Julia Lindgren, MA

Ms. Lindgren is an assistant professor in architecture at UTA. She began teaching at a university level in 2021, and it has been a big transition for her coming from the for-profit sector where she worked before.

Her past work centered around community engagement and was very closely tied to community partnerships. Service learning helped her weave the balance of teaching and research together. Teaching a design build class, she worked with the Dolphin Heights neighborhood of Dallas to discuss different design decisions.

For her, the design build project is much deeper than how the building is situated on the site. She believes service learning is important because of the real-life goal that you're trying to accomplish in partnership with the community.

Julia states that her favorite part of the faculty fellows program was the invigorating conversations with the people throughout the fellowship. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic her experience with the fellowship was remote.

For faculty hesitant on integrating a service learning component, Julia advices to just start and understand that it's not going to go perfect the first, second, or third time. She emphasizes to dive in and rely on the support systems that are in place at the university level, such as this fellowship and other faculty who are doing service learning and have been doing service learning for a really long time.