USU Center for Community Engagement Selects Faculty for Inaugural Fellowship in Community Engagement

LOGAN, Utah — The Utah State University Center for Community Engagement and the Office of the Provost selected Laura Gelfand and Sunshine Brosi to serve as the inaugural Faculty Fellows in Community Engagement on Nov. 3. The Faculty Fellows program will further bolster the connection between the CCE (student affairs) and faculty (academic affairs) which is necessary for our continued growth and success as an institution that is committed to community engagement.

Laura D. Gelfand

Laura D. Gelfand is a professor of art history at USU in the Department of Art + Design in the Caine College of the Arts. Gelfand has been at USU since 2011, arriving as Department Head, a position she held until 2018.

Her current research engages the vibrant, interdisciplinary world of animal studies with a particular focus on dogs and wolves. She edited the volume Our Dogs, Our Selves: Dogs in Medieval and Renaissance Art, Literature, and Culture (Brill, 2016).

Her recent publications include:

• “Whistler’s The White Girl, a Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing,” Humanimalia, 14.1 Fall, 2023: pp. 137-174.
• “Human Animal Interactions in Western Art,” in The Routledge International Handbook on Human-Animal Interactions, Interventions and Anthrozoology, Routledge (2023): pp. 656-676.
• “Red Riding Hood Lied: Trust the Wolf, Not the Tale” Thinking C21 Journal, March 23, 2023.

Among other awards and grants, she was a Fulbright Fellow in the Department of the History of Art at the University of York in 2018-19. Her community-engaged teaching at USU has centered primarily on an Honors course that introduces students to the layered meaning of representations of dogs in various artistic media across time.

Students in the class partner with the Cache Humane Society and help the shelter through activities including fundraising for a mural installed on the CHS building last summer by Salt Lake City muralist and USU alum Chuck Landvatter. After developing close ties with the shelter, Gelfand joined the Cache Humane Society Board of Directors last year.

Sunshine Brosi

Sunshine Brosi is an associate professor of wildland resources in the S.J. & Jessie E. Quinney College of Natural Resources at USU’s Eastern Campus in Price, Utah.

Sunshine is passionate about teaching and has developed and instructed six Community-Engaged Learning courses that have been taught in-person and online.

In addition to the USU Faculty Fellowship in Community Engagement, Brosi has received several awards for teaching and student mentoring, including the Center for Intersectional Gender Studies and Research Teaching Fellows and the USU Empowering Teaching Excellence Teaching Excellence Scholar.

Brosi leads Community-Engaged Learning courses that address land, water and air issues in rural Utah with federal and state agency collaboration. Her undergraduate students’ community-engaged research includes occupancy surveys of kit foxes, migration corridors for pronghorn, and other wildlife projects.

Brosi’s scholarship of teaching and learning research focuses on the transformative nature of community-engaged activities and how they assist students in developing their identities as scientists. Projects are driven by agency professionals in the field and students present their research back to the agency at the end of each semester, providing valuable career connections and skills.

Brosi is also actively involved in mentoring high school students at the National 4-H Forestry Invitational and at Carbon High School 4-H & FFA Rangeland Career Development Events.

The Faculty Fellowships in Community Engagement will begin in January of 2024, and faculty will serve for two years. Faculty Fellows will help advance Community-Engaged Learning course development, Community-Engaged Research, and Community-Engaged Departments, and also mentor and train new faculty on CEL pedagogy.

For more information on the USU Center for Community Engagement, please visit https://www.usu.edu/community-engagement.