Q&A With Joseph Gardella

Joseph H. Gardella is a student, researcher and teacher at the Community Research and Action PhD program at Vanderbilt University. He is also a member of our Strategic Advisory Council (SAC), which he joined last spring.

As a member of our SAC, Joseph frequently offers insights and blog posts. We’re most grateful for his initiative—he regularly reaches out to us and asks, “How can I help—what can I do next?” He often serves as an ambassador by directing people to our resources, and he continually advocates for community-level nonviolence.

Photo: Courtesy of Joseph Gardella

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When/How did you first hear about Metta Center?

I first heard about the Metta Center from Kit Miller at the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence in Rochester, NY, while an undergraduate student at the University of Rochester. I didn’t know how to merge my political and social interests with my psychological-oriented background to work for change. Kit Miller directed me to the Metta Mentors program as a space where I might explore and find some answers. I had a transformational experience with the Metta Center. I learned that communities that champion love and nonviolence are possible.

Please describe your academic work at Vanderbilt University, where you’re currently working on your PhD in Community Research and Action.

I’m training to be a community psychologist—I’m interested in processes that affect wellness at a community level and how those processes relate with the ways people think. My work broadly follows three trajectories: research, teaching and community organization consultation.

My research focuses on the ways organizational processes might be used to promote positive adolescent development. Recently, restorative practices, information communication technologies and data/ big data science have emerged as some of the more specific themes I’m interested in. I use a variety of research approaches, including both qualitative and quantitative research designs.

As an academic teacher, I’ve taught undergraduates about community psychology and many of the more general approaches used by community psychologists to promote human wellness. One of the methods that I’ve used to great effects is called “service learning.” In service learning, we pair traditional learning methods with practical hands-on service opportunities in the community. Through these experiences, we’ve collaborated and developed a research report used by the city government to plan a multimillion dollar health initiative, and we’ve developed a set of recommendations and tools for a local after school program to be more effective and apply for grant funding. I think students walked away with valuable skill sets and a greater awareness for the social political systems in which they live.

A lot of my consulting work is with schools, and the local state and district school systems. My colleagues and I provide technical assistance to schools seeking to improve their cultures. So I get to work with school administrators, teachers and parents on a regular basis. Right now, I’m working on implementing restorative practices in a middle school, and it’s proving to be an enjoyable challenge.

It’s been an exciting two and a half years, and I’m looking forward to my last two and a half years in my program!

You’re “gamifying”social and emotional learning for an iOS mobile application for preteens. Can you tell us more about this project and what it entails?

Social and emotional learning refers to developing skills and mindsets that lead to greater health in a youth’s social and psycho-emotional life. And, often students who learn about social and emotional skills and mindsets do so in ways that aren’t really engaging and happen just in the school context. So we are seeking to leverage mobile devices—which can be used everywhere a youth takes the device—to develop entertaining, accessible and structured ways to teach the social and emotional lessons. We’ve submitted two large grants to a funder and hopefully we will be awarded the money to build this out!

We hope young folks will be able to engage in behaviors that lead to better decision making, healthier relationships and more self-awareness. We believe that these skills are essential for creating a nonviolent world.

What’s your vision of healthy community development?

There are a lot of very intelligent visions of healthy community development out there, but the best community development listens to what the residents of that community need and supports the strengths present in the given community. Moreover, this community development seeks to build leaders in the community and connect a community with other communities that share similar interests.

Ultimately, community development is about building a community of self-actualized individuals who have healthy relationships with each other and are able to meet their own needs while respecting others’ rights to do so, too. Different academic fields like psychology, sociology, political science, economics, anthropology and gender studies all have different perspectives on what defines and brings about wellness. My vision includes integrating best practices from all of these traditions in the work that I’m doing presently with whichever community I’m working with. I’ve played a little jazz as a piano player, and I think this kind of work is very much like the improvisation in jazz.

Where would you like your community development work to go after completing your PhD?

I intend to pursue legal studies, because I would like to navigate relevant legal structures and hopefully change some of them along the way. So in the short term, my community development work will take a legal slant. After that, I want to work towards developing both infrastructure and human capacity at a grassroots level as well as capacity and awareness at governance levels. I hope to partner with community organizations like the Metta Center or the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence.

I’d also like to apply data science to understanding how community development takes shape.I’m interested in making sense of that data so that we might develop more robust and healthy communities.

Your academic work requires a lot of mind activity. How do you nourish the heart?

First, I feel most nourished when enjoying time with family, friends and my fuzzy canine friend. But I’ve also learned that I need to pay attention to other interconnected areas of my life to make sure that my heart is thoroughly nourished.

Mindfulness is the framework through which I do this. I try to be as present and as intentional as possible, opening to each moment in the most loving way I can. It’s incredibly tough for me, but I think it’s absolutely important. I employ multiple practices:gratitude, meditation, biofeedback breathing, emotional and narrative reflections, Tai Chi, healthy eating and reading that contributes to my personal growth.

As I have more to show for my work, I’ve noticed that I sometimes engage in more egocentric thinking than I’d like to.I find that heart nourishment is far more motivating, sustaining and conducive to healthy living—but it’s a daily battle.