Associate Professor Jota Samper, Program in Environmental Design, is the 2024 recipient of the Excellence in Faculty Community Engagement Award from the Engagement Scholarship Consortium (ESC). This national award is one of the most prestigious of its kind.
Samper’s research concentrates on sustainable urban growth, focusing on the intersection between urban informality and violent conflict. CU Boulder’s Office for Public and Community-Engaged Scholarship nominated Samper for 15 years of connecting his scholarship and study abroad programs (at CU Boulder, Duke University, Emerson College and MIT) with multiple unplanned settlements near Medellin, Colombia. Violence prompted Medellin residents to flee and set up informal dwellings outside the city limits.
Settlements in the region face issues such as landslides and access to potable water, healthcare, public spaces and education. Samper’s Colombian Displaced Communities: Planning and Urban Design Seminar students collaborate with residents to create community development plans and infrastructure designs and help build physical interventions. Communities decide which ideas make it to the building phase. Examples include a rain collection system, paving roads, reconditioning a community kitchen that serves more than 200 youth, and building sewers and potable water lines.
The seventh to win the faculty award nationally and the first from CU Boulder, Samper joined other Awards for Excellence in Engaged Scholarship recipients in Portland, Oregon, on Oct. 10 at the annual ESC conference.
The grant selection committee for public and community-engaged scholarship has funded Samper’s work eight times since 2018.