Noni Gaylord-Harden (center) researches how urban youth are affected by violence in their communities.
the School of Education’s apprenticeship, community-based teacher education program, which works in a variety of schools. “Teaching is not something you can learn from
textbooks,” Moon says. “You have to learn by participation. I try to have fieldwork and theory interwoven in each course. You can’t do one and not the other.”
THE POWER OF RESILIENCE
NONI GAYLORD-HARDEN COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
Noni Gaylord-Harden, PhD, was talking with kids in a Chicago school one day as part of her community-based research on African American children who are exposed to multiple stresses in their environment. She asked them what their biggest stressor was. “Trying to get home without getting shot,” they told her. “I was blown away that these 12-year-olds were having to deal with this,” says Gaylord-Harden, an associate profes- sor of psychology now in her 11th year at Loyola. “They talked about being angry and depressed, about how it was affecting their homework.” Because of what children in the community
told her, she and the graduate students she works with began looking more specifically at violence. Her research team comes back to the term “resil- ience” frequently, because it describes the strate- gies—such as coping and future orientation— that predict positive outcomes for the children. “If they can continue to maintain positive thoughts about the future, about living beyond 18 or 21,
they do better,” Gaylord-Harden says. Depres- sion, on the other hand, is a key predictor for less positive outcomes. “If you develop hopelessness,” she says, “you’re more likely to put yourself in dangerous situations.” Loyola is critical to her work because of the
nature of those conversations with children in Chicago schools. “The voices in community have to be heard,” she says. “We maintain the relation- ships and continue to earn trust.” Gaylord-Harden’s research gives her an op-
portunity to work with many families through intervention, whereas in clinical work she was limited to helping one family at a time. Still, it’s not something she planned to do. She earned a PhD in clinical psychology and was working with children in an impoverished community in Tennessee. The children there were going to inadequate schools and facing discrimination and violence. “The research said they should all have negative life outcomes,” says Gaylord-Harden. “That’s when I began learning about resilience.” She became a postdoctoral clinical research as-
sociate through the Institute for Juvenile Research at the University of Illinois at Chicago and has been widely published in her field. But she especially enjoys working with her students. “The beauty of psychology is that it draws people who want to help others,” she says. Loyola magnifies that. “I knew coming in that I would have the opportunity to have class discussions on social justice issues. I think students are drawn to Loyola because of its commitment to social justice,” she says. In her human diversity course, she focuses on social justice in the last class. A handout helps
George Villanueva brings experience with community organizing
students write about their role in creating justice. “For me, a reason for writing a mission statement is that it helps me remember why I’m doing the work in the first place,” she tells them. “I revisit my mission statement and remember conversations I’ve had, the smiles I’ve seen, and the feeling of knowing my work is important.”
AN LA PERSPECTIVE
GEORGE VILLANUEVA SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATION
George Villanueva, PhD, remembers the day in 1992 when the policemen who assaulted Rodney King were acquitted. Los Angeles erupted in rioting. Villanueva was at middle school, 25 miles from his Central Los Angeles home. Businesses were set on fire and school buses couldn’t risk making their way through the violence. Par- ents kept their children at home. Schools were closed for more than a week. “It was stark, going through that experience,” Villanueva says. “It played a part in forming my outlook.” Villanueva, who came to Loyola in 2015 as an
assistant professor in the School of Communica- tion, credits the experience with drawing him to social justice work. It led him to spend more than a decade in the intersecting world of Los Angeles politics, community media, and community orga- nizing for sustainable urban development. After earning his undergraduate degree in
Black studies and history from the University of California Santa Barbara, Villanueva returned to Los Angeles, working with organizations and elected officials who were trying to make the city
18 LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO
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