociology

Along with focusing the substance of my courses on community, I have increasingly developed courses that involve engagement with community groups. My students have worked with me on intense community engagement projects, including:

Community-Based Research: This course involved a dozen students in conducting interviews with 65 community groups on their perceptions of service-learning. It led to a major community project producing a set of community standards for service-learning and the book The Unheard Voices.

Modern American Communities: Community Information Technology. This course involved a dozen students in conducting interviews with 30 community groups on their needs for information technology support and compiling case studies of two information technology support providers. It led to the implementation of the TechShop Madison project.

Community-Based Research with The Natural Step Monona . This course involved a dozen students in working with The Natural Step Monona to distribute 3100 surveys door to door in the Monona community to learn about community sustainability issues. A follow-up course is being designed to implement the results of that survey. .

Since moving to Wisconsin, my career has shifted more and more toward community engagement. Now, most of my teaching and research are directly involved with various community organizing and development efforts, and you may have learned from the previous sections. Some of my more recent rewarding involvements include:

Co-coordination of the TechShop Madison project with Katherine Loving and Eric Howland--a three year project to build the information technology of community groups.

Community-based research with Community Shares of Wisconsin.

Community-based research with The Natural Step Monona.

Technical assistance with the SouthWest Madison Community Organizers.

Strategic planning facilitation with The Grassroots Leadership College, Community Groundworks, Madison Area CSA Coalition, and the Trent Centre for Community Based Education and U-Links.

Technology Actitivities:

One of the things I would have least expected 10 years ago was how much of my work would involve information technologies.  But today I manage a server, manage two virtual community projects, and write and speak on the role of information and communication technologies in community development.  These are some of the websites I have designed and maintain, and the virtual communities I support:

COMM-ORG: The On-Line Conference on Community Organizing and Development

Community Development Service Learning

The Rural Alliance for Service Learning

I am also skilled with both Debian-based and Redhat-based Linux operating systems, using server and desktop versions of CentOS Linux and desktop and laptop versions of Ubuntu Linux.  I am also increasingly using content management system software such as Drupal and e107. I am not a programmer, but am moderately skilled at configuring and adapting javascript, cgi, and PHP code.

Consulting, Training, and Speaking:

I do a variety of consulting and speaking activities.   Much of my consulting work revolves around helping to develop higher ed-community partnership programs and to facilitate community-based research projects.  My expertise includes:

• planning process facilitation
• community-based research design and facilitation
• empowerment evaluation
• service-learning

I have been doing more and more training with community groups and academics around maximizing the community impact of service-learning and community-based research. I have had the pleasure of facilitating workshops that last anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of days; with with national and international groups, community coalitions, academic-community partnerships, and higher education institutions ranging from community colleges to Research I universities and everything in between. Some of the groups I have recently worked with include:

Just Connections--a consortium of Appalachian community groups and colleges.

The University of Toronto

The Canadian Alliance for Community Service Learning

Northern Michican University

Belmont University

Cornell University

Knox College

Colleges of Worcester Consortium

National Outreach Scholarship Conference Emerging Engagement Scholars

Great Northwoods Service-Learning Conference

University of Wisconsin Baraboo/Sauk County

And I have also had the pleasure of delivering keynote addresses to a variety of gatherings that include:

Commnity Outcomes. Keynote address prepared for the Canadian Alliance for Community Service Learning Symposium, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada, 2011.

Building Partnerships with Service Learning. Keynote address prepared for the Fourth Annual Great Northwoods Service Learning Conference, Sheboygan, Wisconsin, 2011.

Service Learning in Metropolis and Beyond. Keynote address delivered to the 7th Annual Eastern Carolina University Conference on Service Learning, 2010.

Research as Colonization: Ending Our Complicity in Oppressive Global Relations. Keynote address delivered to the Sixth Annual Social Theory Forum, University of Massachusetts, Boston, 2009.

Dating to Marriage: The Community-School Relationship. Keynote address prepared for South Eastern Wisconsin Service Learning Consortium Service Learning Academy, St. Francis, WI, 2008.

CBR and the Two Forms of Social Change. Keynote Address delivered to the Learn and Serve America: Higher Education National Community-Based Research Networking Initiative Subgrantee Meeting, 2007.

Why Don't We do More Participatory Research. Keynote address delivered to the The First, CSU Conference on Community-Based Teaching and Research: Creating Knowledge and Building Community. Cal Poly, Pomona. 2006.