Resilience Fellows

Building capacity and connections

Please carefully review all materials below.

Resilience fellows participate in a diverse cohort of academic and community fellows. Candidates will need to meet either the academic or community fellowship classification requirements to be eligible for the program.

Academic Fellow

• Successful academic fellow applicants may be tenure-track or non-tenure-track professors at any level (assistant, associate or full), scholars with instructor or research appointments, or post-doctoral research associates in any discipline.

• Graduate or undergraduate students are not eligible.

• Eligible applicants may be affiliated with any department, school or research center across all Arizona State University campuses in Maricopa County.

Community Fellow

• Successful community fellow applicants may be employed by any of the following types of institutions: non-profit organization, local and regional municipality, government agency, philanthropic, non-governmental or religious entities.

• Private sector business applicants may be considered if the enterprise's primary mission relates to a proposed community resilience theme or solutions space.

• Sole proprietors or unaffiliated entrepreneurs are not eligible.

• Community partner applicants should have sufficient experience, stature or permissions in their home institution to enable substantive collaboration, whether through data exchange, access to institutional programming or relationships with beneficiaries. They should also have sufficient opportunity to implement what they learn during their fellowship at their home institution.

What is the difference?

The only difference between community and academic fellows is the classification based on their home organization. Both types of fellows receive program benefits and will be placed in the same fellowship cohort under the general name KER fellows. 

Fellows will work in community-university pairs to complete collaborative projects. Candidates who already have a partner in mind can apply as a pair. Our team will help match candidates who applied as individuals with an appropriate partner.

A heavy emphasis is placed on the proposed project and the potential to contribute knowledge to strengthen community resilience and bridge academics, practitioners and the public. The project must focus on a topic within the FUSE framework (See Below).

Three additional criteria include: 

• The individual applicant’s potential to contribute to insights, actions or solutions related to a specific social, economic and/or environmental resilience challenge, as proposed in the application.
• The merit of a proposed idea to advance understanding on community resilience broadly and systematically.
• The possibility for innovative creation and/or use of data, including participatory methods to support the synergetic exchange of knowledge within the cohort. 

These factors are considered along with meeting the eligibility criteria for an academic or community fellow classification.

1. Food, energy and water transitions

Food and water systems in a resilient community are characterized by equitable distribution and reliable access to safe, healthy foods and adequate quantities of clean water for all residents everywhere. Assemblages engage a diverse set of productive actors such as local growers, urban farms and a robust sustainable heat-adapted agricultural industry. Supply chains are robust and resistant to disruption or scarcity.

The energy landscape of a resilient community consists of a diverse, integrated array of resources and infrastructure for obtaining sustainable and renewable fuel for cooling, heating, and mobilizing in our homes, businesses, and public spaces, as well as to fuel transportation systems that are available and accessible to all rural and urban residents across the county and beyond. Interruptions in the provision of power, whether due to economic or environmental drivers, are rare and short-lived.

2. Urban heat and healthy communities

Healthy, resilient communities create the necessary social and physical environments that promote good health for all, capable of thriving in the face of potential chronic stressors, such as heat exposure, and of withstanding shocks such as rapid-moving epidemics. Access to care and prevention facilities is equitable, and services are responsive to locally relevant threats to residents of all ages and backgrounds. Belonging to an inclusive place, enjoying a diverse community, exercising human rights, and developing social cohesion among neighbors and across organizations, are experiences that set apart the capacity of communities that are building resilience.

3. Shelter and the built environment

Shelter in resilient communities is ubiquitous, affordable, safe, and secure. Housing options are diverse and available in adequate quantities and at proper quality to every resident, providing relief from heat, floods, or other environmental threats. Periods of lack of shelter whether experienced by students, families, veterans, elderly or others, are infrequent and nonrecurring. A robust continuum of services is available to bridge needs for those suffering eviction or foreclosure, and is provided in equitable measure to all. Homes are constructed to be resilient to heat, and are free from domestic violence and crime.

4. Economic security and work

Resilient communities are economically secure, with organizations from private, public, and education sectors alike working in concert to meet present needs and prepare for future dynamics. Residents are able to generate consistent income or work for fair wages, salaries, or compensation in an integrated workforce and education system that provides equitable access to opportunities for generating resources for individuals and families of all backgrounds. A diversity of jobs and businesses lead to optimal productive capacity, able to transform challenges such as heat exposure to potential innovation. People participating in resilient economies are able to withstand downturns, confront changes from growth, and successfully face a dynamic future of work.

We emphasize across these themes that here in Maricopa County, heat is a major threat multiplier and underlies our understanding of all FUSE themes.

Furthermore, we recognize that pervasive to our understanding of these themes is the notion that community resilience relies upon attention to equity, including that shocks and stresses often disproportionately affect particular vulnerable and disadvantaged populations, requiring a proactive approach, and that solutions should strive for the equitable distribution of resources to withstand shock and stress according to exposure and risk.

Finally, we acknowledge that place-based understandings are critical and that these themes will play out differently depending on the place in which we are considering how to build resilience.