Engaged Arts and Humanities

Graduate Students Benefit as Engaged Arts and Humanities Scholars

Arielle Wiedenbeck — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 20:20:59 +0000

Graduate Students Benefit as Engaged Arts and Humanities Scholars Arielle Wiedenbeck Fri, 02/21/2025 - 13:20

Alexandra Wilson

Since its launch in 2018, the Engaged Arts and Humanities (EAH) Graduate Student Scholars Program at CU has given 40 students the opportunity and resources to combine their academic disciplines, the tools of the arts and humanities, and their unique individual interests and apply them to public and community-engaged scholarship projects.

“I believe the program’s focus on lived experience, equity-oriented partnerships and mutually beneficial community-engaged scholarship has been key in creating an inclusive community of learners,” said Lisa Schwartz, Office for Public and Community-Engaged Scholarship Program Manager and EAH founder.

The two-year fellowship, now co-administered by the Office for Public and Community-Engaged Scholarship (PACES) and the Center for the Humanities & the Arts (CHA), encourages students to work collaboratively with communities to create meaningful, lasting change and allows students to broaden their networks on and off campus. Students co-design mutually beneficial projects with community partners, receiving a $5,000 stipend over two years and up to $1,000 in project funding.

Professor Jennifer Ho, CHA’s faculty director, works with the CHA team and Schwartz to oversee and implement the program. “I’m thrilled that the CHA is partnering with PACES on this program. When Lisa Schwartz first told me about the program, I could see the vitality and mutual intellectual and creative aims of having graduate students use their expertise in service to community-engaged projects. Lisa’s leadership of the program is part of the secret sauce to its success, as is the passion of the EAH scholars for work outside the traditional walls of academia.”

EAH Fellow Amy Hoagland’s 2021-22 project with CU Science �鶹��Ƶy and Cal-Wood Education Center serves as a prime example of the program’s impact on the surrounding community and her future as an artist and advocate for environmental justice. Combining her passions for art and science, Hoagland initiated a series of outdoor events with youth and families, providing opportunities for the “mourning, celebration and collective recognition of the impact of climate change.”

Hoagland creates artwork to “provoke thought and change in people’s relationship with the surrounding landscape.” While continuing her work inspired by EAH Scholars, Hoagland received a 2022 Windgate Fellowship for sustainable art presented by Honoring the Future.

“I cannot express my gratitude for EAH Scholars and Lisa Schwartz’s mentorship. It has all been incredibly impactful on my practice. It will positively impact my future projects, too,” said Hoagland.

A key aspect of EAH Scholars is the experience of selecting, interviewing and developing a relationship with a mentor who is a community-engaged scholar within the university or broader community (Read the EAH scholar mentor interviews here). PhD student Idowu Odeyemi shared his experience working with Professor Briana Toole, founder and director of the Corrupt the Youth program.

“Professor Toole’s community greatly intersects with mine; it was very easy to form a connection with her. She was helpful in terms of how I can develop my ideas for the sort of community work that I want my project to be about,” said Idowu.

A number of scholars have incorporated their work with EAH into their MFA thesis and PhD research. Brenda Aguirre Ortega is one such student. Through sharing and developing her ideas with members of the EAH cohort, as well as securing additional funding, Aguirre-Ortega’s multitude of interests evolved into her establishing and co-facilitating an after-school program at Columbine Elementary School, combining her passions of teaching, music composition and mathematics. In an interview discussing her experience with community-engaged scholarship, Aguirre-Ortega emphasized the program’s impact on her.

“At first, I only knew that I wanted to create a project in a school and that it would have something to do with music production,” said Aguirre-Ortega. “The idea became more tangible when I started sharing it with the EAH cohort. We were all beginning projects, and we helped each other develop ideas.”

EAH Scholars is now welcoming new graduate students for the 2025-2027 cohort. Visit the program’s webpage to learn more about deadlines, eligibility and the application process.

Since 2018, the Engaged Arts and Humanities Graduate Student Scholars program has given 40 students the opportunity and resources to apply tools of the arts and humanities to public and community-engaged scholarship projects.

The program is now welcoming new graduate students for the 2025-2027 cohort. Visit the program webpage.

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Harveen Gill leads a group meditation during a presentation on her work as an Engaged Arts and Humanities Scholar at Research and Innovation Week.

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Harveen Gill leads a group meditation during a presentation on her work as an Engaged Arts and Humanities Scholar at Research and Innovation Week. (Photo Credit: Arielle Wiedenbeck)

Reflections on working with the Engaged Arts and Humanities Scholars

Arielle Wiedenbeck — Fri, 21 Oct 2022 18:19:50 +0000

Reflections on working with the Engaged Arts and Humanities Scholars Arielle Wiedenbeck Fri, 10/21/2022 - 12:19 Lisa Schwartz

Lisa Schwartz is a Community Outreach Program Manager for CU Boulder’s Office for Outreach and Engagement. She founded and leads the Engaged Arts and Humanities Scholars program.

Overview

It’s been an incredible privilege to learn with the graduate students in the Engaged Arts and Humanities Scholars (EAH) cohorts as they develop a practice of innovative and boundary-spanning scholarship with communities. This past year, the 2021-22 scholars connected sports and literacy for elementary school girls, reimagined a mix of Ballet and Afro-Cuban Folkloric Dance, applied philosophical ethics to the dilemmas of tweens and more.

The program provides a small stipend and seed funding for scholars to develop partnership projects with community members. Over the years, the projects scholars have begun while in the cohort have received thousands of dollars in additional grants from external funders, our office and other CU units.

These scholars are doing amazing work and fully acknowledge that community-engaged teaching, research and creative work take time and are often not a linear process. Scholars spend months developing relationships with partners, slowly moving toward the co-creation of goals and projects that are mutually beneficial.

The cohort provides a community of practice, outside the scholars’ disciplinary homes, where they make sense of the inevitable ups and downs of their experiences partnering with communities. An important aim is to support students in developing a sense of belonging—to each other and their partners—as a key element of developing relationships of trust and reciprocity.

EAH Scholar Erica Caasi shared, “I have really appreciated the space created in the cohort to try things out, get feedback, and collaborate with others in a shared space and community.”

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Cohort members examine principles of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) through reflection questions they develop together that explore issues of power and identity in partnerships. The scholars and I aim to write and submit a journal article in spring 2023, drawing from these reflections. In addition to attending DEI-focused workshops, cohort members interviewed their mentors about approaches to DEI in partnerships. Now, starting with the fifth year of EAH, cohort members can receive a micro-credential in equity-oriented partnerships.

Crossing interdisciplinary and community boundaries helps support students to connect with and act on what they care about related to their lived experiences, not solely on the priorities of their disciplines. Cohort members also learn to explain their work to community members without jargon. I know from my own experience that this is a critical skill as students move into careers in academia and beyond.

Mentorship

Mentorship is also a vital component of the program and can be challenging to navigate in academia. Scholars explore the kind of mentorship they need, and then connect with mentors who they interview and from whom they later get feedback about their developing projects. I provide ongoing mentorship through individual meetings and advising, making connections to mentors and partners and continued support through giving references. For the past two cohorts, a second-year member has stayed on to guide program pedagogy and support the new members.

Many scholars have moved into professional positions or other opportunities that reflect their work in the EAH program. It’s rewarding to continue collaborating with these students and seeing them evolve and grow the practices and projects they cultivated in the EAH cohort.

Application deadline for the next cohort

Information sessions about applying for the sixth EAH cohort will be at Noon on Thursday, Dec. 8, Tuesday, Jan. 24 and Wednesday, Feb. 15. The deadline for applications is Wednesday, March 8, 2023. Learn more and apply for the 2023-23 cohort here.

MA, MFA and PhD students in Arts, Humanities and interdisciplinary programs are also welcome to contact me with questions.

Read this month’s Faces of Community-Engaged Scholarship profile of Jesus Munoz for an EAH Scholar’s perspective.

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Faces of Community-Engaged Scholarship: Jesús Muñoz

Arielle Wiedenbeck — Fri, 21 Oct 2022 18:06:53 +0000

Faces of Community-Engaged Scholarship: Jesús Muñoz Arielle Wiedenbeck Fri, 10/21/2022 - 12:06

Gretchen Minekime

Jesús Muñoz knew three things when he enrolled at CU Boulder’s Department of Theatre & Dance. He was known as a Ballet and Modern dancer, but his dance roots are in Mexican and Cuban Folkloric, Afro-Cuban, and Cuban Popular and Contemporary Dance. His presence as a Latinx MFA candidate and instructor would require him to represent a minority experience on campus. And, he wanted to connect his thesis to communities outside of academia.

How did community-engaged scholarship become part of your path?

I respect and am interested in the history and cultural meaning of Latinx Dance and had done lots of networking when I was a freelancer. CU Theatre & Dance is known for its decolonizing work, but Latinx Dance had not been part of the BFA/BA program so I aimed to introduce it.

You’re a member of the Engaged Arts and Humanities Scholars. How does the program support your work?

My Engaged Arts and Humanities Scholars’ project was really the culmination of my first two years working on my MFA in Dance. At the end of September, I hosted Marisol Blanco–my mentor in Latinx Dance. She taught five classes at CU Boulder and two community workshops.

We came up with a way to tie movement to life cycle themes from Afro-Cuban culture. On her last day at CU, Marisol taught the department’s Radical Reimagining Series session (a three-year-old series centering anti-racist learning to foster the department’s collective capacity) with a theme of connecting to nature. All week, we hadn’t told the students the background of the daily themes, and they weren’t familiar with Latinx Dance. We set it up so they could embody the experience and then articulate the connections. They got it! How we designed it worked.

To my way of thinking, my original idea was to recruit Latinx students, but my understanding has expanded. I know now that, even if it’s Latinx Dance with white bodies, it’s creating Latinx Art. This was such a strong experience for me as an educator.

Marisol also did two two-hour community workshops of dance, theory, values of Latinx culture, history and traditions. For me, this was a way to share with community members, who mainly view dance as only entertainment, the importance of the history and culture of this dance and connect them more with CU Boulder. Some community members even came to campus. Students were invited to the community workshops, but this was harder to make happen for logistical reasons.

My efforts re-introducing the department to Latinx Dance…until recently, they’ve just been service work. But, it’s feeling more tangible now. I’m incorporating Latinx Dance into what I teach, the September events exposed many people to the work and CU and community studios now have relationships of their own with Marisol. Also, I’ll be hosting a social dance event at BMoCA one Sunday a month to continue to create relationships between CU Boulder and the community.

Anya Cloud (Assistant Professor, Theatre and Dance Department), Jesús Muñoz (MFA Dance Candidate, Theatre and Dance Department), and Marisol Blanco (Artist in Residence).

How will you carry forward what this project has taught you?

It showed me that academia is not my only option after I get my MFA. I see now I’ll be able to teach and create events that can be financially viable for me and that will continue to build relationship between CU and the Latinx community.

Doing community work really helped with my ability to go in and out of different spaces, to navigate many classes, communities and studios. Partnering with the community is inclusive.

It also informed how I think about my research. Being Latinx on a mostly white campus…well, what I do is seen as political. I always have to explain my work, my culture. But, using movement to expose people to Latinx Dance shares that labor and teaches. By doing the dance and embodying it, people experience it. I don’t have to explain as much.

What’s been the most challenging aspect of working through a community-engaged lens?

It’s been tricky in terms of me coming to relationships knowing both worlds. I know the academic world and Latinx Dance as a social tool. To members of the Latinx community, it’s entertainment, and it’s not prevalent for people to perceive dance as a source of empowerment for marginalized people. So, going into these spaces, I had to listen, respect and relate to what community students wanted from me and Marisol. I had to negotiate within myself, immerse myself in the doing rather than the intellectual aspect. I approached teaching my CU classes and my community classes differently. But, there was also a co-mingling, because everyone expressed a desire for belonging.

This is why I’m most interested in continuing my work with community. It challenged me to stay open and to reformulate my perceptions and knowledge within dance.

Do you have ideas or advice for other graduate students about making community-engaged scholarship part of their approach?

Everyone has a sense of community. Everyone. I can only speak about my department. It claims an anti-colonial and decolonizing stance. So, know that you’re coming into that environment and what you bring. Trying to assimilate these notions can take over identities. I tell students all the time to always try to be an artist first, to keep your identity’s true essence. Community-engaged work is you putting yourself in a room full of different people. Be in these spaces, immerse yourself completely in the experience, embody it, let the artist lead. It will help you engage more, have more patience, more caring, more giving, more taking…so many things.

And also, for example, there was Indigenous Peoples' Day and Columbus Day, and there are tensions with that. Some of us rolled around campus–yes, literally rolled around the grass and pavement to reclaim land. There’s a different intake of information with movement. It’s a moment of pause and reflection that helps embody what we’re doing. And community work requires that too.

To really understand others you have to also spend time with yourself and negotiate your identity–not to the point where you separate yourself from your values and integrity but so that you can open a space for conversation and connect with others. Movement is prevalent for everyone, but we often don't realize that our most significant moments are when we’re really using our bodies.

More information about the Engaged Arts and Humanities Scholars program with the Office for Outreach and Engagement is available on our website. To learn more about Jesús’s work with Marisol Blanco, read his interview with her.

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Jesús Muñoz's Engaged Arts and Humanities Scholars Program final project.

Los Seis de Boulder sculpture to remain at CU as part of university archives

Arielle Wiedenbeck — Wed, 16 Sep 2020 17:00:00 +0000

Los Seis de Boulder sculpture to remain at CU as part of university archives Arielle Wiedenbeck Wed, 09/16/2020 - 11:00

The Los Seis de Boulder sculpture, which memorializes six Chicano students killed in 1974, will become part of the CU Boulder Libraries’ permanent collection.

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Street art portrays Denver’s Chicana/o culture

Arielle Wiedenbeck — Wed, 19 Aug 2020 17:00:00 +0000

Street art portrays Denver’s Chicana/o culture Arielle Wiedenbeck Wed, 08/19/2020 - 11:00

Kenna Bruner

Allyson Burbeck has long been interested in graffiti and street art.

She wrote her undergraduate thesis on graffiti art in 1980s New York. So, it wasn’t a surprise that the robust graffiti and street art scene in Denver drew her to CU Boulder for a master’s degree in art history.

Captivated by the colorful, historic murals painted by Chicano and Chicana artists in the La Alma-Lincoln Park area in Denver, Burbeck focused her graduate thesis on examining the history and legacy of Chicana/o muralism in the neighborhood. Chicana/o are people of Mexican decsent born in the United States. The term came into use as a symbol of pride by Mexican Americans during the Chicano movement in the 1960s

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Engaged Arts and Humanities

Graduate Students Benefit as Engaged Arts and Humanities Scholars

Related Articles

Reflections on working with the Engaged Arts and Humanities Scholars

Overview

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Mentorship

Application deadline for the next cohort

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Faces of Community-Engaged Scholarship: Jesús Muñoz

How did community-engaged scholarship become part of your path?

You’re a member of the Engaged Arts and Humanities Scholars. How does the program support your work?

How will you carry forward what this project has taught you?

What’s been the most challenging aspect of working through a community-engaged lens?

Do you have ideas or advice for other graduate students about making community-engaged scholarship part of their approach?

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Los Seis de Boulder sculpture to remain at CU as part of university archives

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Street art portrays Denver’s Chicana/o culture

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