Service Learning Fellowship

The Television Department's Tim Densmore was an alumnus of Columbia College Chicago and a highly respected member of the faculty who was wholly committed to making the education of his students relevant within and to the communities with which they engaged. This Faculty Fellowship honors the 10+ years Tim developed Service-Learning curricula for the College by introducing instructors to the scholarship and transformative potential of civic engagement.

April 5: Proposals Due

May 7: Three Fellowships Awarded

May 2010 through September 2010: Fellowship Period

2009 Fellows

Nicole Garneau

Nicole Garneau is the Associate Director of Community Partnerships in the Center for Community Arts Partnerships (CCAP) at Columbia College Chicago, where she staffs the Arts in Youth and Community Development graduate program. In her role at CCAP, Nicole works to forge and maintain partnerships between college students/faculty and community arts organizations/practitioners.

At Columbia College, Nicole teaches in the Cultural Studies program, and at DePaul University, she teaches in the Women and Gender Studies department. For 12 years, she has worked closely with Insight Arts, an arts organization dedicated to increasing access to cultural work that promotes social justice and defends human rights. She holds a B.A. in Theater from the University of Illinois at Chicago and an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Art from Columbia College Chicago. For 5 years, Nicole has been making publicly engaged conceptual performance work outdoors in various locations around Chicago and in other US cities. She serves on the board of directors of the National Performance Network. Nicole is a practicing performance artist in Chicago. Her web site is www.nicolegarneau.com.

Lisa D. Lenoir
Lisa D. Lenoir is a writer, editor and educator. She is the former travel and society editor for the Chicago Sun-Times, where she wrote travel features and managed freelance and staff writers who submitted stories to the weekly Sunday Travel section. Prior to her appointment as travel editor in 2004, she was the newspaper’s fashion editor. From 2007-2008, she worked in philanthropy for a social service agency in Chicago.

Ms. Lenoir graduated in 1989 from Indiana University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism and minor in graphic design. Currently, she is working on her master’s degree in Nonprofit Management at DePaul University. Writing awards include the Chicago Association of Black Journalists, Award of Excellence in Commentary, 1998; the Peter Lisagor Journalism Award in Features (team project), 2003; and the 2002-2003 Lowell Thomas Silver Award for Sun-Times Travel Section (team project.) Her volunteer experience includes serving on boards such as the National Public Housing Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago’s Leadership Advisory Committee.

In addition to her journalism and nonprofit background, Ms. Lenoir teaches “Writing for Managers” at Columbia College Chicago and serves as the cluster’s coordinator. She’s been incorporating Service-Learning into her writing curriculum since 2005, when she engaged her students in a project built around Hurricane Katrina and its relief efforts. The experience motivated her to incorporate more Service-Learning components into her “Writing for Managers” courses. Students have worked with organizations such as the National Organization for Women, Blue Sky Inn and Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE). Through the Timothy J. Densmore Service-Learning Faculty Fellowship, Ms. Lenoir looks forward to adding more rigor and excitement to her course by working with the college’s Center for Community Arts Partnerships, and thus further share the rewards of civic engagement with students and faculty.

Laurence Minsky
Laurence Minsky is an associate professor in the Marketing Communication Department of the School of Media Arts at Columbia College Chicago, where he originated a course called “Ad Agency. In this course, students work as a specialist (art director, copywriter, and account executive) in a team to complete real ad assignments for actual clients, including the American Lung Association of Metropolitan Chicago, the Chicago Fire Department, Friends of Chicago Animal Care and Control, and TPAN (Test Positive Aware Network). And the student projects have resulted in increased public knowledge of selected social and environmental issues, contributed to the passage of Chicago’s Clean Air Ordinance, among other governmental changes, and has received ad industry awards for creativity and effectiveness.

As a professor, he focuses on helping his students develop their abilities to creatively problem solve and innovate, the key to industry success. He also works to help students develop their individual philosophies of what makes effective and ethical advertising so they can become better, more articulate judges of creative work and strategic solutions. And he works to give students ample opportunity to reflect on their learning, identify and take “ownership” of what they need to learn next, and refine their educational goals.

Outside of teaching, Laurence also applies his skills and knowledge as a creative and strategic consultant for leading and emerging agencies and corporations throughout the world. In addition, he is the author of How to Succeed in Advertising When All You Have is Talent (Second Edition), a chapter author of Advertising and the Business of Brands (Media Revolution Edition), and the co-author of 25 Words or Less and is currently under contract for another book. And, he has been a guest speaker at professional meetings and universities, quoted in such leading print media as the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and Chicago Sun-Times and interviewed on television and on radio talk shows across the country. Laurence is a member of The One Club for Art and Copy, The In-Store Marketing Institute, The Authors Guild, and the American Academy of Advertising.