Magrath Community Engagement Award Spotlight: University of New Hampshire

In recognition of their extraordinary community outreach initiatives, four APLU member institutions have been selected as regional recipients of the 2017 W.K. Kellogg Foundation Community Engagement Scholarship Award. As regional winners, East Carolina University, the University of New Hampshire, Oklahoma State University, and Purdue University will now compete for the national C. Peter Magrath Community Engagement Scholarship Award – which will be announced Sunday, November 12 in Washington, DC during the APLU Annual Meeting. In this second of a four-part series, APLU spotlights the University of New Hampshire for its work to prevent and respond to sexual violence.

One in six women in the U.S. are victims of rape or attempted rape. Over 10 million people in the U.S. are victims of domestic violence. In 2006, an interdisciplinary group of five researchers and practitioners founded the Prevention Innovations Research Center (PIRC) to develop pioneering responses to sexual and relationship violence through research that engages a variety of community partners.

PIRC now employs over 20 researchers and practitioners as well as graduate and undergraduate students. The Center’s researchers engage with community partners across the country to develop innovative, evidence-based sexual violence prevention and response strategies. PIRC’s work has helped shift the research paradigm on sexual violence prevention and victim support. Crucially, PIRC’s forms its research agenda first by collaborating community stakeholders to understand how prevention and victim support efforts operate in practice. By engaging police officers and counselors, researchers are able to tackle the most pressing problems facing victims and community practitioners.

PIRC’s research-based innovations have been used to prevent violence in communities, high schools, universities, and in the military. PIRC also helps survivors of sexual violence move forward in the aftermath of trauma. The Center’s work informs policy at the institutional, local, state, and national level. PIRC’s research applies theoretical frameworks of public health and social ecology to study violence prevention. PIRC members have published 85 peer-reviewed journal articles, 15 book chapters, and 21 practitioner-oriented publications and reports. The Center’s sexual violence-prevention campaigns are in use at over 500 campuses, 75 state- and community-based organization, as well as the U.S. Army.

Learn more about the other 2017 C. Peter Magrath Award Winner finalists.