CCSP 2025 Summer Social Justice Grant

Congratulations to our 2025 grantees:

• • Undergraduate Summer Grants  - $500/each
    • Kamilah Pasha - Mental Health ToolBox.
      • This project addresses mental health disparities in under-resourced communities by providing Classroom Mental Health Toolboxes to 15–25 classrooms to a Long Island elementary school. Each kit includes tools and materials to support emotional regulation for students, along with take-home resources for parents. Partnerships with local organizations will help expand the project’s reach. This work integrates social work training with a long-term commitment to advancing equitable, community-based mental health care for children.
    • Merica Griffin - Indigenous land and cultural sovereignty.
      • This project combines academic research and creative work focused on Indigenous land and cultural sovereignty. The first component supports ongoing research on public policy and environmental justice in Latin America, contributing to manuscript development for future publication. The second uses environmental artivism through photography to document Indigenous knowledge and highlight Stony Brook University’s location on Setalcott Nation land. With grant support, the project aims to advance scholarship on Indigenous land rights while fostering campus engagement through visual storytelling.
  • Two (2) Graduate Summer Grants - $750/each
    • Clinical Psychology Grad Student - Using EEG to examine how neural processing of social rejection is influenced by cultural background.
      • This study examines how race-related social rejection may contribute to mental health disparities by investigating its neural correlates using reward positivity (RewP), an EEG-based marker linked to depression and social processing. By analyzing RewP responses to same-race vs. other-race social interactions, the project aims to better understand how racial discrimination translates into stress and depression risk. This research represents an early step toward identifying culturally sensitive neurobehavioral markers of depression in minoritized populations.
    • Ariek Norford - Settler Colonialism, Ecocide, and the Climate Crisis in Occupied Palestine.
      • This project contributes to a review paper, Settler Colonialism, Ecocide, and the Climate Crisis in Occupied Palestine, for Social Work in Public Health. Focusing on the environmental justice impacts of Israel’s occupation, it examines how land confiscation, habitat destruction, and ecological degradation contribute to health disparities for Palestinians. Drawing on expertise in ecology and farming communities, the research will synthesize findings on olive grove destruction and afforestation. This work also represents a first step in integrating academic research on community-driven conservation with social justice advocacy for the Arab community, building skills to bridge research and practice.

The Center for Changing Systems of Power at Stony Brook (CCSP) awarded 2 undergraduate and 2 graduate summer grants in support of:

• Research
• Artivism
• Social Justice Activity

In one of the following focus areas:

• Carceral Studies 
• Environmental Justice
• Health Disparities

Grant recipients will be required to participate in a Fall 2025 presentation to share their research, artivism, or social justice activity and reflect on the impact of their project.