The Steans Center is participating in several community-based research (CbR) projects in support of sustainable food systems development in Chicago. Since 2002, the Center has involved students in neighborhood food access research through service-learning courses, many of which included CbR. Students contributed to studies in the Austin, Humboldt Park, and Little Village Neighborhood. In 2011, the Center's director, Dr. Howard Rosing, created the Chicago Community Gardeners Study focused on developing a data collection process to document and analyze the motivations and challenges faced by gardeners in neighborhoods underserved by the retail food sector. The study, which was completed in 2014, resulted in an ongoing tracking system to identify challenges faced by community gardeners and to seek solutions through collaboratively designed service-learning and internship projects. The study led to several new community-university partnerships. During 2012 and 2013, the Center participated in the Harvest Study, a study led by Neighborspace, the city's community garden land trust, documenting the city-wide yield, distribution, and nutritional value of food from community gardens. The results of this study was published in 2014, but data has already spurred further development of a longstanding effort to develop a city-wide map and inventory of urban agriculture. CUAMP (Chicago Urban Agriculture Mapping Project) is a multi-institutional collaboration involving some 10 or so groups representing not-for-profits, community organizations, universities, and practitioners. The group has been meeting since 2010, to collaboratively develop a publicly accessible map and inventory of urban agriculture in Chicago.