Cross-Disciplinary Faculty Duo Honored for Innovative Partnership

Susan Roll and Jennifer Wilking were drawn together from the first day they met, sitting next to each other at new faculty orientation seven years ago. While focusing on different disciplines—social work and political science, respectively—they found parallels in their interests and shared an infectious enthusiasm.

That instant connection led to a lasting collaboration—in research and the classroom. Whether leading a multifaceted study into a city ordinance banning sitting or lying in public spaces or holding focus groups with students experiencing food and housing insecurity, they find opportunities to work together in ways that prepare students to be engaged leaders who support a greater good.

“We are doing work that matters to our community and our city, and that is really exciting,” Roll said. “We had a few students testify in front of City Council a few years ago, and they were like, ‘Wow, we are really influencing policy.’”

That’s their intent. Since 2017, the duo has co-taught a course in political science and social work that enables students to discover how research informs housing policy—at Chico State as well as in the broader community. 

Nearly 100 students have worked in interdisciplinary teams to explore and suggest solutions for homelessness and housing insecurity. Each year, all of the students volunteer in the community and present their research at public events.

For their creativity and success, Wilking and Roll have been recognized this week with the California State University’s 2020–21 Faculty Innovation and Leadership Award—one of the system’s highest faculty honors. Selected from hundreds of nominations, they are among 25 recipients being honored across 20 campuses for extraordinary leadership to advance student success. The award comes with a cash prize and department contribution.

The two were surprised and thrilled by the recognition. Befitting their partnership, it further invigorates their excitement to inspire more collaboration across Chico State and the CSU.

“We are always wanting other people to come play with us,” Wilking said. “We want them to know, ‘You can do this too. And it’s really fun. It’s been an incredibly rich part of our career for both of us.”

She and Roll feed off each other’s creativity and momentum, and they agree the work has improved their own knowledge, teaching, and research. In class, their natural ease with one another is a model for working together.

“In the real world, anywhere you work, you are working cross-disciplinarily, so I don’t know why one would ever teach without other disciplines involved,” Roll said. “Everybody talks about silos in the real world, and we start them in the academy. If we started together, it would be so different.”

Their unique course was born of a walk with their dogs in Bidwell Park, where they found themselves chatting about how Chico’s approaches to homelessness seemed ineffective. Recognizing a need for more data, they had a vision for a class where students would do community-based research. They soon partnered with psychology professor Mariah Kornbluh to launch their “Interdisciplinary Course on Research and Policy.” Students, they discovered, were as excited by the intersection of subjects as they were.

“Students so appreciated having a different perspective,” Wilking said. “They come from many different points of view. Some are interested in different careers in law enforcement, some as social workers, and they have a different approach to similar problems. I think it changed their minds in ways we didn’t expect.”

They’ve since focused the course on other areas of homelessness, student housing insecurity in the wake of the Camp Fire, and housing impacts due to COVID-19—topics students have embraced with impressive candor and courageous conversations.

“Navigating community politics around housing and homelessness is so contentious,” Wilking said. “We are constantly thinking, ‘How do we frame this in a way that moves the issue forward, that doesn’t get caught up in the political and sometimes ugly discourse?’”

Students in the class have shared that they developed greater confidence in conducting applied research, as well as a stronger sense of personal agency in responding to social problems. They also report finding meaningful purpose for their coursework and its connection to their career goals.  

“We got to practice what we were learning and bring it back and make it into a real thing,” wrote one student in post-course interviews. “Every part of it was growth and new. Finally, [we were] able to put all we knew into one place and do something.”

Dean of Undergraduate Education Kate McCarthy, who nominated the duo for the award, said their design and implementation of a team-taught and community-engaged course has significantly advanced a high-impact teaching and learning practice at Chico State.

“The efforts of these faculty are making a real difference in the lives of their students, their colleagues, and the community,” McCarthy said. “This work is critically important at this moment, when we are intensely focused on empowering students to move toward their degrees with purpose and efficiency. … We need to seize these opportunities and reward those who are leading us forward.” 

Four years in, Roll and Wilking still meet every week. It takes an incredible time commitment to take on such a tandem project, they said, and they know that is a barrier for others who want to do something similar. They hope to scale and replicate their model, perhaps extending the collaboration over two semesters, and would love to find a way to include junior faculty on the project.

A bit nervous about how the collaborative classroom approach would look in a virtual environment, Wilking and Roll put the class on pause this fall and plan to resume it in spring 2021. Amid the global pandemic, economic challenges, and unprecedented unemployment, they agree that now more than ever, their work feels critical.

“The issue of homelessness has now been exacerbated. I don’t know that we could give this up right now, just because it’s inconvenient for us,” Roll said. “We can’t give it up. We really do feel a commitment to this work.”

Roll earned her PhD in social work from the University of Denver, her MSW from Arizona State University, and her BA in political science from University of Rochester. After serving as the director of civic engagement for Chico State for three years, last summer she became the director of the School of Social Work.

Wilking earned her PhD and her master’s in political science from UC Davis, and her bachelor’s in political science from Wellsesley College. In addition to teaching, she also serves as associate chair of the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice and coordinator of the International Relations Program.