2011 Recipients
Students Shaw, Shaw, Sunderman, Kethan, Rubenthaler, Miller, Shulte
These HC Education majors applied for grant funds to help the young students they would meet during their J-term strip to Corozol, Belize. Having made this trip before, the Hastings students were struck by how few teaching materials these Belizean schools had for their children. Few books, no art supplies, no recreational equipment. The teachers in Belize provide what they can on their meager incomes, but our Hastings students wanted to bring some teaching supplies to Belize with them to use with the young students and then to leave with the schools after their departure. These students each set up donation sites in their own towns for these supplies and got great responses from their communities. The grant money was not, then, used to pay for these supplies, but only for shipping the boxes down to Belize. This was a high impact and economical project that taught these teachers some tools of community leadership and concrete outreach to poor elementary school students. A solid and creative effort that made them more excellent future teachers, helped their efforts instructing the Belizean children, and helped those schools in Corozol in the process.
Judy Hall and SPED students
Judy Hall proposed a project which would include our HC students who were seeking endorsements in Special Education (SPED) in a field experience with some innovative programs that are doing groundbreaking work with special needs populations. She took these students to three sites in Colorado, provided one-on-one time with the faculty at these organizations, and gave these students a chance to attend special-education specific conferences. In her thank-you note, Judy writes as follows, “Our excursion was amazing and the students were exposed to so many SPED experiences that they cannot get in Hastings.” I have little doubt that this group of experiences changed our students for the better, exposed them to the most innovative approaches to special needs education, and gave them a sense of the professional community and the intellectual rigor surrounding their field of a study. This certainly helped to nurture a culture of excellence for our education students.
Margaret Marsh and First Presbyterian Church
Marsh, an adjunct instructor in the Theater Department, has been working with First Presbyterian Church in Hastings on a collaborative effort between the fine arts at Hastings College, the space and hospitality of First Presbyterian, and the needs and interest of local high school and middle school students. This grant project is to set up a kind of art lounge in First Pres. as a place where Hastings College artists, poets, musicians, and dancers can come to perform and instruct. Some of the local high school and middle school students are interested in these areas of the fine arts, and this is a place where they could receive support, a charitable audience, and instruction. “The Java Lounge” as it is called hosted an interesting variety of open-mic sessions. This chance for our students to reach out to the community through the arts that they love for instruction and encouragement not only makes them more excellent performers and teachers, but helps spread this excellence to potential up-and-coming students at HC.
Kelly Manning
Kelly Manning, former instructor in the art department, applied for a grant in conjunction with a J-term Art and History class which traveled to Belize. She proposed that, in addition to the classroom education experience that her students would receive, she and the students would paint a mural on the campus of the Belize Adventist College in Corozal. The proposed grant would cover the paints and supplies, the remainder of which would be donated to the college in Belize. This project not only added to the educational experience of the students and allowed them an additional place to practice their craft, but included our HC students in a wider effort to beautify a Belizean campus. The global citizenship side of this project is one that, I hope, changed the lives of our students for the better, as well as nurturing their excellence as artists.
Moses Dogbevia
Moses offered a very straightforward grant proposal to us. As the campus advocate for cultural diversity at Hastings college and the multicultural student union, he proposed that Imagine Grant funds pay for his travel and attendance at the National Association for Multicultural Education Conference in Chicago. This effort of faculty development will translate into a much better informed and more excellent educational environment at Hastings College.
HC Music faculty and students
This is a series of three grant proposals submitted by the music faculty and students in an ongoing partnership they are developing with the Metropolitan Opera in New York and underprivileged public school children in that area. I quote, here, from the grant narrative submitted by Dr. Robin Koozer: “In October 2011, an agreement between Hastings College Department of Music, Department of Education, MIENC, the Metropolitan Opera Guild, PS10/Brooklyn and PS242/Queens (now known as TALES Elementary School) was established that will allow Hastings College education majors to complete their clinical experience for ED382: Educating a Multicultural Society in NYC in conjunction with the establish MU/PED242 J-Term class.” The funds from this grant paid for faculty travel to New York City to finalize the details of this J-term class. The mission of the college and an excellent education for our students was the result of this three-year project.
