Zilber student learning to make a healthy difference

Tiffinie Cobb has been working with the Milwaukee Succeeds project, part of the Greater Milwaukee Foundation. (UWM Photo/Troye Fox)

Tiffinie Cobb’s interest in public health began with an interest in healthy living when she was in high school.

Cobb, who grew up on the north side of Milwaukee and attended Nicolet High School, discovered that many young people her age didn’t have the resources to live a healthier life.

As she began doing volunteer work in less affluent neighborhoods, she saw the impact of disparities in access to nutritious food and regular exercise on such problems as childhood obesity.

“I saw that there was a lot of work that needed to be done in my own city of Milwaukee that is related to health and public health,” Cobb said. “I always saw a difference between my suburban school and poorer neighborhoods, but I didn’t understand how to begin to change it.”

That led her to enroll in the Joseph J. Zilber School of Public Health, focusing on community and behavioral health promotion.

Tiffinie Cobb has been working with Dave Celata (from left), Danae Davis and Lamont Smith during her internship at Milwaukee Succeeds. (UWM Photo/Troye Fox)
Tiffinie Cobb has been working with Dave Celata (from left), Danae Davis and Lamont Smith during her internship at Milwaukee Succeeds. (UWM Photo/Troye Fox)

Now, she is working directly on helping make change through an internship with the Greater Milwaukee Foundation. Cobb was one of only seven students nationwide who were selected for an American Evaluation Association Graduate Education Diversity Internship.

The goal of the paid internships is to expand the pool of graduate students of color and from underrepresented groups in the field of evaluation.

Cobb started her internship in September, and has been working with the team supporting the Milwaukee Succeeds project. Milwaukee Succeeds, part of the Greater Milwaukee Foundation, is a community-wide, collaborative initiative to improve educational outcomes for children.

“It’s been great, just learning the culture of the various organizations that are doing so much good work in the community,” said Cobb.

She works with two schools evaluating parent engagement and looking for ways to increase it. She will eventually perform the same work at three other schools.

“She’s providing information on parent engagement in these areas and improving our understanding of strategies that work and those that don’t work,” said Dave Celata, deputy director of Milwaukee Succeeds.

“This is a qualitative analysis,” he added. “She’s having real, in-depth conversations with practitioners as well as parents.” Cobb’s research looks at the barriers parents face and helps schools identify strategies to help parents become more involved in their children’s learning.

In addition to gathering information, Cobb is also working with the schools to improve their ability to evaluate their own parent engagement, look at best practices and help design tools that other schools can use.

Celata said that type of information would eventually be shared with other schools. “We want to understand what works best and what doesn’t.”

After that work finishes, Cobb will become involved with another civic engagement project through the Greater Milwaukee Foundation internship. She is hoping to work on housing policy, an interest that has developed during her internship and an area in which she’d like to work when she completes her degree in May.

Her internship is 16 to 20 hours a week, she also works as a research assistant, and she’s taking courses full-time. That’s challenging, she said, but her professors and her supervisor at the Greater Milwaukee Foundation provide a great support system.

“It becomes overwhelming when I look too far out, so just focusing on week by week helps a lot.”

Cobb plans to stay in Milwaukee, and knowing that what she’s learning will help her community also helps her keep her focus, she added.

“Sometimes it’s hard and sometimes it’s discouraging, but knowing I’m so close to finishing is what motivates me…knowing that everything I’m doing is all going to come together in the long run.”

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