Diverstiy News | Campus Diversity News
A New Year, A New Way of Learning
December 27, 2007
Honors students team with community to address immigration and the American West
What does the face of the American West look like in 2008? What has influenced its evolution and where is it headed?
Only one day into the new year and honors students at the University of Utah are pondering the increasingly complex topic of immigration and the American West in a forum titled “New Meanings of the American West.” The forum will take place in the Commanders House at the Historic Fort Douglas at the University of Utah. Media are welcome. A complete schedule of events is linked below.
“New Meanings of the American West” will bring together students, scholars and community members for an intense four-day encounter to explore immigration and the meaning of the West. Using science, politics, poetry, history, economics and the fine arts as sources to understand definitions and representations of the West and immigration, participants will work together to design alternative practices for ongoing collaboration between students and communities.
Sponsored by the Honors College, the forum is part of a series that will address the complex issues particular to the American West, recognizing how these issues are national and global as well as regional.
“The American West represents a particularly potent region, because of its mythological positioning in the history of our country and because of the issues unique to its people, climate, and landscape,” says Vicky Newman, assistant professor of communication. “Community and region will become a framework for exploration and invention in the Honors Forums.”
Newman has invited a diverse range of community members to participate in the forum, including ESL students, farmers and ranchers, business leaders and union representatives.
“These diverse groups will bring their issues and questions together to shape some of the initial discussion and research for the forum that follows,” she says. “This kind of engaged learning provides students a way to use their intellect and talent to better understand their community and to become more active and informed citizens.”
Included in that group is Luis Mendoza, chair of the University of Minnesota’s department of Chicano studies, who recently completed an 8,500 mile bicycle trip around the United States in which he interviewed people about immigration, citizenship, and identity.
“My goal is to listen to the person on the street, to meet people in churches, cafes, and bars, to find out what they understand are the issues around the ‘Latino-ization’ of the U.S.,” Mendoza said prior to his journey. “My hope is that this journey will not be just my story, but the story of the people I encounter who are both part of the problem and part of the solution. My goal is to offer much needed insight from voices that aren’t often heard in formal media venues."