Susan Jurow earns the Provost’s Faculty Achievement Award
The annual Provost’s Faculty Achievement Awards are presented to selected faculty members who have offered recent significant publications or creative contributions in their academic fields. Awardees receive a grant to be used to support their research, scholarship and/or creative work, and the recipients were honored at the 2018 Fall Convocation Awards Ceremony on Friday, Oct. 5.
Jurow, associate professor of learning sciences and human development, joined the CU Boulder School of Education faculty 2003. Her research explores how learning is situated in changing social and cultural practices.
In particular, the awards committee recognized Jurow's research exploring learning in the food movement and working with an immigrant community located in what is often called a “food desert,” where access to groceries and fresh food is scarce. Jurow intentionally chose to document learning outside of traditional school contexts in order to understand the ways that consequential learning was organized in settings with different power relations. The project that was built on the community members’ needs and questions, and it was co-designed to highlight the community leaders’ expertise.
Dean Kathy Schultz pointed out that Jurow’s work has shaped our understandings of what is meant by “consequential learning,” or participation in social practices that allow people to be recognized as members of a community of practice.
“Her work, located in community settings, has moved the field further in terms of clarifying and concretely documenting the importance—and complications—of consequential learning,” Schultz said. “Her work is deeply informed by her clear grasp of the theoretical literature, her commitment to research methods that reflect a commitment to both rigor and democratic practices, and her partnership with community members who have helped the program come alive.”