Center for Urban Research and Learning (CURL) was founded at Loyola University Chicago in 1996 to create innovative ways to promote equity and opportunity in communities in the Chicago metropolitan area. The team model employed unites research faculty with students and community leaders throughout the urban development process.
In January 1996 the McCormick Tribune Foundation offered a $1.5 million matching grant for the endowment of CURL. The grant was matched and a $7 million endowment established. This supports faculty, student, and community fellowships along with general research activities. Further support comes from grants and contracts from foundations, government agencies, and non-profit organizations for community-based research.
CURL accepts projects that hold promise for truly collaborative planning, with continual interchange between faculty, students, and community. The projects arise from community-identified needs, and the community is vitally involved at every stage of planning. This approach should alter the way in which faculty and students see themselves, as teachers and learners. It should also change the way activists, the community, and government see themselves as involved in a collaborative effort. The focus in all this is on social, economic, and political inequities. While projects are local to the Chicago area, linkages outside the area take place to profit from a wider interchange of ideas. Knowledge of what is learned and achieved is shared within the university community and with the wider community where this might be beneficial. CURL is part of the larger effort at Loyola Chicago, with the university ranked 21st in the nation in community service hours.
The nature of CURL is best understood by reviewing some of its projects, which follow.
The Greater Roseland West Pullman Food Network (2015) would find a sustainable way to overcome food insecurity in two communities through urban agriculture.
Instituto del Progreso Latino (2015) is a pilot program being run with funding from the MacArthur Foundation, giving English as a Second Language training through a combination of online, one-on-one, and classroom elements.
Global Citizenship Initiative of the Chicago Public Schools (2012) provides high quality civic education for a diverse group of learners, while opening up many other opportunities for learning throughout the city.
Community Organizing and Family Issues (2014), funded by the Kellogg Foundation. organizes parents in four communities to be their own advocates for more accessible, quality early learning programs.
The Family Court Enhancement Project (2014) is a joint venture with the Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women, the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, the Battered Women’s Justice Project, and the National Institute for Justice.
Since 2014, sociologist Peter Rosenblatt of Loyola is leading an examination of the security deposit assistance program in Milwaukee, which motivates low-income residents to move to higher opportunity, lower poverty neighborhoods.
Merger Evaluation: One Northside (2014) will examine the outcome of the merger of Organization of the NorthEast and Lakeview Action Coalition, creating ONE Northside, which may hold a lesson in advocacy impact and financial efficiency for other organizations nationwide.
CURL will evaluate the Rising Phoenix Re-entry Program whereby high-risk youth who have been detained by the law will be afforded intensive, coordinated, and trauma-informed care by Alternatives, Inc., and Howard Area Community Center, in a community-centered approach.
From 2013, CURL supplied workshops, research, and dissemination of results as it worked with the Chicago Foundation for Women to produce “Evaluation: The Road from Programming to Policy,” to train organizations that serve women and girls on the basis of data collected.
Uptown’s housing, land use, and population study (2002) mentions that CURL "had a long history of working in collaboration with a number of Uptown organizations."
In 2014, to increase understanding of homelessness and of the organizations that assist the homeless, a photo exhibit was prepared to demonstrate their transition from homelessness to housing.
