Written by DeJaya Hardy
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — On Tuesday, March 24th, 2026 the title of the second DCP Research Seminar of the semester set a tone: Impact of Engagement: Power, Incentives, Risk and Time. These were not soft words. They were an invitation to look directly at what engaged research actually does, and for whom.
The seminar ran from noon to one, broadcast simultaneously over Zoom, and moderated by Jason von Meding, Associate Professor at the M.E. Rinker, Sr. School of Construction Management and FIBER’s Theme Lead for Impact. The panel brought together four voices who work at the intersection the seminar was probing: Assistant Professor Carla Brisotto (Architecture), Assistant Professor Gabriel Castelblanco (Construction), Postdoctoral Research Associate Haleh Mehdipour (Construction), and Research Coordinator Abdul-Hai Thomas (FIBER). Between them sat some uncomfortable questions: Who really shapes the research agenda? Who benefits when the work is done? And is academia built to reward engagement, or just the appearance of it?
Thomas opened with a community-embedded view: when academics arrive with questions already formed, the relationship has already tilted. To which Brisotto pressed on the fundability gap, the quiet divergence between what a community wants and what a grant review panel will reward. Castelblanco complicated the picture further by asking who holds leverage in engaged research, and whether that leverage shifts as a project matures. Lastly, Mehdipour brought the conversation to a to an important consideration: who actually receives the benefit that was promised, and how do you know?
The conversation turned toward impact itself, a word the academy uses freely and interrogates rarely. How do you measure change when meaningful change outlasts any grant cycle? Does industry uptake count? Does a built intervention count, or does the pressure to publish another journal article quietly answer that question for you? Thomas then asked the group, “What does impact look like to the community?” All of these questions were very important to the discussion, as defining impact and its gray areas benefit any group looking to make one, and one that lasts.
On promotion and tenure, Brisotto noted that architecture’s relationship to practice offers a unique opportunity to deliver applied research impact. Thomas described FIBER’s institutional boundary position (part research, part service, part community practice) as both a freedom and a constraint. For those building academic careers, a new inquiry was posed: does engaged work help or hurt you, honestly?
Von Meding closed the discussion without a resolution. He offered that engaged research that does not redistribute power is extraction with better optics. Arriving in communities with pre-formed questions and leaving is not a methodology failure; it is an ethical one. Sustained presence is a promise engaged research rarely keeps, and a grant cycle is not a relationship. And solidarity, not charity, is an accountability standard, one that asks whether the communities we work with would describe us as useful, trustworthy, and present when it is inconvenient.
For all parties who attended the seminar, it is safe to say that the discussion taught as much as it questioned. For all DCP students and staff, that is the exact mission of the Spring Seminar discussions, to get to the foundation of each topic and look at them in a truly honest light. Who knows what impact the conversation may have on future DCP-related research and projects?