Fabiola Mendoza, a third-year student, studies applied biotechnology and biology. She didn’t expect an art class to change how she thinks about science.
But by taking a School of Art gen ed course, she found that art and science relate to one another in an unexpected way.
“I didn’t find this connection between art and STEM until I started taking this course. I see figures in textbooks or even in museums, I see stuff related to STEM,” she said.
“Maybe it’s not so far off from these two worlds that seem very different.”
That kind of unexpected discovery is exactly what the School of Art’s Museums as Cultural and Community Institutions (ART 160D3) is designed to produce.
At the University of Arizona, a “Building Connections” general education course is designed to help student connection knowledge across disciplines and to the world around them. This particular course, taught by Associate Professor Carissa DiCindio, aims to show students not only the art pieces museums have to offer, but the internal workings of the museum itself.
Students as Explorers
“The way we approach the course is by first going to a lot of museums,” she said. “We go to 12 museums across campus over the course of the semester, and we have different types of experiences.”
Museums include the Flandrau Science Center, the Center for Creative Photography, the Arizona Hall of Champions, the University of Arizona Herbarium, the Coit Museum of Pharmacy and Health Sciences and more.
These experiences involve self-guided museum tours, staff-led discussions on the museum’s history, and prompted explorations.
“They have to choose their own adventure that leads into their final project where they’re looking critically at a museum as an institution,” she said.
Making new discoveries
For first-year student Sloane Zuniga, studying business management, the course allowed her to see parts of campus that she wouldn’t have known otherwise.
“My favorite part of this class is honestly the fact I get to travel to different parts of campus,” she said. “I didn’t know that half of the locations were a thing or that certain buildings had museums in them.”
Zuniga was also able to approach her business management major from a new angle, noting how museums manage the movement of information and services.
“I would like to go on to study Supply Chain Management,” she said. “This museum class helps show how these connected processes work together in a real-world setting.”
The course enriches student careers through a holistic approach, no matter what career path they choose to go down.
“Not all of the students in my class are going to go into museum positions,” she said. “But a lot of them are probably going to work for institutions and companies, so really thinking about the practices of museums more holistically in terms of respecting people’s positions and respecting different communities to create an environment that is supportive.”
The Holistic Approach
The course’s holistic approach first dives into the internal systems of museums. Students can take a look into what works, and what doesn’t. Then, they look at museums and their function within the community.
“We’re really taking that ecosystem approach of looking at these institutions as networks that are working together internally and externally, hopefully moving beyond the hierarchical traditional system where the director is making all the decisions and the curators are speaking for groups of people,” DiCindio said.
Mendoza said it was the museum staff that inspired her.
“Meeting the people at the museums – it’s very interesting to see people so passionate about their jobs.”