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“Our community partners have helped us—we’ve been able to make connections and they have extended our classroom.” —DAVID VAN ZYTVELD, CURL’S ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR


the model had merits and paved the way for the establishment of CURL. It didn’t take long for CURL to see the fruits of


its partnership-focused model. An early project for the center brought together the Howard Area Community Center (HACC), a local social service agency, and Organization of the NorthEast (ONE), a political advocacy group, to study the potential adverse effects of welfare reform. A key finding of their report was that cuts of subsidies to legal immigrants for rent and food would lead to a $41 million loss for the local economy in the Rogers Park, Edgewater, and Uptown neighborhoods. CURL’s involvement substantiated the findings,


but their partners helped to put the results into action. By calling attention to the impact on the local economy, ONE was able to get the attention of politicians, community leaders, and the media. As the story gained national and even interna- tional attention, elected officials who previously were uninterested in taking on the issue were pressured to act. Ultimately, Illinois legislators responded by passing a $10 million addition to the state welfare budget.


Such results wouldn’t be possible without


CURL’s partners. “They were able to do things in Springfield that we as a research center and a Uni- versity are not hardwired to do,” Nyden says. “Re- search is a tool with which you can shape policy, but that only happens when you put it into play. We need community partners to do that.”


ACADEMIC


VERSUS ACTIVIST Having community partners also helps CURL maintain its own distinct role. Nyden says that as academics they must remain objective in order to produce sound results, and there is a fine line between research and activism when it comes to some of the issues CURL studies. Nyden himself has turned down offers to join partners in lob- bying or sit-ins at the mayor’s office to avoid muddying the waters. It is a lesson he is also careful to emphasize


with Loyola students, who play a major part in CURL’s research projects. In some cases, students may be eager to take on a project because of


their own personal stance on an issue. When recruiting students for a study on the impact of Chicago’s first urban Walmart store, for example, Nyden recalls one student enthusiastically saying, “I want to get Walmart!” But as Nyden explained, CURL wasn’t trying


to take down the retail giant. The study was intended to research Walmart’s effect on sales tax revenue and employment numbers in the neigh- borhood, and going into the project there was no way to tell what the results would be. “I didn’t know if we were going to ‘get’ Walmart,” Nyden says. “The results might have been positive.” It turns out the findings were fairly neutral—


tax revenue and employment data were both virtually unchanged by Walmart’s presence in the neighborhood—but the report didn’t indicate the store had a profoundly positive influence on the community either. And that was enough to get Walmart’s attention. When an interim report was released halfway


through the study, Walmart produced a 20-page rebuttal. Two days after the final report was released, the Chicago Sun-Times ran an editorial


24 LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO


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