THE NATIONAL COALITION OF INDEPENDENT SCHOLARS

Angela K. Frusciante, MRP, PhD. Principal, Knowledge Designs to Change.

Over the past twenty years, I have stepped around, in, and through the knowledge enterprise. Sometimes it’s been in the form of education, teaching, and research. Other times it’s been in the frame of community development, planning, and urban design. I have walked up and down the levels where knowledge is validated – local, state, national – and in and out of institutions like schools, universities, and foundations. I have also seen knowledge work from the perspective of the private, public, and the nonprofit sectors. I am fascinated by how knowledge is created and the various processes for coming to know the world and our presence within it.

As a socio-political scholar, I am on a journey of questioning the construction of knowledge as it bumps up against notions of voice, power, and social change.

Today I practice engaged scholarship through Knowledge Designs to Change LLC where I consult to nonprofit organizations, collaboratives, networks and initiatives while focusing my research within change networks.

Background: Prior to creating Knowledge Designs to Change, Angela served as Knowledge Development Officer for the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund where she was responsible for grants and contracts related to: organizational learning, management systems, program support, network learning partnerships, and research. She created the foundation’s university learning partnerships with engaged scholars from across the state of Connecticut.

Formerly, Angela was a faculty member of Urban Design in the Urban Planning department of Jackson State University, a Mississippi HBCU. As graduate faculty and undergraduate coordinator, she supported a pipeline for students of color to earn advanced degrees while remaining committed to urban communities. Angela’s previous work was primarily in qualitative evaluation of social programs, community leadership development and university/neighborhood partnerships at organizations including the Burns Academy of Leadership, the Center for Social Research and Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation in Washington, DC.

Angela’s academic training in the social sciences spans the fields of design, regional planning, and education policy and leadership, with practical experience in efforts to address inequity through programs targeting education, prison aftercare, mortgage lending and community leadership investment.