The College Fellows and Engagements Program are seeking 35 students to form the first ever Engagements Cohort. Students in the Engagements Cohort will enroll in a pre-set series of four Engagement courses, all treating a pressing contemporary issue on Grounds. Successful completion of the series will fulfill the Engagements portion of the students’ General Education requirements.
The 2023-24 Engagements Cohort will focus on monuments and statues within Central Grounds. How do these objects memorialize our community’s past? How might we choose to contextualize them for our present and future? What information do we want to provide? What is the best format for conveying that information? Working together with four faculty members, the Cohort will use the Engagement Pillars (Empirical Engagement, Engaging Aesthetics, Engaging Difference, and Ethical Engagement) as four lenses through which to approach these important questions. At the conclusion of the year, this student Cohort will present a set of recommendations to President Ryan and the working group commissioned by the Board of Visitors at the request of the Statues and Monuments Contextualization Committee.
Students in the Monumuments and Memory Engagements Cohort will...
- Take a series of 4 Engagements classes together over the course of the year;
- Form the Monuments & Memory Student Advisory Committee;
- Periodically meet with the Statues and Monuments Contextualization Committee working group;
- Develop relationships (both in and out of the classroom) with faculty who are involved in UVA's decision to recontextualize its monuments;
- Present a student recommendation to the President's Committee during a formal reception at year's end.
How to Apply
If you wish to participate in the Monuments and Memory Engagements Cohort, simply indicate so in the Pre-enrollment Form in your New Student Portal.
Context
In April of 2021, the Board of Visitors approved the formation of a working group to make recommendations to the Naming and Memorials Committee to study the question of contextualizing the statues on Grounds. This group of dedicated faculty and staff are now turning to first-year scholars in the Engagements to provide student input.