Jennifer Jenkins
Note: Title was current at time of award and may have changed.
Querencia: Integrating place-based learning in Southwest Studies curricula
The distinctive profile of UArizona as a Hispanic-serving and Indigenous serving institution, coupled with our land-grant mission, uniquely positions us to develop a curriculum built on immersive experience in our distinct Arizona-Sonora borderlands region. This interdisciplinary project interlaces active, place-based learning with research in local archival materials, focused on the unique and plural histories, geographies, arts, and material cultures of this region. Project faculty will develop or adapt content modules from their Southwest-related courses to integrate travel to southern Arizona sites of cultural, historical, ecological and human significance, supported by primary sources in local archives. In the process, we will measure ways in which confronting such sites firsthand affects faculty pedagogy, student learning practices and academic choices, and undergraduate students’ sense of affiliation with home places and region.
Through this project, faculty will integrate pedagogical practices anchored in Native Ways of Knowing, working in respectful, reciprocal, relational, and responsible contexts with the places and communities we explore. This project engages with UArizona’s core values of adaptation and exploration, sparks curiosity and nurtures compassion and inclusion practices.