The Center for Urban Research, Teaching and Outreach (CURTO) respects longstanding institutional practices for academic centers, while merging those practices with the values that undergird engaged scholarship. CURTO welcomes the expertise of faculty across the College of Arts & Sciences in the advancing of our mission. CURTO also aligns our curricular strategies for the Urban Affairs Minor with those of the Klingler College of Arts & Sciences.

CURTO’s commitment to engaged scholarships adheres to the core values of community engagement most poignantly articulated by the Carnegie Foundation. Community engagement must, “…enrich scholarship, research, and creative activity; enhance curriculum, teaching and learning; prepare educated, engaged citizens; strengthen democratic values and civic responsibility; address critical societal issues; and contribute to the public good.” While achieving these goals institutions must also develop and maintain, “…authentically collaborative, mutually beneficial partnerships…”

CURTO welcomes community experts as integral voices in our research, teaching and outreach efforts. Contrary to popular discourse, urban communities are not laboratories. These homes and neighborhoods are hallowed spaces that require us to embark upon relationships with humility, clearing room for a sense of shared dignity to thrive between all collaborators, whether conducting research, planning events, or advancing creative and high quality learning.

People

Learn more about the staff, advisory board, and partners of CURTO.

Land and Water Acknowledgement

Marquette University acknowledges that our campus and Milwaukee are the homelands and waters of the Menominee, Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk, Fox, Mascouten, Sauk and Ojibwe nations, who have known this land and water as a relative for millennia and who remain our hosts on the land today. We also acknowledge that Milwaukee is located along the southwest shores of Michigami (meaning “big water” in Anishinaabemowin), where the Milwaukee River, Menomonee River and Kinnickinnic River meet. We remember that Milwaukee is covered by the 1833 Treaty of Chicago signed by the United States and Potawatomi and acknowledge it cleaved and dispersed this tribal nation through removal. We also acknowledge the presence of tribal members from Wisconsin sovereign nations in Milwaukee, including the Oneida Nation, Stockbridge-Munsee Community Band of Mohicans, Brothertown Nation and Ojibwe Nations – namely, the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Sokaogon Chippewa Community and St. Croix Chippewa Indians. We further understand and honor that the greater Milwaukee area is home to a large, resurging urban Indian community that includes diasporic Indigenous peoples from around North America, as well as from the Global South, the Pacific, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

Marquette University further acknowledges and pays respect to the elders and ancestors past, present and emerging whose histories, knowledge and cultural traditions have shaped the land and water of the greater Milwaukee area and can enrich practices around its stewardship. We affirm our commitment to practice ongoing good relations with the land and water and with sovereign Indigenous nations that caretake them. In acknowledging the long-held relationships fostered by these lands and waters, we seek to strengthen and recommit ourselves to ongoing and future kinship responsibilities with each other and the Earth. In the spirit of reconciliation, we can authentically attend to and create the conditions of hospitality for current Indigenous students and community members and all yet to walk with us.