Living Our Mission: Research Rooted in Community

Recently, the Senior Academy at IU Indianapolis hosted Dr. Susan Hyatt at the Last Lecture Series. Dr. Hyatt, professor emeritus at IU Indianapolis, is an anthropologist whose work focuses on telling the stories of those who do not have a front seat at conversations. She discussed her book, Neighborhood of Saturdays, which describes the experiences of two communities living side by side from 1920 to 60 – a Jewish community that migrated to Indy from the area around Turkey, and an African American community that migrated from the South. 

In a style that combined storytelling with facts about the era, Dr. Hyatt described what brought these communities together—stories of friendship, food, fun, laughter, work, and prayer that may have started on Saturdays but grew into a bigger part of the culture of South Side Indianapolis. Her talk explained how the communities that bonded together on the south side of Indianapolis started out trying to find a way to address discrimination that affected both groups and, over time, created a tapestry of relationships that reminds us that there is more that unites than divides us.

In the same vein, Dr. Randall Roper, the featured scholar at this month’s Translating Research Into Practice (TRIP) series, is another example of our faculty’s work that touches lives in the community. In Dr. Roper’s case, it is the work done by his lab to address and demystify Down Syndrome.

In his words, “One of my favorite activities of the past year was hosting individuals from Down Syndrome Indiana at a Science Night at IU Indianapolis. Individuals with Down syndrome and their caregivers were able to isolate DNA and we talked about the research we are doing and why it is important to them.”

Having been at Science Night when this was presented, I saw firsthand what this research means to parents whose children are affected by Down Syndrome.

That IU Indianapolis embraces community-based research is not an empty claim – the work of our faculty draws from, and gives back to, the communities around us. Our mission to serve our state, as embodied in the third pillar of IU’s 2030 Strategic Plan, would be a soundbite with little substance unless our work serves our community.

Go Jags!

Latha Ramchand
Chancellor