Cope receives NSF career grant
Unique project to blend geography and education in Buffalo urban classrooms

By JENNIFER LEWANDOWSKI
Reporter Contributor

No one was more surprised than Meghan Cope to learn she had received a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Program Grant to carry out her life's work-a unique project that blends geography and education in urban classrooms.

The grant, an award of $230,525 over four years with a possible fifth-year extension, will fund a project whose goal, Cope says, is to help give a voice to those individuals outside society's mainstream-in this case minority students, the majority population in the schools with which she will be working-while also raising awareness in the community-at-large of the importance of geography.

An assistant professor in the Department of Geography in the College of Arts and Sciences, Cope has put the project, originally slated to begin this June, on hold for a year to accommodate a potential sabbatical. This postponement, however, hasn't diminished the feelings of awe and gratitude Cope has for setting her project-once a pipe dream-in motion.

"I was really surprised to get a grant," she says, noting that in 1998, for example, the NSF granted approximately 340 career awards, only three of which were given for projects in the social sciences. The hard sciences play a much larger part in attracting the NSF grants, and for that reason, Cope says, she was extremely skeptical of her chances.

"Once I saw that, I figured, 'There's no chance I'm getting one of these,'" she says. "Of course, I'm thrilled to have it."

Cope, who has been a UB faculty member since she completed her doctoral degree at the University of Colorado at Boulder five years ago, has focused her work on issues of welfare reform in Buffalo and how social-service organizations in the area influence the labor market, primarily at the lower-income level. This year, she says, will be dedicated to not only firming up plans for her grant project, but also analyzing previous research compiled from interviews with social-services workers from 1997-99. Anxious to get the ball rolling, Cope provided a preview of the four-year endeavor that looks specifically at how inner-city third-graders conceptualize urban space.

The first year, she says, entails "background research, literature reviews, setting up procedures, contacting the schools that I'm going to be working withŠdoing mainly ground work."

The following year, Cope plans to teach a service-learning course for both undergraduate and graduate students at UB, particularly for students in the disciplines of geography and education.

"The idea with theŠcourse is that geography students will get exposure to some education principles and possibly think about elementary or secondary education as a job option, and education students will get exposure to geography in a way that goes beyond what people typically think of as geography, which is memorizing place names and that kind of thing," she says, bemoaning, tongue-in-cheek, the perception some have of her chosen field.

"It's very purposely structured to have this two-way influence," she says, explaining that in addition to regular classwork at UB, students will be working in several Buffalo classrooms-she declined to say which schools just yet-on various activities that reveal the students' take on urban space.

"How do they think of different spaces in the city? Do they perceive some spaces as safe, others as dangerous? Some as fun, others as boring?" she asks, throwing out examples of what she's interested in finding out.

"Respecting that kids are very savvy, these are times in which we are less-focused on urban problems," she says, pointing out that despite the current economic boom, "there are neighborhoods all over the country that are not necessarily experiencing that boom."

"We're using this (research) to see if we can help kids learn more about us and also draw from existing perceptions," she says, noting that students definitely will play an active role in the project.

For example, one assignment would entail third-graders using a disposable camera to record a day in their lives and the spaces they encounter along the way-home, the park, the playground, the grocery store. Students also will be encouraged to keep a journal of their lives in and out of the classroom-for example, "Where I went today and who I saw."

Cope's project is multimedia oriented, with plans for video and Internet activities as well.

The tangible results of this research, Cope says, will be the development of curriculum materials based on the activities, which she will be sharing with the Buffalo schools and the larger teaching community, with plans to publish the materials in pamphlets and online.

The ultimate goal, Cope says, is "to give these children an additional avenue of interest and confidence-(to show them) that someone really cares what they think."

The research, which incorporates issues of class, race and gender, embraces Cope's overall career commitment, which, she says, is simply "listening to peopleŠand letting them know there are people who care about what's happening to them and who'd like to see things change for the better."

Cope is slated to receive additional funding for the project through UB's Equipment Challenge Grant Program.