Dr. Christian Braneon serves as Assistant Director, Service Learning and Partnerships for the Center for Serve-Learn-Sustain.  He is a water resources engineer specializing in water resources engineering, data science, climate change assessments, and community engagement.

It is truly an honor and a pleasure to return to Georgia Tech this Fall as a CEE alum and a former vice-president of the Georgia Tech African-American Student Union. I have so many fond memories from my days as a student actively involved with student organizations such as AASU, EWB-GT, SGA, ASCE, GTSBE, BGSA, and AABE. I did not realize at the time that my roles in these organizations and external nonprofits would provide much needed training and experience related to working with corporate sponsors, partnership development, planning events, managing diverse teams, and succession planning.

After working in the private and the public sectors, I feel extremely fortunate to come back to my alma mater and help redefine our institution’s approach to Progress and Service. I want students to think critically about the social implications of their future work as they matriculate so that they can become civic-minded agents of positive change as graduates. I firmly agree with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s declaration that “Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education.”

My teaching philosophy is rooted in the belief that it is critical for students of all ages to think and acquire experience in real-life settings. Thus, I am extremely excited to support the Center for Serve-Learn-Sustain’s efforts to create and enhance a variety of curricular (and co-curricular) service-learning and experiential learning opportunities. For example, this Fall students had the opportunity to collect water samples in the Proctor Creek watershed alongside community members at EngageATL as well as the Westside River Rendezvous co-sponsored by SLS.

I am looking forward to working with you to promote sustainable communities locally, nationally, and abroad. Hope to see you soon!

- Christian

Dr. Carol Thurman serves as the Academic Assessment Manager for the Center for Serve-Learn-Sustain.  With a doctorate in Educational Policy Studies with a concentration in Research, Measurement, and Statistics, Dr. Thurman's professional experience includes program evaluation, project management, teaching both in the U.S.and internationally at the middle school and high school levels, teaching university research and statistics courses, and serving as a school district research specialist.

I began my career at Tech nearly two years ago as the Data and Assessment Coordinator in the Vice-Provost Office of Education (OVPUE). During my time in OVPUE, I often had opportunity to collaborate, primarily on assessment related projects, with the Center for Serve-Learn-Sustain as well as with the other four OUE units. I enjoyed these interactions with my colleagues as they enabled me to get to know them better as well as learn about the unique ways in which their respective units support our undergraduate students.

Last spring, I volunteered to help Serve-Learn-Sustain with some of the logistics for the Integrated Networks for Social Sustainability (INSS) conference that was held in June. This conference brought together approximately 150 faculty, staff, students, and partners primarily from Atlanta to explore the “social” side of sustainability. The first day of the conference kicked off with a half-day site visit to the Emerald Corridor, a seven-mile stretch abutting Proctor Creek, a tributary of the Chattahoochee River, located in the Westside community. As our group disembarked from the bus in Grove Park (one of several public parks in the Emerald Corridor) and we gathered around a local community activist, I learned from her that there are neighborhoods dotting the Emerald Corridor, such as Grove Park – her neighborhood - that have historic civil rights homes in their midst – some of which are occupied by residents, elderly now, who had at one time participated in Civil Rights marches.

As recent as the 1980’s, the Westside community had been vibrant with good schools, industry, and a pollution-free creek. But I learned during the site-visit that Proctor Creek, which has a main stem flowing through Grove Park, had gone from a healthy fishing and swimming hole to a polluted and largely neglected urban creek.  I was horrified to learn that children still swam in it. It was encouraging to learn, however, that there are neighborhood grassroots efforts and community organizations such as the Emerald Corridor Foundation, that are dedicated to restoring the creek to its former healthy state.

As we re-embarked and rode the bus down Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway and its surrounding neighborhoods, I was confronted with many businesses and houses in dire neglect. The bus eventually stopped in front of the Vine City MARTA station (located directly on Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway) where we learned a little history from our guide about how this MARTA station within walking distance to Vine City, another one of the Westside communities, came to be. I’ve lived in metropolitan Atlanta since 1999, and as an adult lived in two major world cities, and always prided myself on knowing each city, “like the back of my hand,” – yet this site visit taught me that I knew nothing about the Emerald Corridor.

I wanted to learn more about the Emerald Corridor and history of the Westside community.  What had happened environmentally, socially, and economically? How did it happen? How could we avoid the pitfalls of the past and learn from each other to build sustainable communities? Answers to these questions and others were explored at the INSS conference as participants discussed some of the challenges and opportunities of social sustainability.

I have never been one to really get excited about attending a conference because, in my experience, it has been rare when I have left a conference feeling truly inspired because of something new and meaningful that I had learned, but this conference was different. Even though I wasn’t a full conference participant, the site visit to the Emerald Corridor, the passion of the community activists, the conference participants’ enthusiasm, and their genuine interest in making a difference in the world really left an impression on me. I found myself thinking, “I would love to work with SLS in a greater capacity than what I have been doing so far. I want to be a part of THIS.”

Fast forward four months; the opportunity to work with Jenny Hirsch and her team as the Academic Assessment Manager for SLS became available. The more I learned about the position, the more I envisioned how I could use my assessment knowledge and skills to help SLS capture and tell its story of how it was partnering with faculty, staff, and partner organizations to prepare our students for critical service learning. Students who are able to become conscious of and critique social and environmental systems, who are motivated by what they experience and are inspired to take action and make changes.  I am happy to say that since October 17th, I have officially joined the CSLS team. And who knows? Perhaps, I’ll get to work with you as we tell the story through formal assessment of how Tech students, inspired by Serve-Learn-Sustain, connected their learning to professional practice for the betterment of communities, some of which, like the Westside, might be in our own backyard.

 - Carol J. Thurman