The Center is advising participants in their new , an initiative by Project Pericles that is designed to encourage universities to participate in civic engagement endeavors through multimedia projects. These storytelling projects will showcase “grassroots changemaking” that strengthens agency, builds community partnerships, and fosters democratic conversations.

The fellowship’s goals closely align with the mission of the Center and its support of the Power+Place Collaborative. Since 2018, the collaborative has worked with residents across Alamance County to collect oral history, create digital stories and examine the memories and stories of people who have shaped the community.

Lake, along with design catalysts Berenice Sanches-Rosaldo and Andrea Camo Conde, and community partner James Shields Jr., the manager of the African American Cultural Arts and History Center, helped lead the consulting workshop.

Lake, Shields, Sanches-Rosaldo and Camo Conde helped participants think through three different ways to advocate for systemic change through storytelling. These frameworks explored strategic storytelling, investigative follow-up, and activating community action. The Center advised the Project Pericles attendees to follow these methods since the Center and its Power+Place Collaborative use storytelling as a means to build trust across our community.

The Center will continue to consult Project Pericles’ Civic Story Lab Fellowship throughout the spring and summer.

In preparation, students from the Center for Design Thinking have been working alongside Power + Place storytellers to mentor youth in Robert Alvis’ Civic Literacy course at Walter Williams High School.

In addition, students from Professor Deidre Yancey’s “Leadership Theories” class have been preparing to facilitate conversations around leadership and changemaking for community attendees.

The American Queen is a North Carolina Reads 2025 pick from the North Carolina Humanities NC Center. The book is based on the true story of Louella and William Montgomery, two freed slaves who became the self-proclaimed king and queen of the Kingdom of Happy Land nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western NC.

Alamance Reads is funded by the Friends of the Alamance County Public Libraries, a nonprofit that raises money through annual book sales to support all programming initiatives, including the Zoom Pass program, the Lucky Day collection, the Seed Library, book club kits, educational resource kits and downloadable electronic content.

To help make these connections possible, the Center for Design Thinking and the Power+Place Collaborative were awarded $20,000 from the North Carolina Humanities Awards Large Project Grant. The grant, entitled “Storying Home: Cultivating Cross-Cultural Connections through Storytelling,” supports civic storytelling efforts across the county. The goals are to connect people to different ideas in their local communities and encourage a deeper understanding of the importance of conversation between different generations and backgrounds.

The Collaborative is welcoming eight new storytellers who have a significant part in providing access and education to food in the county, for this semester’s “Food & Food Pathways” series.

Assistant Teaching Professor of Environmental Science Jacob Rutz first got connected with the Power+Place Collaborative when he and professor Ryan Kirk were seeking a way to continue race equity work within food systems after they started a partnership with storyteller LaShauna Austria last year. Rutz knew the Collaborative would be the perfect place to continue that work.

“All of these stories are a window into the lived reality of different dimensions of how the food system does and does not work,” Rutz said. “Their unique, complex and messy realities give students the opportunity to look beyond a linear or uncritical theoretical framework into how the food system comes to be in people’s lives.”

Some of the storytellers this spring have kept family legacies alive through their work in the food and agricultural industry within Alamance County, which includes Austria and her son Malik Walker. Living on their family farm in Saxapahaw, the duo focuses on the historic and systematic changes of the food system in the county, raising awareness to move from charity to justice.

“LaShauna Austria is a powerhouse in the food scene in Alamance County,” Rutz said. “I have worked with her the past five years to advance a more equitable food system in Alamance county as well as support the growth of her farm, , with Elon course connections. It was fun to engage her son, Malik, in the project as well. He has his own unique story that I think should be shared.”

The Power+Place Collaborative is a partnership between ÁńÁŤappšŮˇ˝ÍřŐžČë’s Center for Design Thinking, the African American Cultural Arts & History Museum, Burlington Parks & Recreation, Walter Williams High School and Alamance Public Libraries. Since 2018, they have with residents from diverse communities across Alamance County.

Throughout the years, the Power+Place Collaborative has looked for ways to help students and community members understand the underlying systems that impact their community every day, focusing on the stories that may not always be shared in mainstream media. Following design thinking principles of examining wicked problems, human-centred needs and action-oriented thinking, students dive deeper into the community and work through collaboration.

“Engaging with the community is hard work, but necessary, that builds so many more social skills beyond what I can teach about content in the classroom,” Rutz said. “Engaging with real people and real stories brings both the theory to life and critically examines the nuanced and chaotic realities that make up anyone’s life.”

Further engaging with food and civic leadership, the Power+Place Collaborative is partnering with the Alamance Public Libraries for a ” by Vanessa Miller.

Miller will join the Alamance County community to discuss the true story of Loella and William Montogomery, two freed slaves who became the self-proclaimed king and queen of the Kingdom of Happy Land nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western NC. Anyone is invited to join April 15 from 12 – 2 p.m. Community members, Walter Williams High School Civic Literacy class, and the ÁńÁŤappšŮˇ˝ÍřŐžČë Food Security students will engage in conversations on community engagement with previous and current storytellers, taking into account the perspectives shared in the book.

The Power+Place Spring 2026 “Food & Food Pathways” film screening will be held May 2, 2026 at Persnickety’s Books in downtown Burlington.

The Center for Design Thinking has developed initiatives to continue the conversation about the implementation of AI in the classroom through a workshop titled “Designing for Ethical and Effective AI Usage.” This workshop aims to bridge the gap between how AI should be used by educators and how students can engage with it effectively and responsibly.

The Center supported over 110 faculty through a faculty development program designed to support next generation AI solutions. This series is “aimed to equip educators, researchers, and professionals with an in-depth understanding of design thinking principles and their critical role in developing innovative, user-centric AI solutions.”

Contributing to this global conversation, The Center for Design Thinking’s director, Danielle Lake, and Design Thinking Catalyst facilitated their “Designing for Ethical and Effective AI Usage” workshop and shared the latest research findings on its value for supporting student growth.

Lake introduced and outlined key stages of the design thinking process, particularly framing and exploring. She emphasized the importance of clearly identifying problems, taking ownership of solutions and acknowledging the influence of unconscious bias in decision-making.

Lake also encouraged participants to engage in outward exploration and research, fostering discussion and collaboration among faculty members as they shared their experiences and perspectives.

Bratić focused on the ethical implications of AI use in educational settings, addressing students’ increasing reliance on tools such as ChatGPT. She discussed how improper use of AI can lead to plagiarism and hinder learning, while also highlighting the growing demand for AI literacy in the workforce.

Bratić stressed the important role faculty play in shaping ethical AI usage and presented three tools to assist educators in teaching students how to use AI effectively. These tools include ethical usage rules, a structured prompt-building formula and the concept of “mind before machine.”

Additionally, Bratić showcased various AI applications that can support student learning, such as language development and productivity tools. She emphasized foundational principles like originality and accountability, encouraging students to engage in independent thinking before incorporating AI tools.

The session concluded with hands-on exercises that allowed faculty members to brainstorm and apply AI tools within their teaching practices, reinforcing ethical awareness, creativity and critical thinking.

Through collaboration, dialogue and hands-on application, the workshop reinforced that effective AI integration begins with informed and empowered educators. By centering ethics, creativity and critical thinking, the Center for Design Thinking is ensuring that AI becomes a tool for growth rather than a replacement for learning.

Forging Fridays, a virtual workshop series starting Jan. 30, focuses on first-hand practice with emergent relational design strategies. The goal is to explore how we can each apply these emerging strategies to your own life. In partnership with the Systematic Design Association and the Future of Design in Higher Education, this opportunity allows educators and practitioners from across the globe to meet and learn directly from acclaimed relational designers.

Sessions are scheduled for the last Friday of the month at 2 p.m. January through May and feature a different design thinking creator that will share practical, actionable strategies we can implement across our professional, personal and civic lives.

There will be five total Forging Friday speakers: Michael Osterweil, Lesley-Ann Noel, Haley Fitzpatrick, Rafe Steinhauer, and Wayne Li. Sessions will be January 30, February 27, March 27, April 24, and May 29, leading up to the FDHE conference on June 24-26, 2026. Sessions will focus on social impact, how systems shape daily lives, generative AI, and what mindsets to use during the design thinking process.

The first session will be with Michal Osterweil, one of the closing keynote speakers at Design Forge last year, with a workshop called “Slippages to Portals: A Laboratory for practicing and implementing relationally” that explores relational politics and how “slippages” can become portals.

Forging Fridays will culminate in the Future of Design in Higher Education (FDHE)  hosted at Elon and Duke University this June. FDHE is an international organization of design educators committed to building community and exchanging ideas about teaching and running programs in human-centered design in higher education.

The Center for Design Thinking invites anyone interested to register and learn more on our website.

The Collaborative has partnered with Professor Pamela Runestad’s Anthropology of Food and Food Pathways course, community members, previous storytellers and the Elon Community Church to provide cultural homemade meals, where components came together to make a shared meal and shared connections for the film screening held on Dec. 4.

The screening featured a dozen stories, ten community resource tables and four food stations centered around the theme “roots and routes.” Food stations, for instance, reflected an important part of the designated culinary storytellers’ life and included “Ervin’s Beans & Slaw,” “Patty’s Tacos,” “Mohsin’s Chai” and “Randy’s Salad Bar.”

“I am convinced that food is the key to connecting people,” Power+Place 2024 storyteller Patty Holmes said. “This collaborative offers the perfect way to combine speaking and cooking. I love sharing recipes and discussing the meaning and origins of specific dishes.”

Food from Land to Mouths – Ervin’s Beans and Slaw

Students from the Anthropology of Food and Food Pathways course visited Reverend Ervin Milton’s farm to learn about farming and be introduced to what recipes they could expect at the screening.

Rev. Ervin Milton was raised on a 44-acre tobacco farm in rural Gibsonville, where his family grew their own food to make for every meal. His parents never hid the fact that his family was poor, making it a lesson on how to be sustainable while making enough to feed every mouth at the table.

“I grew up poor and didn’t know it because everyone around me was poor,” Milton said. “When extra people came to our house, there was always enough for them to eat with us. [Milton’s parents] learned how to stretch things, how to make things work, how to have enough without assuming that you got everything or that you need everything.”

Milton’s family still owns the land, continuing to grow their own produce and educate others on intentionally farming food to be more environmentally and sustainably conscious of food waste.

For his dishes, Milton decided to make three things that he remembers fondly being at his dinner table: coleslaw, cornbread and pinto beans. These three dishes were staples, coming from the farm straight to the family’s plates.

“Now people are just simply throwing away [food], almost to the point where they throw away people,” Milton said. “I think it’s important to help people, in my case, to understand how you can make a meal, how you can feed people and not spend a lot of money and still make it tasteful.”

Growing up in the civil rights era, Milton was no stranger to inequality. In 1964, he was the first black student to apply to an all-white Gibsonville High School, integrating the school for the first time. The school lunch table was one of the first places where he knew that he wanted to educate people on the causes and importance of equity on both sides to “make life fair for everybody.”

“I remember sitting while the white people that I worked for, they used to eat first and then we would eat,” Milton said. “That wasn’t going to be my life. I went back out to the field that day, but that memory has always been there for me.”

You can learn more about by viewing his digital story on the Power+Place YouTube channel.

Cultural Eats – Patty’s Tacos

Holmes was a 2024 Power+Place storyteller, sharing an of crossing into the United States from Mexico with her daughter to build a new life in the nation. This year, she’s focusing her story on her “second passion” and culture, bringing an array of Mexican tacos to the table.

“The Power+Place Collaborative not only educates, but it does so through real stories — stories that often aren’t found in the news or media,” Holmes said. “We are ‘invisible yet real,’ but through initiatives like this, we can become visible and reachable.”

A staple of her own childhood, Holmes made picadillo tacos for the “Patty’s Tacos” station. Her mother used to create the meal as it was plentiful and could be made for both breakfast and lunch.

As a child, Holmes would visit tortilla bakeries –  tortillerias – that would often have salt shakers, letting customers “savor a warm, fresh tortilla with a sprinkle of salt — a ‘tortilla con sal.’” While waiting in line, she would also enjoy a raspado, a Mexican-style shaved ice dessert topped with syrups, fresh fruit and sometimes condensed milk or chili-lime seasoning.

“My experiences becoming a storyteller for Power+Place feels incredibly fulfilling,” Holmes said. “Knowing that many people can understand the immigrant journey is powerful and promotes empathy and unity in our community.”

Faith-Fueled Food – Mohsin’s Chai and Randy’s Salad Bar

Students also met with Mohsin Sidiqui for “Mohsin’s Chai” at the Burlington Masjid, a place that’s been important to him since he came to the U.S. In 2023, of immigrating to Burlington, North Carolina from Pakistan’s largest city Karachi when he was a young boy. In his story, he emphasized the importance of community and family, something he missed when he moved to the states.

Through thoughtful conversation, Sadiqui told the same story to the Anthropology of Food and Food Pathways students through chai tea, a drink that he’s savored since a young boy. He also talked about the differences of the chai made in Pakistan and the U.S.

Randy’s Salad bar features staples from Pastor Randy Orwig, Pastor of the Elon Community Church. Pastor Randy has been a longtime, generous supporter of the Collaborative.

In preparation for the film screening, students met with pastor Randy Orwig to educate on community engagement within the church and its mission, along with touring the kitchen where the food will be made. In addition to hosting “Randy’s Salad Bar,” Orwig helped design the event, oversee the set up, and recruit community volunteers for the event.

Feeding the mind and body – Anthropology of Food and Food Pathways

Students in Professor Pamela Runestad’s Food and Food Pathways interviewed culinary storytellers about the particular dishes and took field trips to Milton’s family farm and the Burlington Masjid to gain a better sense for the significance of these foods to their storyteller.

Students’ insights from their interviews with storytellers and their site visits will be archived on the website alongside the dozen new stories captured this year about “Roots and Routes.” So far, Power+Place has archived over 120 documents, photos, transcripts, and more to their database that is accessible to anyone.

“I think students are really interested to learn about the variety of different experiences in our wider community here and see how food fits into that,” Runestad said. “They’re also learning about collection and processing of qualitative data — not just for data’s sake, but for a purpose: these narratives will be shared with Storytellers and saved in the archive.”

Both the culinary and Power+Place Stories of Alamance storytellers met with Williams High School participants, the students who have been working with them and the Elon community at the church. This year, 12 new storytellers were featured with a focused theme of rootedness, migration and belonging.

This year’s theme is “Storying Home: Cultivating Cross-Cultural Connections Through Storytelling,” with participants exploring themes of rootedness, migration and belonging. Faculty members Danielle Lake, Sandy Marshall and Deidre Yancey are leading the initiative together in anticipation of the Dec. 4 screening.

The Power+Place Collaborative is a partnership between ÁńÁŤappšŮˇ˝ÍřŐžČë, the African American Cultural Arts & History Museum, Burlington Parks & Recreation and Alamance Public Libraries. Since 2018, they have collected and preserved oral histories and cocreated digital stories with residents from diverse communities across Alamance County.

“Working with Groups and Communities” student Peyton Patrick sees the impact of her Power+Place community-engaged course from both a logistical and creative level. Patrick is inspired by her instructor and Center for Design Thinking Director Danielle Lake as she sees her as a “boss, a teacher and a mentor at the end of the day.” The teachings of design thinking have also helped shape Patrick’s time as an ÁńÁŤappšŮˇ˝ÍřŐžČë student.

“The whole point of the center is to design human change and create things that are going to improve people’s lives,” Patrick said. Being a part of the process of community change is “so much different than talking to a whole class about how you can make a difference in the community.”

Owner of Occasions’ Catering & Southern Cuisine Elois Lettley is Patrick’s storyteller for this semester. She instantly found a connection with her, enjoying hearing about Lettley’s upbringing and how she brings different food influences to the restaurant.

“Just 15 minutes outside of this bubble, there’s so many people of diverse backgrounds and cultures that want to get to know you,” Patrick said. “It really changes your whole perspective on what it means to be able to understand other people and to understand and connect with others.”

Along with collecting stories, The Alamance County History Harvest collected materials from storytellers to store on an open-access digital database. Power+Place stores its archived materials from storytellers and History Harvest materials on , an openly accessible platform for digital collections and exhibitions.

With guidance from Amanda Kleintop, assistant professor of history, and graduate student Emily Moser, students Andrea Camo Conde and Amaylie Bethea helped gather materials from storytellers at the event. Camo Conde was a student in the class last year, also creating films alongside other students. She believes working this position still allows her to connect with the storytellers.

“The history harvest was a great way to meet and get to know them through the objects they brought, which highlight their significant impact on the community,” Camo Conde said. “It’s so nice to see people reminisce on the objects they brought in to be scanned and recognized by the community. You can see in their face that they are appreciative and happy to share their stories.”

This year, the Power+Place Collaborative is collaborating with Williams High School civic literacy students. High school students will be attending the December storytelling event to hear all the finished stories from members of their community.

There are two options to attend this year: Limited in-person seating at the Elon Community Church. If you would like to attend in person, please email dlake@elon.edu and register , or you can attend virtually from 12:30-2 p.m. EST. Register

The workshop, entitled “”, brought together over fifty youth and community leaders from across countries to share research on effective social systems changemaking, highlighting powerful stories and promising strategies from visionary changemakers.

Both sessions were sponsored by The Jane Addams Center for Civic Engagement and the University of Warsaw.

“We must take seriously the belief that there are multiple pathways to redesign our lives and communities towards peace,” Lake said during her virtual session.

Both sessions highlighted design thinking strategies, stories from the center’s long-term partnership with the Power+Place Collaborative, and the book “Relationality: An Emergent Politics of Life Beyond the Human.” Participants were asked to think about their own communities and how conflict impacts them, visualizing how they can bring their own skills and passions towards cultivating connections across divides.

Multiple participants joined in from war-torn countries, like Ukraine.

“When I hear the word ‘peace,’ I immediately think about the absence of war,” said one particpant. “That people can live calmly, without fear. Peace is when you can plan your future, study, travel, and not be afraid.”

Jane Addam’s own social justice storytelling initiatives have inspired Lake and catalyzed many of the initiatives the Center for Design Thinking has undertaken. Lake has built the center to explore potential challenges of emergent, relational, place-based design for addressing wicked problems and transforming social systems in the Elon community, but also all over the world.

If you’re interested in consulting with with the center or reviewing it’s latest research, please visit their website or reach by email at elonbydesign@elon.edu.

Merrie Byers ’26 is not doing a traditional research project for the Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE); the cinema and television arts major is exploring differences through a self-produced documentary.

The documentary focuses on the reverends of two churches in Burlington, North Carolina, with a deep, complicated and connected history. During U.S. slavery, according to Byers, members of Union Ridge Church owned members of Union Chapel United Church of Christ. Now, the reverends of each church, which sit across the street from one another, have developed a close relationship.

“They are using their friendship to combat this prejudice and hosted a committee where 10 members of the church from each side got together and talked about these differences,” said Byers, who is from Wake Forest, North Carolina. “It really made a difference in how these churches have blossomed into a bonded community.”

Byers, an Honors Fellow, was introduced to both churches through the Place and Placemaking course, connected to ÁńÁŤappšŮˇ˝ÍřŐžČë Power + Place Collaborative, a community partnership that works to capture and share untold stories of communities in Alamance County.

In the course, Byers says, faculty members Sandy Marshall and Danielle Lake discussed the significance of Christianity in Black and white communities, and how those communities worship. Byers was tasked with creating a mini-documentary about another reverend, but when reviewing the work of other students about her current documentary subjects, she had an idea.

“When I watched the footage, it just felt like these stories should have been brought together,” she said. “It was really fascinating to me to see the way that this friendship has connected the two of them.”

Byers is working alongside Nicole Triche, associate professor of cinema and television arts, on the documentary, which she will present in a poster presentation at SURE on June 24 in the Snow Atrium of Schar Hall.

Nearly 60 students will present at the annual research symposium, which provides an opportunity for students to work with faculty and gain meaningful research experience over the summer, without the pressure of other courses during a typical semester. Students apply for the opportunity, which usually takes place during the summer before the junior or senior year.

“Professor Triche is genuinely one of the most understanding, yet professional, people that I’ve worked with,” said Byers. “I really appreciate her approach to education which stood out when I took her COM 2200 class.”

Even though her documentary won’t be displayed at the poster presentation, Byers still hopes people will take away an important message.

“I want to bring hope,” she said. “That’s been such a common theme with the two interviews I’ve had. Anything that can shine a light on the fact that this history is timeless and always needs to be talked about. Oral histories are important, and you can learn so much from someone else’s perspective.”

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• Untold Stories
• Community members harvest their history at Power + Place Collaborative event

For over a year, ÁńÁŤappšŮˇ˝ÍřŐžČë Master’s of Higher Education student Emily Moser has been leading the Alamance County History Harvest, an initiative affiliated with the Power + Place Collaborative that focuses on building a community archive through digitizing the historical materials of Alamance County citizens and storytellers.

The Power+Place Collaborative is a partnership between ÁńÁŤappšŮˇ˝ÍřŐžČë’s Center for Design Thinking, diverse faculty across campus and community organizations. Their goal is to collect, preserve and share oral histories and digital stories in partnership with residents from diverse communities across Alamance County.

“We’ve really been trying to highlight the storytellers of Power+Place and the communities that interface with Power+Place, particularly the African American communities in Alamance County,” Moser said. “It’s rooted in accessibility to create counter archives – archives outside of a traditional university or library archive.”

Moser holds many roles at Elon, along with her time doing History Harvest, including being the program coordinator for the Center for Engaged Learning and the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning. Through her work, she’s interweaved all her interests into one, including her love for objects and public history.

“I hope that objects can be another way people can connect,” Moser said. “I think that the History Harvest can be that. You don’t have to be a permanent resident of Alamance County and the items don’t have to be about Alamance County. It can be about you as someone living in Alamance County, that’s just as valid.”

Power+Place stores its archived materials from its storytellers and its History Harvest materials on , an openly accessible platform for digital collections and exhibitions. So far, Power+Place has archived over 106 documents, photos, transcripts, and more to their database that is accessible to anyone. They will work this summer on adding all of the donated materials to the Omeka site, along with hosting additional Harvest events.

Coordinating and planning for the History Harvest started in the summer of 2024, then transitioned to one of Assistant Professor of History Amanda Kleintop’s fall Museum Studies and Public History classes, where students learned how to do some of the work themselves.

“We had an initial open History Harvest in September at Snow Camp Outdoor Theater,” Moser said. “We’ve done pop-up History Harvest events with Power+Place. We are really lucky that students from Dr. Kleintop’s class last fall stayed interested. A benefit of Elon being a close-knit community is that there’s a lot of interpersonal connection.”

According to Moser, History Harvest was designed at the University of Nebraska as a public history project designed to engage students. The student-led initiative encourages working directly with community members to collect and digitize donated materials. Moser will be at the Gibsonville Public Library’s Juneteenth Celebration on June 14, also referred to as Juneteenth, to collect and further expand the History Harvest database.

The setup is “way more simple than you think,” only using a book scanner that saves scans directly to a hard drive and metadata forms that describe the specifics of the object on the website. Moser says that those who bring the materials still keep ownership of the object brought to History Harvest, which will be recorded in the metadata.

Connect with Power+Place Collaborative

If you are looking to donate any objects or materials to the History Harvest archive, you can contact Moser at emoser3@elon.edu or Center for Design Thinking director Danielle Lake at dlake@elon.edu for further information.

This summer, you can also join the Center for Design Thinking and the Power + Place Collaborative at where the organization will be sharing digital stories from diverse community members.

In the fall, Power+Place will host Stories of Alamance County 2025, a public screening and community dialogue featuring new digital stories focusing on rootedness, migration, and belonging. These stories are co-created by ÁńÁŤappšŮˇ˝ÍřŐžČë students and local partners, including the African American Cultural Arts & History Center and the CityGate Dream Center.

A History Harvest, community dialogue and lunch will be held along with the screening open to all members of the community to join! .

Learn more about the Power + Place Collaborative and make a donation .