Quad Projects / Update 10.25
Sandy Fales, recent UCCS graduate and Quad Research Fellow, pictured above, is creating best practices for a social enterprise database for Colorado Springs and beyond.
Quad project teams comprised of students from all four higher institutions in Colorado Springs are busy at work on 5 different community-driven endeavors this fall semester. We have four large project teams who meet several times a week and one full-time Research Fellow.
One project team with two students from UCCS, one student from CC, and one student from PPCC are working with Silver Key to understand and make recommendations on how to utilize space in their facility. They are in their second phase of this project, moving toward making the recommendations set forth in phase one a reality.
Another team comprised of two students from UCCS, two from PPCC, and one cadet from USAFA is in the third and final phase of their project working with the City of Colorado Springs and El Paso County on a solution that will combat barriers to accessing social services in our community. This project is extremely important as our team is finding that the disparity between those who qualify for services and those who actually receive services is quite large.
Our third team, consisting of one UCCS student, one CC student, two PPCC students, and two USAFA cadets is partnering with Ventetucci Farms on the second phase of a project to work through the water crisis the farm faced in 2016. They are developing solutions and future direction for their space, as well as providing important research on how we can address water crisis issues for business nationally.
The last team is working with Colorado Springs Utilities examining both dominate and experimental fuel types, fuel generating technologies as well as storage and management of those energies to better prepare for future energy needs in Colorado Springs and beyond! This team boasts two UCCS students, one PPCC student, one CC student, and two USAFA cadets. The information discovered through this project will not only benefit our local community but set the stage for energy discoveries across the nation.
Our Research Fellow, Sandy Fales, a recent graduate from UCCS’s Sociology program, is working on a project backed by both the Better Business Bureau of Southern Colorado, and the Colorado Institute for Social Impact, exploring methods of collection and best practices for a database of social enterprise and impact businesses in Colorado Springs, the state of Colorado, and beyond! This week, Sandy is diving into community connections that can be fostered in order to facilitate the growth of social impact business awareness in Colorado Springs. The goal for this project is to create a unified place that consumers can turn to in order to patron businesses that create good for our community.
We are excited to share our projects with you, our community, and look forward to updating you on our progress through the rest of this fall semester!
