Walt Paquin, professor of social work, and Perry Bush, professor of history, are the two faculty members who received this year’s Bluffton University Research Center grant, a grant that provides funding for conducting research and contributing further to the given professor’s field of study. Bush is also taking over as BURC grant director next semester.
Bush is using the BURC grant to conduct research for a book he is writing about a Latino farm labor union called the Farm Labor Organizing Community (FLOC). A main part of Bush’s interest in this organization comes from the fact that it was founded by a former Bluffton University student, Baldemar Velasquez, in 1967.Velasquez is still president of FLOC, and this organization is one of the major farm labor unions in the United States.
“Dr. Martin Luther King knew about Velasquez and his efforts,” said Bush. “King wrote a letter to Velasquez during Velasquez’s time as a Bluffton student. He was in a class somewhere on campus when the telegraph from Dr. King came. He also worked closely with Cesar Chavez.”
When Bush was on his sabbatical last year, he wrote the first five chapters of the book. He is now hoping, with the help of the BURC grant, to be able to complete the remaining four chapters over the summer. Bush has already completed most of the research for this project.
Dr. Perry Bush. Wit file photo by Blake Hershberger.
“I conducted a lot of my research at the Walter P. Reuther Library at Waynestate University in Detroit, Michigan where I spent a couple of weeks up there,” said Bush. “A lot of FLOC’s archives and papers can be found in this library.”
Bush also spent time at the FLOC office in Toledo, but plans on going back up to these places to conduct more research.
“I have to go back up to Detroit and Toledo this summer,” said Bush. “The BURC grant will help allow me to continue to travel back to these places. Part of the point of the BURC grant is to free you up financially so you can focus more on the research.
In addition to being this year’s recipient of a BURC grant, Bush is also taking over next year as the director of the BURC grant, a position that currently belongs to Jeff Gundy, professor of English.
“There’s the responsibility of managing the faculty colloquium series and encouraging faculty to apply for BURC grants,” said Bush. “But more so than that, I am looking forward to being an active advocate among my faculty colleagues for continuing to research, write, and contribute to their fields of study.”
Bush acknowledges that there are obstacles to being able to conduct these kinds of projects such as time management and other responsibilities, but he also emphasizes that research and scholarly work are a part of the job description of being a professor. He looks forward to encouraging his colleagues to apply for BURC grants so that they can conduct research.
“Bluffton is not the kind of institution where professors have to write and publish in order to keep their tenure,” said Bush. “It’s important for professors to be involved in their fields of study, so I want to serve as a reminder, encouragement, and support that research is an important part of our job even though I understand that this can become difficult because of work-load.”
Paquin is using the grant to explore options for post-COVID service-learning in Lima by working with community partners in those areas. The reason for this research is to find ways that students taking the Learning in Community course can reconnect with the community after being unable to do so because of the pandemic and social distancing guidelines. The pandemic was the motivating factor behind why Paquin chose to apply for the BURC grant because of the effect the pandemic had on the structure of the Learning in Community course.
“About two summers ago, I spent the summer developing and working with community partners for the Learning in Community course,” said Paquin. “But, when we had to move the class to remote due to the pandemic students never actually got the chance to work hands-on with these community partners, so the BURC grant gives me the opportunity to reach back out and start fresh with these community partners.”
Many of the community partners that this course would interact with are non-profit organizations such as the YMCA, Crime Victim Services, and the Allen County Board of Developmental Disabilities. There are currently about eight of these community partners, but Paquin predicts that there will be a need to expand to include some small businesses, hospitals, and after-school programs in the Lima community.
Paquin will spend the summer working on developing projects with these community partners, but there is still uncertainty surrounding whether or not some of the projects will take place or how they will be implemented and carried out.
“The most challenging part of this has been the unknown,” said Paquin. “We won’t know until the fall whether or not we can implement these projects or what they will look like.”
When faculty members apply for BURC grants they create a proposal that explains what the project will be, why they want to do it, why they believe it to be important, and the time-frame it will take to complete the project.
