Isabel Call

Bonner Scholar Isabel Call has received the Ohio Campus Compact 2005 Charles J. Ping Award for "research and coursework that reflects the interests and needs of many Oberlin students and community members while addressing a key community issue."

Oberlin President Nancy S. Dye nominated the Oberlin senior for the award, which is granted annually to undergraduates from member institutions by Ohio Campus Compact. The organization comprises 46 Ohio colleges and universities and was established to support the development of campus-wide student and institutional participation in community and public service.

Isabel, an economics major with a minor in religion,  says she became a Bonner Scholar her first year at Oberlin because she was "passionate about community service. I wanted to give back to the society that has treated me so well."

Since then community service for her has changed. From being an academic and social experience it has become a deeply personal one.

"Learning about the troubles that low-income people, people of color, people with disabilities, and single parents have in finding adequate housing has shown me that housing is a universal human issue."

Isabel says her decision to focus on housing issues took shape in 2003 in her hometown, Knoxville, Tennessee, during a summer internship she undertook to learn about historic preservation as a way of keeping low-income communities and inexpensive housing intact.

 "I was in a depressed inner-city neighborhood, in a historic house that was being rehabilitated. As I looked around the house, I realized how many generations had lived in the house and how many more would continue to live there as long as the building was preserved."

Back in Oberlin, Isabel helped conduct a survey for the Oberlin Housing Initiative. She walked the streets of the city collecting data on the conditions of homes and yards, street lamps, and sidewalks. Her report became a pivotal part of the city's housing renewal and redevelopment plans.

She also produced several community-based research projects for the Oberlin Design Initiative and developed—as part of the College's Experimental College—Low-Income Housing and Social Justice—an ongoing course that brings together community leaders and students to discuss local housing issues.

Isabel says she is particularly excited about a spin-off produced in cooperation with the Ohio Public Interest Research Group: the revived and expanded Oberlin Rentbook.

Designed to help both student and community renters make informed housing decisions and to be a permanent feature of the Oberlin rental market, the Rentbook offers information about Oberlin landlords and rental property.

Isabel and her students also have initiated or contributed to several other community projects, including the Youth Energy Squad, a group of college and high-school students who weatherize homes in Oberlin in partnership with Zion Community Development Corporation.

Most recently she has been working with Biodiesel Oberlin—a project that strives to produce and burn biodiesel fuel to offset the local consumption of petroleum diesel—evaluating the economic feasibility of small-scale biodiesel production. Her paper on the topic recently won the Bowling Green State University undergraduate economics competition.

And if papers, data, and reports ever tend to morph into vague abstractions, it only takes Isabel a quick trip to Real Life 101 to put everything back in focus.

"Recently, the Low-Income Housing and Social Justice class took a field trip to a local subsidized apartment building. I had worried that we would be seen as rich kids intruding into a community where we didn't belong, but the door monitor made us feel welcome by sharing how grateful she is to have a roof over her head.

 "‘You all, with your college education and all the opportunities you have, probably don't want to ever live in a place like this,' the monitor said. ‘And you probably won't have to. But it's really not a bad place, and it's a lot better than other places I might have to live if I couldn't live here'.

"She made me realize that even though we come from different settings, we all share the need to have a home and a community."