Laurie Walker has been awarded the 2017 Ernest A. Lynton Award for the Scholarship of Engagement. The award recognizes early-career faculty who practice exemplary engaged scholarship through teaching and research. Recipients are selected on the basis of their collaboration with communities, institutional impact, and high-quality academic work.
Dr. Laurie Walker is Assistant Professor of Social Work at the University of Montana. Her research diligently includes community members in research design, data collection, literature review and data analysis and often includes students as co-authors to have the greatest impact. The most recent scholarship focuses on understanding the causes of over-incarceration of Native American women in prison and their re-entry needs. Walker’s current research is in collaboration with UM interdisciplinary students, UM’s Margery Hunter Brown Indian Law Clinic and Montana Justice Initiative, the Salish Kootenai Tribal Defender’s Office, a newly formed local holistic defense nonprofit, the Montana Department of Corrections, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Council.