DeepThink Tanks
DeepThink Tanks are participatory, action-oriented working sessions focused on critical social and environmental issues. Attendees actively engage with how to address these issues in our teaching, research, community activism, and organizing.
DTT1. (Almost) Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know about Grant Writing
In this DeepThink Tank, we will share tools and best practices for grant writing, funder relationship building, and grant-writing course building. Audience members will have an opportunity to gain guidance through group discussions and topic-focused collaborative roundtables. Participants are encouraged to bring grant applications in process or opportunity announcements for focused help.
Goals for the session:
- Opportunity to get feedback on grants and ideas for grant responses
- Learn best practices for grant writing, grant reporting, and storytelling
- Demystify the role of reviewers and what grants are seeking to fund
- How to create an equitable community partnership/grant writing course
DTT2. Inspiring Communities to Take Action: A Guide to Nonprofit Leaders’ and Community Organizers’ Toolkits
In this DeepThink Tank, participants will learn how organizations, community leaders, and grassroots movements can use resources like toolkits or workbooks to organize their work and make change in their community.
Participants will hear three different examples of how toolkits have been used to:
- guide city residents and organizers through a walkability assessment of their community
- assist youth organizing campaigns in their fight to dismantle school policing infrastructures
- inspire women and gender expansive folks to take political action by running for office, seeking appointments, and sharing their personal story narrative
Participants will engage in a discussion around how successful community organizing efforts can be replicated or scaled through the use of toolkits. Questions explored in this Deep Think Tank may include: How does this approach contribute to the authenticity of organizing efforts? What are the disadvantages and limitations of this approach? How are toolkits currently being used to uplift communities around Detroit, and what more could they provide?
DTT3. Designing Change: Community Writing and Entrepreneurial Collaborations
Facilitators:
Jared Grogan, Wayne State University
Casey McArdle, Michigan State University
Participants:
Kate Sonka, Teach Access
Students from XA/P2W
Tommy Truong, XA Alum
Paul Jaques, Michigan State University
Sarah Gretter, Apple Developer Academy
Kristin Johnston, Wayne State University
Dawn Opel, Food Bank Council of Michigan
Goals:
- Foster engaging, actionable discussions on the intersections between community writing, professional communication, and entrepreneurial practices.
- Identify and Develop innovative frameworks for sustainable, impactful community initiatives through cross-sector collaboration.
- Equip participants with practical tools and strategies for measuring, communicating, and enhancing the success of community-based projects
Description:
When technical communication, entrepreneurship, and community engagement intersect, the possibilities for meaningful, sustainable impact multiply. This Deep Think Tank (DTT) is designed to bring together educators, entrepreneurs, community leaders, and students to explore how entrepreneurial frameworks, technical/professional communication strategies, and digital tools can collectively strengthen community-driven writing and communication initiatives. Participants will collaboratively map existing ecosystems, highlight successful case studies, and build actionable, innovative strategies aimed at sustained community engagement and measurable outcomes.
DTT4. Building the Bridge: An introduction to Community-Based Participatory Research
This Deep Think Tank workshop will introduce you to Community Based Participatory research (CBPR) as a collaborative approach to research. We will explore examples of CBPR in action and discuss processes of relationship building across communities.
Participants will:
- Learn about various types of collaborative research approaches
- Understand the key principles of the community based participatory research approach to partnerships
- Identify ways participants can apply CBPR to their research projects.
Facilitator Bios
Erika Brown-Binion is the Executive Director of the Refugee Development Center (RDC), where she has dedicated the past eighteen years to empowering Lansing’s refugee newcomer community. Her leadership has been pivotal in transforming RDC from a modest grassroots initiative into a thriving organization that has quadrupled in size, budget, and reach. Under her guidance, RDC has expanded its programming and impact, most notably through the establishment of the vibrant Newcomer Center—a dynamic hub that welcomes hundreds of refugees every day.
Beyond her work with refugees, Erika brings over twenty years of experience in education. She has served as a teacher, literacy specialist, and ESOL faculty member at Lansing Community College, enriching the lives of countless students. Erika earned her bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University and holds a Master’s Degree in Educational Administration from California State University.
Erin Green is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. Her research focuses on Black queer literacies and rhetorics, community-engaged writing, and prison abolition. Her scholarly writing has appeared in Writers: Craft & Context, Community Literacy Journal, and The Peer Review. Her public writing has appeared on TransGriot.com where she has written about political issues affecting Black transgender women. She is also the host of The True Harm Podcast, a true crime podcast amplifying victims of carceral violence and abolitionist movements.
Jared Grogan is a committed member of Wayne State’s faculty who is inspired by his students, his colleagues, the spirit and diversity of communities in Detroit, and the dynamic fields of Technical Communication, and Rhetoric and Composition. His recent passion is to build Technical and Professional Communication courses that partner with Detroit startups taking on entrepreneurial challenges, particularly those addressing social and environmental issues, or addressing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice missions. He works with entrepreneurs and students to co-create projects addressing “problems” that inspire and scaffold student learning of crucial skills, motivate academic and professional growth, and foster a desire for social justice. He also serves as English Department Internship Coordinator, building community pathways for internships that help students explore rich local experiences in teaching, advocacy, creative writing, publishing, law, and professional or technical writing. In his spare time, he volunteers with local organizations, consults and collaborates on disability and climate justice research, coaches basketball, gardens, and plays wildly with his four kids.
Amy Latawiec, Ph.D. (known by her students as Dr. L) is an associate professor of teaching in the English department at Wayne State University. Amy enjoys researching and reading about cognitive psychology (specifically resilience and habit-forming), developmental writing theory and pedagogy, and public health. Between 2011 and 2020, Amy led the English department’s basic writing programming, creating standard curriculum, participating in assessment, and mentoring graduate students in the teaching of developmental writing courses at Wayne State and elsewhere. In December 2025, Amy will graduate with her MPH degree from Wayne State’s Medical School. Her public health work has included consulting on qualitative methods and methodologies, survey design, data analysis, and supporting the landscape analysis pillar of the federal R.E.A.C.H. Grant in southeast Michigan.
Morgan Locke (she/her) is a Detroit resident who is passionate about environmental justice. Her work centers on strengthening community partnerships and spreading awareness about environmental health impacts. She has worked on research teams at the University of Michigan’s Department of Anthropology and the School of Public Health. 
Cee Maul (they/them), a lifelong Michigan resident, has a decade of experience in Michigan politics, specializing in state house campaigns, grassroots organizing, and constituent outreach. With a degree from Central Michigan University and a deep-seated passion for feminism and queer rights, Cee and their wife, Ashley, live in Kalamazoo, Michigan (with their cat, Pita). Notably, Cee served on Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s Community Engagement Team following six years with the Michigan House Democratic Caucus. They are now the Michigan State Director for Vote Run Lead, a training powerhouse that helps women and gender-expansive folks run for office – and win! When not immersed in politics, Cee enjoys playing guitar, writing, checking out local art, and spending time in nature.
Casey McArdle is the Director of the Experience Architecture Program in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Cultures at Michigan State University. He is an advocate for accessibility in and out of the classroom and has been involved with OWI for many years via publications, presentations, and research teams that focus on OWI. He is the co-author of Personal, Accessible, Responsive, Strategic: Resources and Strategies for Online Writing Instructors (winner of the 2020 Computers and Composition Distinguished Book Award), co-editor of two PARS in Practice collections, winner of the 2024 Computers and Composition Charles Moran Award for Distinguished Contributions to the Field, and the co-creator of The Online Writing Instruction Community resources website.
Natalie Sampson, PhD, MPH, is an Associate Professor of Public Health at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. She has served in many leadership roles in the field of environmental health at the local and national level, including with the American Public Health Association, Community Action to Promote Healthy Environments, Environmental Health Research-to-Action, the Michigan Center on Lifestage Environmental Exposures and Disease, and the National Council for Environmental Health and Equity. Dr. Sampson works to democratize environmental health science and policymaking in an effort to improve environmental health for all. She gets to do this work in partnership with brilliant leaders, including longtime community organizers, activists, youth, students, agency partners, educators, and researchers. As a faculty member, she primarily teaches courses on environmental health and community organizing and enjoys engaging in active, practice-based learning with her students throughout Metro Detroit.
Victoria Stewart is the Assistant Director of the Wayne State University Humanities Center in Detroit. A folklorist by training, Victoria works at the intersection of the public and academic sectors, and many of her community-engaged works have been funded by grants. Over the course of her career, Victoria has secured over $600,000 in grant funding from both private and governmental sources, additionally serving on awards panels and as an advisor and referee for grants and other monetary awards on the state, regional, national, and international levels. These grants have funded a variety of projects and programs including interpretive exhibitions, documentary films, academic and community events, academic curriculum development, and travel and material expenses for a competitive study abroad program, an international ethnic heritage festival, and an international folk dance festival. At Wayne State, she writes grants to support Humanities Center programs, and she also offers grant referral and consultation services to local humanities and arts nonprofits and members of the Wayne State community.
Bree Straayer is Associate Director of First Year Writing at Michigan State University. Prior to her current role, she served as Director of the Family Literacy Program at The Literacy Center of West Michigan, a non-profit organization focused on community-based language and skill development for adults. During her time there, her program received a significant grant to develop a Health Literacy and Language program described in her co-authored piece “Braiding together Family Literacy and Health Literacy: Insights into New Program Development” published in COABE in 2024. Bree continues to invest in community-based work with grant writing and teaching non-profit writing courses along with her research into the role of culture, language, religion, and gender in education.
Jule Thomas is a full professor of teaching in the English department at Wayne State University. Jule’s research interest is in STEM focused composition, trauma-informed pedagogy, and community writing courses that partner with local organizations in Metro Detroit. Jule recently completed a Master’s in Learning Design and Technology and worked for over two years in a collaborative redesign of the State of Michigan’s Social Work training program. She is currently working on an autoethnographic book on trauma that troubles the linear nature of trauma stories and the role of neuroscience in better understanding how trauma can become visible within the liminal space between psychology and science.