“Activating History of Art Teaching: Bringing Connect, Capstone, and other Student Research Experiences into the Curriculum”
Whitney Davis, Jun Hu, Anneka Lenssen, Sugata Ray (History of Art)
Cohort 2021-2022
The fellows worked to develop and test curricular pathways within the History of Art department meant to more immediately bring intending majors and transfer students into a learning community based upon sharable research questions and transferable skills. We focused on the goals of 1) strengthen student opportunities to understand the scope of the field and acquire discipline-specific skill in research methods and theories; and 2) explicitly link courses with the co-curricular opportunities that arise from our faculty members' community- and museum-based work, including student involvement in curatorial projects, museum education programming, the development of accessible and inclusive online content and guides to visual and built culture, etc. Participating faculty and GSRs created and ran two pilot courses meant to test strategies for integrating research into undergraduate teaching. The first followed a “Connect” model oriented to transfer students, and the second offered students a chance to complete a guided “Capstone” research and communication project meant as an opportunity to start synthesizing elements of their B.A. studies.