Joseph Krupczynski, director of the office of Civic Engagement and Service Learning (CESL) is also a professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Joseph’s creative work and scholarship promotes imaginative community partnerships and crafts participatory platforms to engage people in the creation of their built environments—especially in collaboration with underrepresented communities.
His co-edited volume (in collaboration with Mari Castañeda), Learning from Diverse Latinx Communities: Social Justice Approaches to Civic Engagement (Lang, 2017), was published in 2017. Recent work includes: "Holyoke Visible” (2015–2016), a participatory public art process/project at three important revitalization sites in Holyoke (in collaboration with Professor Max Page); the Civic Engagement Plan for “The New England Knowledge Corridor (Hartford-Springfield),” and author of the report, Sustainability and Equity, Engaging Underrepresented Communities on Issues of Sustainability in the Pioneer Valley (2014).
He is a founding director of The Center for Design Engagement (C*DE), a 501(c)(3) design resource center in Holyoke, MA (www.designengagement.org) that is dedicated to exploring community identity through creative place-making. As the director of the office of Civic Engagement and Service Learning (CESL) at UMass Amherst, he continues to promote critical service-learning and partners with communities on and off campus to work collectively for a more just world.