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 either of the following offices:

Department of Rural Sociology, 350 Agricultural Hall, 1450 Linden Drive, Madison, Wisconsin  53706.

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

Center for Community and Economic Development, 610 Langdon Street, 3rd Floor, Madison, WI 53703

     phone: 608-265-8256
     fax: 608-263-4999

A Brief Biography:

Raised in a small town called Mukwonago, 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 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 level 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 an Associate Professor in the Department of Rural 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.

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.  Even the two most recent books I've worked on are focused on the craft of doing community-based research.  You can click on the book graphics to find out more.

 

Consequently, all of my research 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 informatics.   If you are interested, here are some recent talks I've given over the past few years that illustrate what I mean by those terms.

Creative Tensions in the New Community-Based Research

Is Community Informatics Good for Communities?

Power or Programs:  Two Paths to Community Development

 For those of you who want to see even 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

Community-Based Research

I have also taught online courses in the past and sometimes teach portions of my face to face classes online I have become increasingly comfortable teaching over the Internet.  The key to successful online teaching, I have found, is to make maximum use of the Internet's capacity for interactivity.  So I emphasize student use of e-mail, online forums, and even chat rooms.

You will also notice from the example syllabi that I emphasize student responsibility in my courses.  My goal is for students to become self-directed learners.  I do this by providing student choice in selecting what to read and even what to write.  I lecture only rarely, instead focusing the course process around guided discussion and learning workshops.

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, design my own online courses using all open-source software, manage two virtual community projects, and write and speak extensively 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:

Public Sociology

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

The Sociological Initiatives Foundation

Community Organizations and Service Learning

The PAR Outcomes Project

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, particularly e107. I am not a programmer, but am moderately skilled at configuring and adapting javascript, cgi, and PHP code.

Consulting 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
• participatory research design and facilitation
• empowerment evaluation

I have used those skills on projects such as these recent examples:

The Grassroots Leadership College program evaluation and strategic planning.

The Wisconsin Pathways to Independence Model Communities program evaluation.

The Corella and Bertram F. Bonner Foundation's Community Research Project

The Toledo Community Foundation's community organizing training and technical assistance program

The Lagrange Development Corporation's Weed and Seed program evaluation

The West Bank Community Development Corporation's community organizing assessment project

Monash University's Neighbourhood House information and technology assessment project

Among my list of humbling experiences have been those where I have been asked to deliver keynote speeches.  Here are some examples of those addresses:

Savior, Servant, or Scallywag: Ethical Challenges of Community Engagement. Trent University Ashley Fellowship lecture, Peterborough, Ontario, 2006.

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.

Creative Tensions in the New Community-Based Research. Delivered to the Community-Based Research Network Symposium, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, 2004.

Toward a People's Technology. Delivered to the "Community and Information Technology: the Big Questions" search conference, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. 2002

Some Questions as we Begin: Thinking About Community-Based Research. Delivered to the Best Practices in Undergraduate Community-Based Research: Challenges and Opportunities for the Research University conference, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 2002.

Power or Programs? Two Paths to Community Development. Delivered to the International Association for Community Development Conference, Rotorua, New Zealand, 2001.

The "Dot-Orging" of Community:  Community Change, Development, and the Internet. Delivered to the Creating and Sustaining On-Line Communities 2000 conference, Mandurah, Western Australia, Australia, 2000.