In January 2021, fifteen UI graduate students gathered on Zoom for the final Obermann Graduate Institute on Engagement and the Academy—and the only virtual Institute. Created fourteen years earlier, the program has served more than 200 UI graduate students from every college on campus except one. It’s been stewarded by some of the best faculty on campus, people whose teaching and research is woven through with meaningful, long-lasting partnerships. Many of the program’s alumni created community engaged projects in Iowa City and beyond, working with the Johnson County Senior Center, Public Space One, local K-12 classrooms, the Rape Victim Advocacy Program, and many more. Others now weave their training into their teaching and research at other institutions, while a few lead campus community engagement programs. Locally, we are proud to count several leaders as alumni, including Anna Flaming, director of the Center for Teaching, Kalmia Strong, co-director of Public Space One, and Aiden Bettine, director of the LGBTQ Iowa Archives and Library.
Program makes way for new stewardship
The program is shifting into the hands of the Office of Community Engagement, which will run an orientation program that borrows many of the tools and principles from the Institute. Participants in the orientation will be eligible for other workshops and can apply for project funding.
“While we are sad to see this program go,” says associate director Jennifer New, who helped start the program along with Teresa Mangum, then a professor in English and a frequent Obermann Center fellow, and David Redlawsk, then on the UI’s Political Science faculty, “with the growth of the Office of Community Engagement, it makes sense for this program to come under their wing.”
Mellon postdocs lead first-ever virtual institute; center equity, reciprocity, and antiracist work
Ashley Cheyemi McNeil and Laura Perry, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellows, oversaw the final Institute. They were able to translate what they were learning via their work with Humanities for the Public Good to the students.
“It was an unexpected balm to be in community with such tremendous scholars and learners, especially when it felt like our bigger communities—at the national and global level—were literally falling apart (insurrection, the horrendous mortality spikes of COVID),” recalls Cheyemi McNeil of the Institute, which occurred less than a week after the January 6 events in Washington, D.C. “The participants were generous of heart and mind in a moment when both felt particularly scarce, even lost.”
Perry noted the changes they made in response to the Institute’s necessarily online format: “We had to think carefully about what could work well in a virtual space, what couldn’t, and what needed to work, somehow, because it was central to the goals of the Institute. We had many conversations about our values and core commitments when working with students and community partners—equity, reciprocity, supporting social justice and antiracist work—and designed the virtual Institute outward from there.” She and Cheyemi McNeil called upon facilitation methods and community building strategies from activist and antiracist organizations to help structure conversations about topics like research ethics and building good relationships with community partners, and in response to student interest, they expanded the Institute’s focus on advocacy and activism by spending a full day discussing the intersections of social justice advocacy with academic work and inviting speakers who had experience with local and national advocacy.
Diverse in multiple ways, the 2021 Graduate Fellows included students from the Colleges of Education, Liberal Arts and Sciences, Medicine, and Public Health, as well as citizens of Nigeria, Sri Lanka, China, and Indonesia. Their project interests ranged from creating programs with a small museum in Britt, Iowa, to working with the Iowa Harm Reduction Coalition.
“Finding my role as a community member first.”
One Graduate Institute Fellow, Alejandro Pérez Belda, is now an Assistant Clinical Professor and World Language/Dual Language Programs Coordinator at the University of Maryland, where he is employing the skills he learned last January: “I am actively using many of the strategies that I internalized and/or explored during the Institute, especially those that guide my current relationship with mentor teachers, university supervisors, and school district administrators. I have been able to initiate and establish new relationships that I hope are going to be key in my new role as program coordinator to keep collaborating and supporting each other in the near future.”
Alejandro says that one of the ideas that impacted him the most from the Institute was “the importance of finding my role as a community member first. Then, in collaborative partnerships, [I could] position myself critically to avoid imposing my voice or creating imbalanced relationships with the community members involved in that partnership.”
“How do we produce change?”
Another student, Angelina Malenda, a PhD candidate in Communication Studies, says that the Institute impacted her research and identity as a scholar, “importantly, and especially, the ways in which my scholarly identity is allowed to—or, perhaps, is necessary as an activist—exist outside of the institution and within the community. The Graduate Institute allowed participants to explore how public engagement can enhance teaching, research, and creative work. [The Institute] also sparked questions that guide my research to this day: How do we sustain community engagement; how do scholar-activists resist institutionalization; how do we produce change?”
We trust that the 2021 cohort will bring the lessons of the Institute into multiple communities and impact students, colleagues, and partners. We look forward to helping the Office of Community Engagement as they commence supporting a new generation of engaged scholars!
2021 Graduate Fellows
- Ebenezer Adeyemi – PhD candidate, Anthropology, CLAS
- Antonio Alejandro Pérez Belda – PhD candidate, Literacy, Culture, and Language Education; College of Education
- Nicole Amato – PhD candidate, Language, Literacy, and Culture, College of Education
- Luke Borland – PhD candidate, History, CLAS
- Laura Carpenter – PhD candidate, American Studies, CLAS
- Elizabeth Fry – PhD candidate, Community & Behavioral Health, College of Public Health
- Mitchell Hooyer – 4th-year student, Carver College of Medicine
- Lauren Irwin – PhD candidate, Educational Policy & Leadership Studies, College of Education
- Angelina Malenda – PhD candidate, Communication Studies, CLAS
- Hansini Munasinghe – PhD candidate, Sociology & Criminology, CLAS
- Hoshik Nam – PhD candidate, Political Science, CLAS
- Sanjna Singh – MFA candidate, Nonfiction Writing Program in English, CLAS
- Adelheid Bethanny Sudibyo – PhD candidate, Spanish Literature & Culture, CLAS
- Emilie Sommers – MA candidate, Clinical Mental Health Counseling, College of Education
- Hao Zhou – MFA candidate, Film & Video Production, CLAS
Fellows in the News
Hao Zhou: Openly Pursuing His Cinematic Dreams
(Iowa Now)
Student Spotlight: Filmmaking grad student creates LGBTQ-centered art
(Daily Iowan, 11/3/20)
UI student and team awarded $50,000 for screenplay
(Daily Iowan, 7/27/21)
Obermann Annual Report 2020-21 