 As a Catholic Jesuit University Milwaukee, Marquette has a unique duty to serve the urban community we call home. Few faculty members understand that better than Dr. Robert Smith. Rob is the Harry G. John Professor of History at Marquette and Director of our Center for Urban Research, Teaching and Outreach, or CURTO. CURTO's initiatives address issues central to affirming human dignity and rights. They partner with organizations all over Milwaukee, like the American Civil Liberties Teaching Center of Wisconsin, Youth Justice of Milwaukee, the Wisconsin Black Historical Society and the Hague Museum of Art. With the belief that law and policy are what teaches us who we are and how we treat one another, Rob uses his expertise as a historian to help address critical societal issues and contribute to the public good. Let's hear more about Rob and his work. Hi, my name is Robert Smith. I am the Director of the Center for Urban Research, Teaching and Outreach, and I am the Harry G. John Professor of History here at Marquette University. I'm a great society baby. I've benefited from the Civil Rights Era programs in the 1960s. Fair employment, fair and equal access to education, fair and decent housing, had the opportunity to visit universities and colleges as a high school student because universities and colleges were required to recruit students who were first generation and or students of color. I walked into a graduate course with a conversation about race and racism in stone, understanding that it's law and policy that teaches us who we are and how to treat one another. And that resonated with me. Rob is an incredible historian in a way that is really powerfully trying to bring attention to the history, particularly of black folks here in Milwaukee. Really our mission is to do some cool projects with cool folks here on campus and across Milwaukee's various communities. The EPP, our primary mission is to create pathways to higher education for people who are directly impacted by incarceration. Rob Smith was working in CURTO with some other faculty, Darren Wheelock and some other folks, really trying to think about how the university can be playing a role in the city of Milwaukee in decarceration efforts. They had been interested in kind of expanding what they were doing to think about teaching classes and then blending students who were incarcerated with students who were campus-based degree-seeking students in the same classroom together and I thought that was a really powerful opportunity. Actually going in and taking a tour and meeting the students and sitting beside them and us learning and having conversations was like I said transformational for my learning and for me as a person. Milwaukee is a wonderful place to do this kind of work because there are so many committed grassroots activists and activist-based organizations that are leading the charge to significantly impact and positively impact our neighbors and our neighborhoods. The way Rob approaches people is just incredibly warm, it's incredibly accepting, it's also really inclusive, it's one of the ideas, one of the work, let me hear about it rather than let me come as the expert as the one with the knowledge, the expertise. He's really, really, really anchored in kind of celebrating and uplifting the history, the traditions, the wisdom of the city of Milwaukee and its people. We are going to continue to grow our education preparedness program. We are going to continue to work with our local educators and do cool stuff with local history. But we're going to continue to grow and have fun.