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Faculty, staff, and students on 51����’s regional campuses recently received over $25,000 in Experiential Learning Funds to support access to, and engagement in, hands-on learning.

The Undergraduate Experiential Learning Awards and Stewardship Grants are open to faculty, staff, and undergraduate students on all OHIO campuses, and are supported by the Career and Experiential Learning Fee that 51���� adopted in Fall 2018.    

This year’s award recipients represented all five of OHIO’s regional campuses with 11 students receiving a total of approximately $7,000. While many of the spring 2022 regional campus student recipients are using the awards to help offset travel and other direct expenses related to their internship and clinical experiences, these funds were created to expand access to all six types of experiential learning; community engagement, internships, leadership, research, creative endeavor, and study away experiential learning.  

Faculty and staff from the 5 regional campuses were awarded more than $18,000 to support experiential learning activities for their students.   

According to Kimberly Jeffers, associate director for experiential access and engagement, the spring 2022 regional campus faculty and staff award recipients are great examples of the expansive creativity that exists at 51����. “These projects and experiences perfectly align with the goals of fostering inclusive environments in experiential settings and encouraging collaboration across units.”  

OHIO Lancaster’s Dr. Kevin Cordi and Dr. Pamela Kaylor were awarded funds to support their project “Equity Addressed out of the Box—Allowing Voices to be Heard: Student Ambassador Social Justice Project.” 

“The way we change an existing narrative is by discovering and listening to stories from people who know about the work we are discussing. Many of our students learn about issues of incarceration from popular media," said Dr. Cordi. "Frankly, Law and Order is not the best source. In this work we will not only draw from Dr. Kaylor and my work, but our students will talk to people who have been incarcerated and those who work in this environment.  We can’t wait to work with these students as they hear and study and read rich narratives from these people. It is a humanizing project and there is no better way than to be involved in telling and listening to stories."

Dr. Kaylor shared her enthusiasm with this project. "I’m excited about working with Dr. Cordi who is an accomplished story teller and advocate of the Internationally recognized Story Box project.

We are currently looking for interested students to be ambassadors in this project.  They will collect and disseminate stories and accounts that address equity. These stories will then be documented and will become part of the international project called “The Story Box”.  The Student Ambassadors will have a rare opportunity to dig deeper into this particular social justice issue, to be part of the planning process, to capture the narratives of participants, and to be solution-oriented through education and engagement.

Right now, we are looking for faculty, staff, and students who want to be a part of a book discussion group for Anthony Ray Hinton’s book, How I Found Freedom on Death Row (2018)," said Dr. Kaylor. We have copies of the books we can give people.  We’re also looking for students who are interested in being a part of the planning process – they will be Student Ambassadors.  Join our project by emailing dawes@ohio.edu."

Dr. Kaylor followed up with "We are eager for faculty and students to be involved as discussion leaders and more. We can’t wait to begin!”

In addition to The Story Box project, Dr. Debra Dunning, associate professor of instruction in Teaching, will use the Experiential Learning grant in her “STEM and Arts/Humanities Resources and Enhancements” experience.