In November, voters in the city of Louisville will elect a new mayor and Metro Council. University of Louisville social scientist Lauren Heberle and the Metropolitan Housing Coalition, Louisville’s affordable housing advocacy group, are ready.��

MHC’s 2022 , titled “Toward a Just Future in Uncertain Times,” was released in June. It is the latest annual MHC report written by Heberle, director of the University of Louisville Center for Environmental Policy & Management in the College of Arts & Sciences, along with graduate student researchers.��

Heberle has contributed to the report since 2006 and written it for more than a decade. Kelly Kinahan, a former UofL assistant professor in the Department of Urban and Public Affairs, was co-author since 2017. (Kinahan has since left the university.)��

The report, at 90 pages, is the longest and most comprehensive ever, designed to be the go-to document for newly elected Louisville leaders who need current information on housing. ��

The MHC report is normally published in November, but its schedule was thrown off by the Covid-19 pandemic. That gave MHC and Heberle’s team the chance to “do a real deep dive” before the November election, she said.��

“If you don’t have it documented, it makes it harder to hold folks accountable or keep moving it forward, especially in something as complicated as housing,” Heberle said. ��

The current report will serve as a road map for the new administration. It is jam-packed with tables, charts, maps and graphics used to help MHC and others advocate for housing changes in Louisville. ��

UofL students also contribute mightily to the report, with several taking a lead on data analysis every year. Some are undergraduate students, some are graduate students. Some are sociology majors, while others are from urban and public affairs. ��

This applied research is a “way of teaching them how to make sense and talk about the importance of research for policy change, for social change, for social justice,” Heberle said.��

 “Figuring out how to understand this complicated structure of funding and policy that comes down from the federal government and shapes how Louisville is able to function is a really important learning opportunity for our students,” she added. Students have used their experience working on the report to help them apply for jobs, she said.��

Tony Curtis, executive director of MHC, noted the many years Heberle has worked on the report.��

“Producing this report is not only important to drive the fair, accessible and affordable housing conversation in Louisville and making the best housing data and analysis available for policymakers, advocates, and the community, it is a research and educational tool that Lauren uses to teach her UofL students and give those students the opportunity to engage in research that has real community impact,” Curtis said. “This is the beauty of the State of Metropolitan Housing Report collaboration between MHC, Lauren and her team.”��

There have been some years that the report focused on research topics suggested by Heberle or her students, while other years the report is in response to a specific need or request that MHC has, such as preparing for upcoming legislation.��

“They’ve understood the value of working with students and have seen that work to their benefit over the years,” Heberle said of MHC, “and have been really supportive of our students in that work.”��

As director of the in A&S, Heberle might have two or three graduate students working with her on the MHC report or another project each semester.����

Students bring different interests and talents to the project. “I’ve had folks come to the table saying, ‘I want to learn how to make better maps,’” she said, and they produced maps for the report. Additionally, she and her students often work closely with UofL’s and the .��

Learning how to obtain and report federal census data is a big part of compiling the report. Students learn how to put the information that is available — which fluctuates — into a form that MHC can use for its needs — which also fluctuates. ��

“That’s a learning experience for students,” she said. ��

Heberle also leads community engagement for the created at UofL about five years ago to support research on the cardiometabolic effects of volatile organic chemicals (VOCs). As a social scientist, her focus is community engagement, or working with the public affected by the sites. UofL is one of several universities that conduct research or outreach on the sites .��

Lenora’s grandmother, Jessie, spent her time at UofL not as a student but as a custodian, cleaning classrooms, offices, bathrooms and hallways in the J.B. Speed School of Engineering and the Brandeis School of Law until the early ‘90s.

“She was very smart, she just didn’t have the opportunity,” said Lenora, a soft-spoken, single adoptive mother and foster mother who, despite many challenges that threatened to throw her off course, never gave up on the higher education goal she set for herself after graduating from high school.

At commencement, she will celebrate her August completion of her bachelor’s degree in sociology. She immediately turned her attention to a new goal and has started her master’s in social work at the Kent School. She also works full-time at Stuart Middle School.

Her two teenage foster daughters and teenage adopted daughter will be at the KFC Yum! Center to cheer her on. Missing from the audience — but not her heart — will be her late sister, who always strongly encouraged Lenora to stay in school, and her late grandfather, a lifelong Cardinals fan whose 90th birthday would have fallen on the commencement date of Dec. 17.

After years struggling to pay for her classes amid family deaths, crises and health issues, Lenora was just a few classes away from finishing when she ran out of financial aid. She credits counselors with UofL’s Student Success Center with helping her obtain a persistence grant that carried her through.

“I would say to any student that feels that they are not deserving or are in a hard situation … and they feel like their academic journey is over? I would reach out to the Student Success Center and get some assistance that you need so you know your journey’s not over,” she said. “(I would say) that you can keep going and it’s just one hurdle, but it’s not the end. You can keep going.”

Lenora has fostered pre-teen and teenage girls since 2014. This year, she adopted her 17-year-old daughter, who recently applied to UofL.

“I didn’t think they were paying attention, but they were paying more attention than I thought,” she said. “They haven’t seen anybody go to college. … If they see me do it, they say ‘OK, maybe I can do it.’”

Check out Lenora’s story in her own words below:��

While at UofL, she had a baby born in 2000 who today is a sophomore at UofL. She met and married her husband, Jeremy. From 2000 to 2004, five close family members died, and the grief was overwhelming. In addition, Burrell was diagnosed with a condition defined as “like multiple sclerosis” that had her moving from class to class in a motorized wheelchair.

But at that 2004 commencement, Burrell was so excited. She steadied herself with a cane while her then-3-year-old son, Lorenzo, toddled along beside her. When her health took a sudden downturn, she had to put off the one class she still had to take to earn her degree.

Slowly, as the years passed and her family grew to four children while she worked full-time at Humana, her last class “turned into many,” she said.

Still, she was determined to finish. “I kept going back over the years.” she said. “As requirements changed, I kept going. When I owed tuition, I paid what I could until my balance was fulfilled and immediately, I re-enrolled.”

After all, when she arrived at UofL in 1999 as “an 18-year-old full of promise,” she was the recipient of a prestigious MLK Endowment of Peace award and a Woodford R. Porter Scholarship. She joined Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc. in 2002. Her father, Kenny Rowan, had “put Cardinals in my crib,” she said.��

In 2019, she arranged with her College of Arts & Sciences advisor to take her final three classes. “I completed all the steps to start classes in January 2020,” she said. “During that first class, Covid-19 hit, and we had to move quickly to virtual classes. Including that class, I have taken the last three classes I needed to graduate, one per term, during Covid.”

And she did it despite working from home and having four children at home who�� each had individual virtual learning needs: A freshman in high school (14-year-old Ajani Nicole), a second-grader (8-year-old Hayden Reese), a pre-schooler (5-year-old Katherine Joy) and Lorenzo, who lived both on campus and at home.

In addition to her parents, Burrell, who grew up in Owensboro, found inspiration in Ricky Jones, chair of the Pan-African Studies department, who was her first Black teacher.

“I took every single class that he taught,” she said. “Now my son has started taking his classes and it makes me proud that Dr. Jones sees me in Lorenzo — my legacy.”

Burrell’s next challenge will be a master’s degree (first she has to decide among public health, Pan-African Studies or Women and Gender Studies) and eventually a Ph.D.

“UofL helped prepare me for life,” she said. “Over the last 11 months, UofL has helped me show my children that Mommy, now 39, never gave up, no matter what.”

He found that the locals were drawn to him in their search for medical assistance and he served them the best that he could without any medical training.

“The villagers would come to my little house and assumed I would help them with any sort of medical ailment,” Belknap said.��

Motivated by this lack of medical care, he joined forces with other sociology professors to create the Kingiti Fund, which focuses on scholarship and health care. The program provides resources for students to further their education for $250 a year, in addition to providing emergency training to medical staff in local hospitals.

The non-profit also plans to extend their education and emergency medicine projects into other regions. “We have a lot of projects going on right now. We are in a moment of growth, and we’ve had so much luck with this,” Belknap said.

He has returned to the village several times even as he finishes his residency program in Brooklyn, New York. He��plans to continue his work, serving the people of East Africa with education and medical care.

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