2026 CCSP Summer Social Justice Grant

woman at a protest, holding a "go green" sign

Following a strong response last year, including a large number of compelling applications advancing social justice and the funding of four student projects, this marks the second year of the grant. We are excited to review new proposals and continue working with the SBU student community toward advancing social justice.

2026 Grantees

Death by Incarceration

Angelina Goura Mancini (in collaboration with Amarachi Marshall, Destiny Gbor, Adejumoke Ademiluyi, and Peyton Edwards) | Undergraduate student double majoring in Africana Studies and Anthropology

Home After Stroke on Long Island: A Community-Based Stroke Recovery Resource

Neha Yalamanchi | Undergraduate student majoring in Biology with a minor in Health, Medicine, and Society

Disentangling Stories of Violence and Mental Illness through Oral History

Megan Knighton | PhD student in History

Towards a Waste-Free Community: Quantifying Waste Production at Stony Brook University to Establish a Zero-Waste Plan

Julian Maceren | PhD student in Chemistry

2025 Grantees

Undergraduate Summer Grants

$500/each

"Mental Health ToolBox" | Kamilah Pasha

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.

"Indigenous land and cultural sovereignty" | Merica Griffin

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.

Graduate Summer Grants

$750/each

"Using EEG to examine how neural processing of social rejection is influenced by cultural background" | Clinical Psychology Grad Student

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.

"Settler Colonialism, Ecocide, and the Climate Crisis in Occupied Palestine" | Ariek Norford

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.