Students present research at SOURCE Explore 2024

The program takes place on Jan. 24, Jan. 31, Feb. 7 and Feb. 14, with the final presentation on Feb. 28 from 2 to 4 p.m. All cohorts, except “Mapping Stories, Making Change with ���ϲ����� Community Geography” take place from 2 to 4 p.m. The Community Geography cohort will meet on Fridays from noon to 2 p.m.

The six SOURCE Explore programs being offered are:

• “Mapping Stories, Making Change with ���ϲ����� Community Geography:” Learn how maps help us visualize and share pressing stories like the impacts of climate change, the global pandemic, housing inequalities and ongoing racial injustice (among many more).
• “Analyzing Media and Popular Culture Through a Social Justice Lens with Newhouse’s CODE^SHIFT Lab:” Learn how to examine media texts (such as news stories, social media posts, movies, TV shows, music videos or advertisements) from a social justice lens to become more mindful media users.
• “Culture Clubs: Researching Communities of Interest:” Explore traces of human culture, activity and ideas through archival materials like photographs, scrapbooks and diaries, homemade fliers and pamphlets, notes and ephemera to better understand what constitutes “community” from mainstream offshoots to counterculture and subculture groups, to organizations of extreme niche interest. This cohort will be offered through the Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center.
• “3D Printing and Advanced Manufacturing*:” Learn how to utilize computer aided design (CAD) and 3D printers in academic research for precise modeling and rapid prototyping of complex structures.
• “Discovering Connections: Using Graph Theory to Solve Real-World Network Challenges*:” Learn how to model networks as graphs and apply key concepts like shortest paths, network flows and connectivity to explore how mathematical models can help solve real problems.
• “Exploring the Building Blocks of Life*:” Learn how DNA, the building block of life, is a key component of life science research through Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), a common laboratory technique that amplifies DNA sequences of interest.

The three STEM Explore programs* are offered in partnership with the����program; students meeting the LSAMP����are strongly encouraged to apply.

Of the SOURCE Explore experience in spring 2024, one student shared that they learned “how to be more open-minded and adaptable when doing research,” including “how to navigate looking at archival, first-hand sources.” The student explained, “I didn’t have much experience with this prior, as I mainly used online databases and second-hand sources to complete projects. This led me to a third skill that I developed, which was how to narrow down my search and ask relevant questions.”

Interested students should by Dec. 5.

Under the new banner Arts at ���ϲ�����, are top-notch museums and galleries, active maker spaces, robust community centers and a myriad of creative events and programs.

The new name is part of a rebranding and profile-boosting effort to highlight the University’s arts offerings and strengthen and grow awareness of its diverse group of centers and programs, says , assistant provost for arts and community programming.

The initiative includes the , which comprehensively illustrates the range of arts centers and programming available to students, faculty, staff and community members. The site also includes a dedicated that highlights events, ongoing programs and exhibitions.

Spaces and programs include , , , , , , at ���ϲ����� Libraries, , the , ���ϲ����� Artist-in-Residence Program and the in New York City.

Outdoor visual displays are conducted at the Urban Video Project.

New ideas about how academic and community arts programming and experiences are presented to a range of constituencies—students, faculty, staff and the general public—and as part of student experiential learning, teaching activities and individual entertainment and enjoyment resulted from a year-long planning process spearheaded by the , Traudt says.

Miranda Traudt

“This is much more than a name change. It’s a true rethinking of the arts at ���ϲ�����,” she says. “We purposefully considered how all the individual units and centers that are doing such fantastic work on their own could band together to have greater overall impact and visibility and to create wider local, regional, national and international awareness of these exceptional offerings.”

In addition to enhancing the visibility of the separate arts programs and centers, Arts at ���ϲ����� highlights how, grouped together, the units offer distinctive experiential learning opportunities for students that are typically available only at much larger national and international venues, Traudt says.

���ϲ����� Stage puts students and their artistic presentations at the center of downtown ���ϲ����� and hosts theater offerings that are enjoyed by all of Central New York.

“The ���ϲ����� Art Museum has one of the largest university-owned art collections in the country. La Casita, as a vital part of the ���ϲ����� Near West Side community, is the only Latin cultural center in this part of New York state. The Community Folk Art Center is a vibrant seat of community programming for people of all ages. Light Work’s renowned Artist-in-Residence Program has hosted more than 400 artists coming from every U.S. state and 15-plus countries. Urban Video Project is an important international venue for the public presentation of video and electronic arts and one of the few projects in the U.S. dedicated to continuous and ongoing video art projections. Exhibitions of nationally and internationally known artists hosted here mean you don’t have to travel to New York City to see that kind of artistic excellence.”

Elisa Dekaney

Elisa Dekaney, associate provost for strategic initiatives, makes this comparison. “We pride ourselves on the fact that the University’s study-abroad programs utilize their locations as classrooms. We say, ‘Florence is our classroom; London is our classroom’ because of what these cities offer in the arts and cultural experiences. But we can also say ‘���ϲ����� is our classroom’ because of the rich arts programming the University offers right here.”

Other goals defined in the strategic operating plan include serving as an international model of arts and humanities engagement for institutions of higher education; expanding community partnerships; growing reciprocal relationships with local, regional, national and international arts and strategic partners; increasing faculty, alumni and donor engagement with the arts programs and centers.

The students were part of the Significant Disabilities: Shifts in Paradigms and Practices (SPE 644) course taught by , associate professor in the School of Education, who was the Libraries’ 2023-24 Special Collections Research Center .

The students presented their findings at a public showcase in spring 2024 and their work is available online as a digital exhibition. “” explores disability as a cultural construction by examining historical developments in special and inclusive education, as well as the development and later closures of institutions and asylums for individuals with intellectual disabilities. The archives—and exhibit—show details of how Americans in past decades regarded disability, including information about eugenics (the selective breeding of humans) as the basis for institutionalization; letters exchanged between institutions and individuals about certain individuals and situations; and striking images collected by those who advocated for disabled individuals and disability rights.

Graduate students held a public showcase last spring describing their research and capping their course, “Significant Disabilities: Shifts in Paradigms and Practices.” From left are Associate Professor Julia White and students Neil Boedicker, Kayla Cornelius and Raquell Carpenter. (Photo by Martin Walls)

White says the primary source materials provided the students with particularly rich and informative records, in part due to ���ϲ�����’s long history as a vanguard for disabled individuals and a leader in inclusive education and disability rights. Today, the Center on Disability and Inclusion continues the legacy of the , founded in 1971 by Dean Burton Blatt, a groundbreaking disability rights scholar. Blatt and other individuals at the University were involved in disability rights lawsuits during the 1970s and developed language surrounding the creation of special education law. All of that history—and dozens of associated original documents and artifacts—are preserved for viewing and research.

Julia White

“We at ���ϲ����� have really reconceptualized how to think about people with disabilities, especially intellectual disabilities. The University is known for its forefront advocacy on inclusive education and all that work is evident in the archives,” White says. “There are so many things to investigate and so many lessons we can get from this; it’s a gold mine waiting to be explored.”

A former special education teacher, White now researches national and international special education policy and inclusive education as a human right. But she “was always interested in how law and policies could be applied to different people under different circumstances. I noticed how some students could be placed in segregated or self-contained classrooms while others were in resource rooms and were more integrated. Very little was different about their learning profiles other than their race or socioeconomic profile. I wondered why, if some students had more significant disabilities, they were held to very few or no academic standards.”

Based on her experience as both a doctoral student and a teacher, White says, “I had a pretty strong sense of the racial and economic injustice inherent in U.S. society and always considered inclusive education a civil rights issue.” Yet it was her experience in a Fulbright teacher exchange program in the Slovak Republic and later work for the Landmine Survivors Network for the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, that cemented her perspective of inclusive education as a broader human rights issue.

Cover of “.” (Photo: Special Collections Research Center, ���ϲ����� Libraries)

‘Fantastic’ SCRC Process

The time she spent examining materials and working with staff at SCRC “was a fantastic process all around,” White says. “Sometimes, an artifact had very little to do with what I was interested in—���ϲ�����’s role in deinstitutionalization, inclusive education and disability activism—but there were many�� ‘aha’ moments that sent me down rabbit holes and that was a lot of fun. The discovery of so many amazing contributions of folks affiliated with the University was the best part of this fellowship. And the staff were phenomenal; they had great insights. I came into this knowing little about archival work and hadn’t done any myself, but they were so gracious and so helpful.”

SCRC staff were also readily available to the , discussing their readings, helping them categorize materials and offering advice on how to formulate the exhibit, White says. , instruction and education librarian, was involved with the class almost every time they met. , humanities librarian and digital and open scholarship lead, helped them create the digital exhibit.

Gratifying for Students��

The experience of using primary source documents and finding so much relevant information to work with was gratifying for the students, two of the class members say.

Sierra Eastman ’20, G’25 teaches math to seventh- and eighth-grade students in the ���ϲ����� City School District. Her review of archive materials helped her gain a better understanding of the perspectives of people with disabilities, Eastman says. “I have students with various disabilities in my classes and I wanted to get an understanding of them that I didn’t have as an able-bodied person. We tried to put ourselves in their shoes and see how we could make sense of how this [institutionalism] happened, how they were personally impacted and the larger societal reasons that it occurred.”

A “Fight Handicapism” poster provides a historic perspective about the word’s definition. (Photo: , Special Collections Research Center, ���ϲ����� Libraries)

Kionna Morrison G’24 is an algebraic reasoning teacher in the ���ϲ����� City School District who completes the inclusive special education (grades 7-12) program this month as a scholar. She wanted to understand the experiences that people of color, especially Black children, had in institutions for the intellectually disabled. “I could see how disability, institutionalization and racism can be traced to the pre-Civil War and Reconstruction eras. I gained insight on how certain bodies have been consistently institutionalized.��Now, I want to continue to learn about the intersectionality between race and special education and how people from multiple marginalized communities navigate their experiences with disability,” she says.

White believes there has been a significant change in the public’s views on disability, and particularly on intellectual disability, in recent years. “The U.S. has much farther to go in terms of changing society’s perception of disability, intellectual disability and breaking down barriers for any group of marginalized people,” she says. “We need to recognize how far we’ve come in changing attitudes in society, making places accessible, and providing higher education opportunities for disabled people, such as ���ϲ�����’s program. That’s a good start to thinking differently. Although attitudes are something that we still have to change, the civil and human rights of people with intellectual disabilities are routinely denied in the U.S. and worldwide, and I hope that this project helps shed some light on the history of the continuing fight for disability rights.”

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They’re lightweight, durable, flexible, inexpensive. They’re moldable, extrudable, pressable. They’re colored and clear; they’re dinnerware, jewelry, vinyl siding, military supplies, toys and thousands more things. In the early half of the 20th century, the availability of polymers and fossil fuel-based chemicals led to a proliferation of the manufacturing of plastic “things” whose everyday use became enmeshed in America’s social, political and environmental landscapes.

holds the largest academic library resource on the history of plastic. This includes over 70 archival collections relating to plastics, most of which were obtained after the National Plastic Center and Museum closed in 2008. Housed in the , the materials document the rise of plastics, mainly from a plastics-industry perspective, and include papers from innovators , , and . The collection also contains related prototypes, photographs, audio, film, advertisements and blueprints useful for interdisciplinary research, as well as 3,000 objects related to the rise of plastics manufacturing.

Courtney Hicks

Many of these materials are now on display at Bird Library as part of the SCRC exhibit “Plasticized: The Proliferation of Plastics in the 20th Century.” To highlight the exhibit, a panel discussion and reception will be held on Earth Day, Monday, April 22. (See details below.)

Courtney Hicks, SCRC lead curator and curator of plastics and historical artifacts, spoke about the exhibit and some of the fascinating facts to uncover from the collection’s historical documents and artifacts displays.

Douglass Day celebrates Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), a leader of the American abolitionist movement, on his chosen birthday. The pop-up exhibition will showcase a selection of materials pertaining to Douglass and his life, including his three autobiographies, speeches and a selection of letters in Douglass’s own hand from the and .

Attendees will have the opportunity to view and engage with the items on display. This event is open to the public, and SCRC staff will be on hand to answer questions about the materials on view and the Center.

The same day, the ���ϲ����� Humanities Center will be hosting the on the first floor of Bird Library, in the Peter Graham Scholarly Commons (Room 114) from noon to 3 p.m.

Alexander Charters

Alexander N. Charters (1916-2018) was an internationally recognized American expert in the field of adult and continuing education. ���ϲ����� Libraries has assembled historical documents and University records, including manuscript, print, visual and media materials related to adult education since 1949.

This material is known collectively as the Alexander N. Charters Library for Educators of Adults, in recognition of Charters’ efforts to promote and expand SCRC’s adult education holdings. Through the generosity of Charters, SCRC offers annual grants to one or more scholars or practitioners wishing to do research using SCRC’s adult education collections with the amount of the award dependent on the scope of the research outlined in the applicant’s proposal.

Details on the application process are available on the��.

Jana Rosinski, instruction and education librarian, working with students in the Special Collections Research Center.

SOURCE Explore introduces curious students with no prior research experience to research by providing hands-on, interactive workshops led by a faculty member or research staff member. This pilot program will take place from noon to 2 p.m. on Jan. 26, Feb. 2 and Feb. 9, with presentations by all participants on March 1. Students interested in participating should submit their application by Jan. 18^��. Space is limited to 12 participants in each of the workshops. Those selected who complete the program will receive a $250 stipend.

SOURCE is partnering with �� to offer the following SOURCE Explore short-term research experience workshops:

• SOURCE Explore: Finding Yourself in the Archives

For students at ���ϲ�����, maybe you’re from ���ϲ����� or somewhere nearby, or perhaps you’re from another state or even another country. Now that you’re here, you’re learning places on and off campus, being introduced to new topics and ideas through your classes and you’re becoming part of a larger community. There’s a history to ���ϲ�����, to the city of ���ϲ�����, to this region of New York, to the United States, the Americas and the world. Ideas and stories turn into books, letters about life are sent from one friend to another, photos are taken to capture a moment, inventions are dreamed up and then created, culture is made and re-made each day through humans just living on earth. History is made up of countless stories that need many to give it voice–your voice included.

Let your wonder wander through doing archival research in special collections. Over the course of one month, students will not only learn how to do research in archives and special collections but will get to explore something of themselves—their own experiences, their own interests, their own curiosities— within SCRC’s collections. Students will create a presentation of their researching experience to share in an informal forum, along with a publication of their project in the SCRC blog, in the SU Libraries’ SURFACE digital repository for scholarship and in a zine with their fellow research residency cohort.

Instructors include Jana Rosinski, instruction and education librarian, SCRC; Amy McDonald, reference and access services librarian, SCRC.

• SOURCE Explore: Mapping Stories, Making Change

Maps are powerful storytellers. They help us visualize and share pressing stories like the impacts of climate change, the global pandemic, housing inequalities and ongoing racial injustice (among many more). They help us locate people, places and events within our stories. They help us identify patterns, trends, divergences and relationships that nuance our stories and illustrate changes in our stories over time. Maps have the capacity to bring us together as communities to better understand the complexities of the world around us and our everyday experiences of the challenges we face. Perhaps, most importantly, maps create social change by centering stories that are too often left off the map.

By the end of this program, students will tell a map-based story with industry standard mapping software by developing a geographic research question, conducting background research, identifying relevant spatial datasets and analyzing and visualizing their data to answer their research question. Students will reflect upon the power of maps as storytellers throughout the research process in a research journal. Students will create an ESRI StoryMap (i.e., an online platform that allows for map-based visual storytelling) that documents their spatial story and answers their research question. Students will share their ESRI StoryMap and research experience in a presentation at an informal forum sponsored by SOURCE.

Instructors include Jonnell Robinson, associate professor of geography and the environment in the Maxwell School and College of Arts and Sciences and co-director of ���ϲ����� Community Geography; Andre Ortega, assistant professor of geography and the environment and co-director of ���ϲ����� Community Geography; and Meghan Kelly, assistant professor of geography and the environment and faculty fellow in ���ϲ����� Community Geography.