Arts at Michigan brings art into the classroom

Updated 2:00 PM November 3, 2003

Arts at Michigan brings art into the classroom

By Michelle Begnoche
University Record Intern

For undergraduate students of the 21st century, much of the subject matter they jot in their notebooks or highlight as they read may not seem to have much relevance to the world around them.

Leonora Ivanitskaya and Kate Mendeloff at a dress rehearsal.
(Photo by Todd Mckinney)

Arts at Michigan's Course Connections Funding Program offers a way for faculty members to draw associations between the information they teach and the real world by providing money for trips to museums, theater tickets, tours of Detroit and more.

"The faculty are in a unique position with students to really draw connections across disciplines and make book learning live," says Lisa Herbert, director of Arts at Michigan. "This provides an opportunity for the learning experience to be greatly enhanced and make it more relevant, and to connect it to many different points."

The funding program offers grants to faculty members who incorporate arts-based learning into their classrooms. "We are especially interested in projects that reach a broader U-M community and extend outside a particular faculty's classroom," Herbert says.

Kate Mendeloff is one of the faculty members who has taken advantage of the funding for her course RC Humanities 484: Advanced Acting Workshop in Modern Drama: Ibsen and Chekhov. Mendeloff's students not only read and discuss "The Seagull" by Anton Chekhov and "The Dollhouse" by Henrik Ibsen; they also perform the plays. With her Course Connections funding, Mendeloff was able to offer a small stipend to Russian dramaturge Leonora Ivanitskaya to help Mendeloff's students understand the Russian culture and nuances imbedded in the plays.

Brandon Rehkopf, Colleen Thompson, John Paul “Jip” Dutka, and Zack Spencer in a scene from Chekhov’s “The Seagull.” The play was presented Oct. 24-26 in the Residential College Auditorium. (Photo by Todd McKinney)

"Chekhov was writing about turn-of-the-century Russian life. I understand a lot about this, but there are aspects of the culture that are very specific, and I wanted to be able to have the students understand these," Mendeloff says. "Leonora provided a perspective that was very helpful."

Mendeloff and Ivanitskaya endorse the importance of branching out from book learning.

"The theater is one of the best ways to learn about the world and to learn about another time, life and culture," Mendeloff says.

"Acting pushes them deep into understanding the situation," Ivanitskaya says. "I see American boys that have never been to Russia look authentic."

This is exactly what Herbert hopes to achieve with the funding. Because the subject matter of art encourages different ways of thinking, it allows students to look at the material and themselves differently.

"If you have an understanding of where a work of art comes from, it is an opportunity for students to get to know themselves better," she says.

Mendeloff, who helped produce "The Seagull" during her first year in graduate school at Yale, is a testament to this idea. "It was a profound growth experience for me, and I have continued to build on that," she says.

Student response to the arts activities has been positive, Herbert says. She notes that encounters with art have been some of the most meaningful experiences students have had in the classroom.

Ryan Smith, a freshman in the Residential College and a student in Mendeloff's class, agrees. "You come to understand every single character, and then the situation as a whole," he says. "It is like I have a stage family and a class family now."

Herbert would like to see more faculty members take advantage of the funding, and she says Arts at Michigan will help interested faculty members find funding one way or another.

It comes highly recommended by Mendeloff. "The best way for you to have excitement for your work is to involve someone new in it," she says. "Course Connections allows us to do this."

The program makes funding of up to $500 per undergraduate class available to any instructional staff member on campus, including graduate student instructors. In order to be qualified to receive funding, the activity must employ faculty leadership and expertise to promote student learning through the arts; must complement course content and be integrated into class discussion; and must instill a sense of the arts in the students.

Additionally, the activity must fulfill one of the following criteria: exposing students to unfamiliar art forms and communities; employing the arts as a means of addressing challenging topics; increasing understanding of or proficiency in the arts; or involving diverse communities for cultural exchange, Herbert says.

To apply, visit http://www.umich.edu/~arts/funding/ccfunding.html .

Arts at Michigan brings art into the classroom

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