Paula Gerstenblatt PhD

Dr. Gerstenblatt has worked for over 25 years with a focus on macro community practice throughout the United States and West Africa in the non-profit and government sector. She is the founder and former Director of the Mart Community Project located in rural Mart, Texas, a community development initiative and nationally recognized model of a reciprocal community-university partnership that has received numerous grants, including two National Endowment of the Arts Design awards. As a practicing artist, Dr. Gerstenblatt is passionate about utilizing the arts as a tool for community building, livability, and revitalization. Dr. Gerstenblatt received her PhD from the University of Texas at Austin where her dissertation research was awarded the Social Work Education Research Student Award from Social Work Education: the International Journal. Her research areas are service learning, community-university partnerships, community art practice, and arts based research methods, and most recently the animal human bond.