Fall Semester Promises Energy and Excitement | |
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The final weeks of summer are upon us, and the Office of Community Engagement is excited to welcome students back to campus later this month for the Fall semester. In the spirit of celebrating the new academic year, OCE will be hosting an Open House Wednesday, September 6th from 3-5 PM at our new office space in the University Capitol Centre. Come join other faculty, staff, students and community partners for conversation and refreshments, and stay for an inspiring faculty panel who will speak about the impact of community engagement on their research and teaching. Grant winners from the first year of the Graduate Engagement Corps (GEC) will also be sharing their work.
The Fall semester promises the return of OCE's core programming, including Community Engaged Courses (CECs), which continue to be popular options for undergraduate and graduate students. We encourage instructors to contact us to learn more about this designation and the benefits that partnerships bring to students and our communities. Graduate students interested in engagement should watch our website for the GEC application that will be released in September. If you already manage community partnerships as part of your work, consider joining the Community Engagement Network (CEN) to discuss current engagement models and best practices with other scholars and practitioners. Regardless of whether you are new to engagement or an experienced practitioner, we would love to hear from you and look forward to connecting as we move into the new academic year.
In partnership,
Nick Benson
Executive Director
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Teaching, Learning, and Research | |
Engagement Open House
Mark your calendars! On Wednesday, September 6th we will be hosting an open house from 3:00 - 5:00 PM. We invite you to visit our new space at 2999 UCC for snacks and conversation before we transition to a faculty panel session with community engagement practitioners. If you are new to community engagement this will be a great opportunity to learn from experienced instructors. Previous GEC grant winners will also be sharing their work. Check our website in the next couple of weeks for more details!
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Community Engagement Network
Do you manage community partnerships as a key part of your job? Are you the “go-to” person for community partners seeking to connect with your department or unit? Do you have a specific focus to help create the environment that makes community engagement possible? Are you otherwise deeply involved in community-engaged teaching or research? If you answered yes to any of these questions, please considering joining the Community Engagement Network (CEN) scholars and practitioners!
Through sharing and learning about our collective engagement models, current partnerships, and best practices, we aim to:
- Build community among community engaged scholars and practitioners across campus
- Forge new connections and interdisciplinary collaborations
- Enhance impact for faculty, students, and community partners
- Align efforts with the UI Strategic Plan and institutional goals
Join us for coffee on Monday, September 18 from 8:00 - 9:00 am in 2520D UCC for our first CEN event of the fall semester!
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Experiential Education Course Grants
Experiential learning is a priority of the University of Iowa campus, and multiple campus-wide initiatives focused on applied learning are underway in support of expanding access and creating additional opportunities on and off campus. As such, the Pomerantz Career Center's P3 project Closing the Gap: Experiential Education for all Undergraduates aims to create more curricular experiential learning opportunities for students within their program of study.
The purpose of this grant program is to increase undergraduate student access to and participation in experiential learning, especially those not otherwise participating. This grant program funds undergraduate experiential education courses that will be sustainable over time and offered regularly in order for students to anticipate and plan for experiential opportunities in their programs of study.
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First-Year Seminar Announcement
We are excited to be expanding our undergraduate programming with our new First-Year Seminar this Fall Semester! Beyond Volunteering: Changing Your World Through Community Engagement (CSI:1200:0019) will help students build an understanding of community engagement through active learning and community exploration. The course format will consist of a series of presentations and discussions by guest speakers, visits with local community partners, and reflective exercises that will provide a foundation for the final project. More information on the course can be found at MyUI.
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The Office of Community Engagement is here to help with letters of support and one-on-one meetings to discuss upcoming courses, research projects, and community partnerships. | |
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Bring the Arts to your Community!
Arts Share offers schools and communities around the state a variety of arts experiences such as interactive performances, workshops, readings, and master classes. Events take place in K-12 schools, libraries, museums, hospitals, community colleges, and performance venues. Our artist roster is made up of students and faculty from programs across campus in the areas of music, dance, theatre, writing, visual arts, and cinematic arts. In addition to individual artists, we have many amazing ensembles that are available for performances. We will work to tailor programming to meet your needs!
To learn more about opportunities to bring arts to your community, please contact Arts Share at artshare@uiowa.edu, or contact the Arts Share director at leslie-finer@uiowa.edu.
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Incoming GWAC Fellows
The Grant Wood Art Colony of the University of Iowa announces the recipients of the 2023-24 Grant Wood Fellowship! Each year, three fellows are selected from an international search to become artists-in-residence and visiting assistant professors at the University of Iowa. The fellows will live at the Grant Wood Art Colony, each teach one course per semester, engage community members across the state, and make work. The Grant Wood Art Colony will host several lectures and an end-of-year exhibition. Through a competitive process, the following talented artists were selected by their peers:
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Shea Hembrey
Painting & Drawing
https://www.sheahembrey.com/
Shea Hembrey's work questions reality. He seriously explores our best current understanding of the structure of reality while simultaneously playing trickster. He routinely fictionalizes in both making and presenting art: sometimes he twists identity (he has invented over 140 fictional artists and made their work for them) and sometimes he uses trompe l'oeil techniques in masterful realistic paintings.
Hembrey approaches art by concentrating on a singular, defined conceptual project where the ideas direct what methods and media he uses. Research is key to all of his creative endeavors while he remains a prolific maker of things. While in residence, he plans to make “beautiful paintings that ask big questions”as he explores new materials and processes.
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Junli Song
Printmaking
https://www.artsofsong.com/
As a Chinese American woman, Song has undertaken the project of world-building to create a space where she belongs, and to make sense of the complex, often contradictory, realities of existing between cultures. Centering around a female re-imagining of the mythological headless deity, Xingtian, as a symbol of resistance, the world created within these images exists as an imaginary realm where the liminal becomes a space of alternative existence. Drawing upon the fantasy and continual self-(re)invention inherent within diasporic societies, her work reveals the fluid nature of identity as inherited stories and traditions continually evolve.
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Jessica Tucker
Interdisciplinary Performance - Theatre
https://jessica-tucker.com/
Jessica Tucker is an American-Dutch artist, musician, and educator. Her work playfully examines how media technologies substantiate the shifting dimensions of selfhood and the body, and thereby condition experiences of agency and identity. She creates multimedia performances, videos, and installations that restage everyday virtual activities as complex embodiments that reveal and distort our deepest desires.
Using advanced and quotidian contemporary media technologies, she poetically reframes the vane and mundane into immersive, ritual-like experiences that speak to our longing for connection while confronting dominant mechanisms of attention manipulation, self-commodification, and surveillance capitalism. Inspired by media technology histories as well as diverse spiritual and scientific definitions of consciousness and individuality, she explores cracks in machines as in humans, looking at how our shared slippages reconcile meaning in the midst of what feels like entropy.
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Seeking Co-Facilitators for Fall 2023 Communities of Practice
Communities of Practice (CoPs) provide a unique opportunity for Campus Compact members to join peers across the country to dig deeper into specific areas of engagement practice. Through discussions, joint activities, resource sharing, and relationship building, participants develop a repertoire of resources, skills, and knowledge to use in their practice.
Campus Compact is seeking co-facilitators for fall 2023 to lead communities focused on a variety of topics of their choice. This is a great opportunity for those who are seeking a national leadership opportunity in the field of civic and community engagement. Apply by August 18 at https://compact.smapply.io/prog/FacCoPFall2023/.
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Registration is open for ESC 2023!
The 2023 Engagement Scholarship Consortium Conference will take place October 4-5 in East Lansing, Michigan. This year's theme is “Mobilizing Change through Engaged Scholarship.” The conference will provide a platform for intentional conversations about how engaged scholarship can lead to significant, positive impacts in the community and the academy. To register and learn more about this exciting conference, click the link below.
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