by Riley Londraville '27 and Chase Quigley '26 on December 11, 2025
News
Welcome to NERLab, we’re happy you’re here. I understand that what we do—and even our acronym—isn’t exactly easy to grasp at first, so allow me to further explain our initiative.
The Neighborly Engagement Research Lab (NERLab) originated from a need to examine and better understand the relationship between Providence College, the place we call home, and the broader 02908 communities in which the college resides: Elmhurst, Smith Hill, and Wanskuck. The NERLab does not have a definitive end goal; instead, it sees our work’s purpose as the dedication to these neighborly connections themselves. We follow a relational process, focused on the building of relationships and the sustained efforts it takes to maintain them. In our most recent publication, Kat LaDuke ’27 of the NERLab said it best: “The NERLab at PC is built on a simple but powerful idea: colleges and universities should see themselves as neighbors to the communities that host them for their engaged work.”
Under the guidance of Dr. Carmine Perrotti ’11, members of the NERLab attend and participate in local ward meetings throughout the 02908 neighborhood to gain insight into community-driven ideas, concerns, opinions, and more. Additionally, by being a part of these meetings and other community events, you get to know some friendly faces, and we’ve found that relationships and connections can blossom from these small instances: just showing up truly makes a difference.
All of our work would not be possible without the community, and so, for both the insight and the connections we’ve made and will continue to nurture, we are forever grateful.
Through 17 in-depth interviews with 20 local residents and over 100 hours of participant observation at community meetings and events, NERLab identified six foundational principles of “neighborliness.” These principles begin to create a framework for how college campuses and communities might collaborate as neighbors. They include defining institutional commitment and strategy; practicing shared leadership; recognizing and valuing community context and knowledge; reframing how we leverage both community and campus assets to support access; and maintaining continued reflection on assessment. Our aim is to illuminate what neighborly engagement looks like from the perspectives of those most directly affected by it, using these principles to develop community-identified practices toward college-community engagement.
We hope our website can be used as a landing page for our work and all things community-campus related, and more. I encourage you to play around, explore our About Us section for more details surrounding the lab, and also get to know each of our members under the Team section. Our interactive Small Business Map shows you all of the local businesses in the 02908 neighborhoods, and you’ll probably find your new favorite cafe or restaurant is right around the corner. You can find community-wide events, along with campus events open to the public, on our Community-Campus Calendar. If you scroll down, you’ll also see the athletics schedule and additional public resources. In our conversations with community members, we consistently heard a desire for a clear platform to show which areas of campus are open and accessible to the public. These sections of our website were created in direct response to that need, providing straightforward information to strengthen connection and accessibility.
We have exciting plans for the future of our site, including a blog I’ve been working on! In the future, I plan to write portraits of community members that I had the pleasure of speaking to and learning from over the past year, in hopes of highlighting what it means to be a good neighbor and also community-identified priorities. We would love to invite guest writers to post on this blog as well, so if you’re interested, please find our contact page and send us a message. Again, thank you for being here. We look forward to what the future has in store for NERLab, the community, campus, and the meaningful connections we’ll continue to foster together. Contact Us at Nerlab@providence.edu or Visit Our Website at www.nerlabpc.com