A great art community could be right under your nose.
It's hard to believe that we're halfway through the first month of spring classes. Most of our HECUA USA students have already settled into their classroom routines, and semester program students have completed the first day of work with their internship sites. We'll be updating the blog with posts from students in all of our programs, both here and abroad, over the coming months, so be sure to check back each week. Our first post of the spring comes from Art for Social Change student Jane Heer. Jane is a graduating senior at the University of Minnesota this year, majoring in Theater Arts. In...
Making change, not coffee.
From the HECUA staff - a response to a recent New York Times editorial.
A recent opinion piece in the New York Times (“Internships Abroad: Unpaid with a $10,000 price tag.”) offered up both critique and acclaim for unpaid internship opportunities abroad. Some quoted in these articles were skeptical that “students paying to work for free” in unpaid international internships is a “good return on investment.” In a world where higher education has become increasingly expensive and the job market increasingly competitive, parents and students are right to question how their money is being spent....
Tracking tunnels and Te Reo: interning at urban eco-reserve Zealandia.
It's time for the second (and final) installment of HECUA student Analuna Brambila's take on adventuring overseas and at home! Analuna is a junior at Macalester college in St. Paul, Minnesota, majoring in Environmental and Educational Studies, and she's spent the past four months on a grand adventure, traveling from Auckland to Wellington with HECUA's New Zealand Culture and Environment: A Shared Future program. In Analuna's previous post, she introduced us to an excellent #perspectivehack: the "microadventure." In the post below she gives us an enviable peek into the day-to-day adventures...
Inequality in America student Emily gives us the inside scoop on internships.
Every 16 credit HECUA program, both in the United States and abroad, includes a significant internship component. Community partners in the US apply for HECUA interns each year - students in our programs are highly sought after as student workers, and HECUA staff person Emily Seru makes sure that organizations and students get the most out of their time together. Emily Trudeau, a graduating senior and Human Services major at St. Mary's University of Minnesota, sat down with us recently to offer some insight into what it is that HECUA students actually do during their internships.
Emily spent...
Microadventures in New Zealand
What's a microadventure, you ask? Read on for HECUA student Analuna Brambila's take on adventuring overseas and at home. Analuna is a junior at Macalester college in St. Paul, Minnesota, majoring in Environmental and Educational Studies, and she's spent the past four months on a grand adventure, traveling from Auckland to Wellington with HECUA's New Zealand Culture and Environment: A Shared Future program. In the post below she describes the HECUA New Zealand group's approach to their time together, and shares her own resolutions for finding microadventures when she returns back to the Twin...
Swirling snow and germinating seeds: a report from Environmental Sustainability student Fionn Mallon.
University of Minnesota junior Fionn Mallon enrolled in HECUA's semester long Environmental Sustainability semester as part of his path towards a BIS degree in anthropology, sustainability and political science. He selected the farming collective Stone's Throw Urban Farm for his internship placement site. The mission of Stone's Throw is to "create a dynamic urban farm that strives toward ecological sustainability, community empowerment, and financial viability in Minneapolis and Saint Paul." Fionn's semester-long project was to find a clean source of heat for the 15th Ave. plot's greenhouse,...
Making Media, Making Change: A semester at SPNN
Making Media, Making Change Spring 2014 student Tom Hackbarth created this short video during his internship at community television network SPNN's Access Center. Tom began the program with relatively little production experience, and he emerged with the technical skills that allowed for the sophisticated production of this video. The video speaks for itself! If you click the link you'll hear more about the MMMC experience, how the program integrates with SPNN, the internships offered through the program, and HECUA's approach to experiential education.
Tom writes,
"I decided to take MMMC...
Writing for Social Change: The Author Is In.
It's difficult to believe, we know, but it's almost Thanksgiving. As the semester draws to a close for our fall domestic programs, we invited Program Director Bill Reichard to offer a glimpse into the Writing for Social Change classroom. In the post below he describes a recent class trip to All My Relations Gallery in the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis, where students gathered to meet with poet Heid Erdich and discuss her book, National Monuments.
(All photos in this post were taken by local photographer Bruce Silcox).
Meeting Heid
Poet Heid Erdrich has been a field speaker in Writing...
Notes from the Field: Inequality in America student Taylor Day on #pointergate
University of Minnesota - Twin Cities student Taylor Day is enrolled in HECUA’s Inequality in America program this semester. Her internship placement site is the powerful advocacy and training group Voices for Racial Justice (formerly the Organizing Apprenticeship Project).
In the post below, Taylor describes how her work at Voices for Racial Justice affected her reaction to a KSTP news story and the resulting community uproar that’s become known as #pointergate. You can find more about #pointergate here, and more about Voices for Racial Justice here.
Taylor writes,
"My internship site this...
From our Executive Director, Jenny Keyser
The fall semester has just barely begun and already one group of HECUA students has traveled to New York City for the People’s Climate March, while another joined Minneapolis fast food workers in a national day of action for a living wage. Likewise, in Ecuador, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, and Norway HECUA students are digging into complex issues facing communities and the world, and learning how individuals and groups are working together to create change.
As HECUA approaches its 45th year, we’re amazed at all the ways past and present HECUA students are contributing to their communities...
