One of my favorite campus events of the year is the Celebration of Creative Inquiry. It’s been among the most fun and rewarding parts of my job to head up the planning for this event. Right now on the Gustavus homepage there is a story about this year’s event. The story and the embedded video were created entirely by students.
The Celebration is a campus-wide poster session held the evening before Honors Day. Well over 100 posters are on display with the student authors on hand to talk about their research, scholarship, or creative work. The event is well attended by students, faculty, staff, administrators, families, and alumni. Students often tell me how surprised and excited they are to have faculty, often from other departments, expressing sincere interest in their work. Faculty often tell me how surprised and excited they are to see what our students are up to outside of class.
Rhea Muchalla ('09) talks with Thia Cooper (religion) at the 2008 Celebration (Photo via Creative Commons by FolkeB)
The inaugural Celebration was held just last year, in 2008. There has long been interest and support on this campus for an event like this, but it was a summer faculty development workshop in 2007 that really helped get the ball rolling. After that workshop, a handful of faculty members representing a large number of departments formed a working group to start planning. The Provost’s Office and the Kendall Center for Engaged Learning quickly came on board with financial, logistical, and moral support. In 2009, the Celebration was fully “adopted” by the Kendall Center (with continuing support from the Provost’s Office) and I in my role as the Kendall Center faculty associate for undergraduate research continue to oversee the event with the continued help, support, and advice of the original faculty working group and a handful of students.
More links:
The Kendall Center-based homepage for the Celebration of Creative Inquiry.
Slideshow of pictures from the 2008 Celebration of Creative Inquiry.
-Brandy
Hey, Brandy,
Thanks for putting together this blog. Rhea Muchalla, btw, is a proud graduate of Philosophy and Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies. Her poster is actually from last year–it concerns research she did in Bangladesh on a HECUA program.
Thanks, Lisa~ I didn’t know this was from a HECUA (http://www.hecua.org/) program. And of course, Rhea had a great poster at this year’s event, too, but I haven’t gotten my hands on great photos from this event.
Thanks to all who put on and participated in this event. Creative Inquiry has provided a lot of great memories from my time at Gustavus!