Researcher Spotlights are Q&As that shine a light on School of Human Ecology faculty members’ unique scholarship and research interests.
Matthew Calvert, a Civil Society & Community Studies professor, studies youth involvement in community and its effects. Through his role with the UW–Madison Division of Extension’s Positive Youth Development Institute, he focuses on understanding and implementing programs that build knowledge and youth-adult relationships, which can lead to new ideas and benefit communities over time by strengthening the diversity of social networks. Calvert has also developed curriculum and supported program development and evaluation in nationwide efforts to engage youth in participatory research and action. These programs provide an ongoing laboratory for learning about and strengthening program practices in rural, tribal and urban communities.
How did you become interested in your area of study?
I focus on positive youth development programs — particularly on how young people become civically engaged and contribute to their communities as they grow. I came to that pretty soon after college working with 4-H programs for kids referred by a Michigan juvenile court. This was an opportunity to work with young people and learn from life experiences very different from mine. I wanted to learn more about how youth programs operated because I saw that many of these young people, though they were struggling in school and other areas of their lives, really thrived within our programs, especially when they were able to lead, be self-determining and add something to the broader community.
I entered graduate school with these questions: Why are young people able to engage in a community program when they’re not able to engage in school? What can we learn from a more youth-centered and empowering community-based environment that could translate to schools and places of work?
What’s your motivation for doing this type of work, and how does it impact human well-being?
I’m motivated both to support young people’s development and to create more just and engaged communities. We should think about how we’d like young people to grow up — within schools, within programs, within families. My vision is that, in a democracy, young people should be fully engaged. I think it’s trying to create a positive feedback loop where young people thrive in supportive communities, and they are also making those communities and organizations better places for others.
What’s something you wish was more widely known by the average person?
Young people actually care deeply about their communities. Some may perceive that youth are distracted — they’re only focused on themselves, perhaps, or they’re in a different world. In fact, they are paying very close attention, and when given the opportunity have incredible ideas and observations and a clarity of perspective that we can all benefit from hearing. We tend to be uncomfortable interacting across generations, but I believe there’s a lot to be learned. I do think we’re at a different place than when I started doing this work more than 20 years ago, and now there’s a lot more head nodding when you talk about the power of young people to make change and that maybe adults don’t have everything figured out.
Where do you see an opportunity to shift a conversation?
I’d like to see a shift toward thinking more holistically about education and the development of young people. Not surprisingly, there’s a lot of focus on economic outcomes and self-sufficiency, but I think it’s equally important that we build community. We should think about education not just as job preparation, but also for developing young people who have an opportunity to contribute to culture and to a more just world. I’d like us to think about what we give up as a society when we’re so narrowly focused on what we hope for the next generation.
What has surprised you about working in your field?
I think what’s surprised me is the seriousness of the issues young people are willing to dig into. They have the courage to take on everything from dating and sexual violence to issues of race and other things that are sometimes scary and difficult topics. As I’ve worked with them more and more, I’ve moved from the idea that young people need to stay in safe zones to understanding the importance of giving young people supported spaces to grow and lead as they deal with their own lived realities and communities.
What do you see as the most critical question currently facing your field?
I think it’s critical to understand how young people can grapple with the same issues that face the rest of humanity, including existential issues like climate change and how to live in a world that often feels overwhelming. I think it’s a hard time to be human and a hard time to be a young person, and we’re all relying on this next generation to help pull us forward. I actually feel an incredible desire on the part of people to engage with one another, and I think we just need opportunities and invitations. Let’s lean into our humanity and invite each other into real connections. Whether it’s art, nature or conversations about justice, I think people are hungry for those conversations, and let’s not give up on them. Let’s also lean into our institutions — places like schools, libraries and parks.
What is something you’ve accomplished that you’re especially proud of?
In 2004, alongside Wisconsin youth organizations, I helped start an annual conference called Youth as Partners in Civic Leadership, which is focused on youth-adult partnership and engagement of young people in community change. I’m very proud of the space we created there, and building it meant trusting both the adults and young people to co-create a space that is inclusive and works for high school-aged youth from diverse places and cultures of Wisconsin. Recently I’ve been doing interviews with conference alumni who are now young adults, and I’m hearing them reflect on how they felt so supported by the adults in that space to lead and share and teach, and how they felt it was a unique opportunity to interact with people from across Wisconsin of different life experiences. While these young people were already doing great things in their communities, learning from and being inspired by other young people taking on different issues has really stayed with them. Even though it was just one weekend each year, they say it’s had a significant impact on the way they think about the world and the possibility of making change in it and building others up.
Who are some individuals who have influenced your work? How do you think about “paying it forward” as you gain experience in your field?
As a graduate student in the UW–Madison School of Education, I worked with Shep Zeldin, one of the founders of the Civil Society & Community Studies (CSCS) department. He was on my dissertation committee, and he and his partner, Linda Camino, were important scholars of youth-adult partnership and ways of working with and empowering young people in communities. Those relationships were grounding as my career progressed from finishing my PhD in education to working for the Division of Extension for about 20 years and then joining the School of Human Ecology. I’m still engaged with Extension as a specialist, but now I’ve come back to pay it forward to the next generation of students, and I’m having a great time learning from and working with them.
(Today’s students) are standing on the shoulders of a generation that came before, and I see them thinking so much more deeply about equity, social justice and truer and deeper participation of young people in research, change processes and leadership. Coming back and getting to be part of that has been great.
I’d also add Sharlen Moore, one of the founders of Urban Underground, a youth organizing group in Milwaukee, who showed me that you need to combine a vision for creating programs with a real commitment to individual people — you can’t just be an organizer and not also have deep relationships with the people you’re working with.
What else should the Human Ecology community know about you?
Working for Extension mainly as a practitioner in program development and evaluation for two decades, that’s really where my heart is, and now at Human Ecology I’ve been given the opportunity to focus more on research and try to capture some of the ideas I’ve come across as a practitioner, as well as getting to work with the next generation of students. That’s one of the wonderful things about CSCS: The department leans into community engagement and practice, so you can walk in the door with a grounded community practitioner perspective and be welcomed here. We also have colleagues and students who lead with research but are deeply engaged in practice. I think it’s a pretty special place to be a faculty member, student or partner. I’m at a later stage in my career, but I still feel like I’m doing new and different things.