August 20, 2009
‘Truly a learning community’: the UW Summer Institute for the Arts & Humanities flourishes
When doors of collaboration and mutual understanding are opened, good things happen — connections are made and lessons learned that can last a career and improve the work of students and faculty alike.
Such is happily the case with the UW’s Summer Institute for the Arts & Humanities, now in its eighth year. It runs from June 22 to Aug. 21, on which day its undergraduate participants will give presentations on what they’ve learned in a daylong symposium at the Odegaard Undergraduate Library.
“This has been a fantastic experience,” said Ileana M. Rodriguez-Silva, assistant professor of history and one of the four instructors for this summer’s session. “I love my students and I love this project.”
Joining her in teaching this summer’s session are Francisco “Kiko” Benitez, assistant professor of comparative literature; Enrique “Rick” Bonus, associate professor of American Ethnic Studies; and Chandan Reddy, assistant professor of English. There are about 20 students each year.
The intensive summer program brings select faculty and students together to explore a topic from an interdisciplinary approach and to promote undergraduate research. The students begin learning scholarly methods, and the faculty, who have chosen the year’s topic, often team-teach the classes. This year’s topic is “Shifting Empire: Critical Imperial Studies in the Americas and Beyond.”
“It’s trying to reframe what we understand as empire,” Rodriguez-Silva explained. “To use a different understanding — not looking at one entity but … a web of power relationships” and organizing elements behind them.
It’s sophisticated stuff — for freshmen or anyone. Student Brittany Patterson wrote in an e-mail that she was daunted at first by the material and her “dynamic and intelligent” fellow students. But now she feels lucky to be part of the group “because I think we all will do great things in the future.”
Student Camille Elmore wrote that as a woman of color, she appreciates being mentored and taught by four faculty of color. “To be a part of this collective is very exciting, rewarding and definitely motivating me for the next step of my academic career, which is graduate studies.”
The summer institute was started in 2002, part of a growing national trend of boosting undergraduate research experiences, said Janice DeCosmo, associate dean for undergraduate academic affairs, who oversees the program.
At the UW, this commitment to undergraduate research was manifested by the Mary Gates Endowment to the UW from the Gates foundation in the late 1990s that totaled $20 million. The endowment payout provides funding for scholarships for undergraduates to do research, and set into motion the Undergraduate Research Symposium, a popular event on campus each spring.
The Gates endowment widely expanded undergraduate research opportunities at the UW, but there was still something missing, DeCosmo said.
“We kept seeing a predominance of the sciences and engineering and medical sciences, but not very much happening on other parts of the campus. There wasn’t a parallel for students interested particularly in the humanities — and I started thinking what we could do to target those students.”
DeCosmo turned to colleagues at the Simpson Center for the Humanities — the very mission of which is to promote interdisciplinary work among campus faculty. Director Kathleen Woodward and Mirian Bartha, now the assistant director, were of great help to the project.
Bartha wrote in an e-mail, “Because the Simpson Center solicits and supports collaborative, humanities-based research projects … we are a good source for identifying promising themes and faculty who are working together, or who should be working together.”
DeCosmo said, “They were very interested in working with us if it was interdisciplinary and encouraged faculty from different disciplines to work together on a theme-based institute,” DeCosmo said. “The program turned out to be similar to what was already happening in the sciences.”
DeCosmo said each year, faculty submit a proposal and she and her Simpson Center colleagues “help them refine the topic or make it more undergraduate friendly.” The topic is meant to engage the students and encourage faculty collaboration.
Rodriguez-Silva said this year’s exploration of empire was born from earlier discussions among faculty from different fields who were already becoming close friends.
“We were all four working on questions of race and empire” and comparing notes in casual conversations, she said. “We realized a lot of points of convergence, and that’s how we decided to put a class together.”
Fellow instructor Chandan Reddy agreed. “It was pretty organic in terms of how it evolved. As our friendships developed we also realized we had overlapping intellectual questions, problems we turned to each other for help to explore.”
Rodriguez-Silva said two or three of the professors often team-teach the classes together, working through their different approaches toward collaboration — which is helpful to them and instructive to the students.
“The point is, we are collaborative in our ways of talking, our research and our teaching methodology … We are not only opening the questions to bring the students along as part of our collaborative project but also experimenting and hopefully modeling different ways of how to collaborate on projects.”
Rodriguez-Silva is already impressed with the students. “They’re a very dynamic group of people,” she said. “It’s truly a learning community.”
Bartha, of the Simpson Center said that her observations over the last five years “absolutely affirm” that the institute “is playing an important role in developing a UW research culture that extends the benefits of serious research engagements and opportunities to undergraduates, graduate students and faculty.”
The students will present their final projects from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday, Aug. 21, in 220 Odegaard Undergraduate Library. Rodriguez-Silva said they have come up with “amazing ideas” — but that she’ll be happy if they show a clear understanding “of what we’re trying to do in the class.”
Student Camille Elmore wrote, “Aug. 21 will display a multitude of interdisciplinary projects, ranging from an economic analysis of Brazil’s tourist industry to live performances re-enacting African dances that are the foundation for Salsa and other Puerto Rican/Dominican/Cuban dances.”
DeCosmo said greater faculty collaboration is a surprise byproduct of the summer institute. “From the beginning we knew that there was a benefit to faculty. …What we didn’t anticipate is that it would be such a strong influence on the teaching and long-term research with fellow faculty,” she said. “They think of collaborations they might not otherwise have produced.”
It seems to be working: This year’s four faculty members are planning a book based on lecture material they prepared for the institute as well as previous work by Benitez and Rodriguez-Silva. Reddy said it will be “a collectively edited volume including scholars from around the country working on the comparative study of empire.”
Additional support for the program comes from the Simpson Center and the Office of Research. To learn more about the UW Summer Institute in the Arts & Humanities, visit online here.
