MAPPR Co-Founder and UNC Charlotte Professor Receives Provost's Faculty Award for Community Engagement

Dr. Smith (center) with UNC Charlotte Provost Joan Lorden (right) and Suzanne Leland, Chair of the 2014 Provost's Faculty Award for Community Engagement Selection Committee (left)

Dr. Heather Smith, a Professor of Geography at UNC Charlotte and one of the co-founders of MAPPR, has received the 2014 Provost’s Faculty Award for Community Engagement!  This award honors faculty members “whose teaching, research and service embodies the University’s commitment to civic involvement and whose work strengthens the relationship between UNC Charlotte and the larger community”. 

Community engagement has regularly been a focus of Dr. Smith’s work, and her collaboration with MAPPR provided a natural extension of that endeavor.  With her MAPPR colleagues, Dr. Smith has been a lead member of research teams exploring the efficiency of primary care services provided to the uninsured Latino population of Charlotte; the perceived and real barriers facing Latino newcomers as they seek primary care access; the challenges and opportunities experienced by health care providers as they strive to meet the needs of their Latino and immigrant patients; and the social determinants of healthy neighborhoods and communities. 

In order to successfully do this work, Dr. Smith has built successful and fruitful partnerships between UNC Charlotte, MAPPR and many organizations and members of the Charlotte Mecklenburg region, including but not limited to the Latin American Coalition, the Levine Museum of the New South, Carolinas HealthCare System, and key leaders in the populations with which she is working.

“Dr. Smith demonstrates that good scholarship does not have to take place in an ivory tower,” says Claire Schuch, a doctorate student in geography.  “I have learned much from her about building partnerships, establishing trust and empowering community members in the research process.”

In addition to her role at MAPPR, Dr. Smith is the director of the master’s and doctoral programs in Geography, Director of the Urban Studies minor, and a faculty research associate at the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute.  Congratulations Dr. Smith!