top of page
Guatemala Trip

March of 2024 my colleague Dr. Kimberly Warren from the Psychology department and I traveled with 12 students on a service learning experience in Guatemala.  The students learned to measure blood pressure, BMI and test for sugar in the blood. They worked at a health fair, made presentations to school children and visited the surrounding villages to make home care visits to families with young children. We went on numerous cultural immersion field trips and learned about the traditional artisanry and way of Mayan life in the highlands of Guatemala.  We studied Spanish for three hours each day with a private teacher and applied the language everyday as most Mayans speak Spanish as a second language and do not speak much English.  The trip for me was one of networking. I spent time visiting two potteries in San Antonio Palopó, a very small village known for its pottery.  The style of ceramics that is practiced is more western in that the pottery was started by a man named Ken Edwards in the 1990s.  Ken retired from a career as a studio potter after emigrating to Mexico where he had a 25 year career producing high fire stoneware pottery.  He moved to Guatemala to retire however, he began another pottery business that he passed on to the many families that he trained in high fire, slip decorated ceramics over the course of his 20 year tenure in ‘retirement’ in San Antonio.  He has forever changed lives and his legacy lives on in the businesses and ceramics produced in Guatemala today. I had the pleasure of meeting Ken Edwards in 2020 and, if not for the pandemic, would have made a return trip that summer to lay the foundation for study abroad trips with art students.  

20240321_123500.jpg
Guatemala Trip
Community Art Class

  This series of images represent my most recent community collaboration between Morgan State and Mergenthaler Vocational Technical High School.  Five years ago Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School (Mervo) got the funding to transform an asphalt parking lot into a green space.

Starting in the fall of 2021 my community art students and I have been working with Mervo English teacher and master gardener, Alex Clunis and his gardening club. The community art course is a service-learning course. The Service-Learning paradigm combines service in the community with academic learning objectives and reflection. Service-learning is a ‘high impact’ practice that has civic mindedness or concern for the well-being of the human community at its core. It can be described as ‘problem based learning’ or experiential education. 

For many of the students this was their first experience with gardening and plants. At a time when a lot of engagement had to be moved online, Morgan students got to interact safely with the community and experience all of the benefits of working with plants. Morgan students responded enthusiastically to working with the high school students and learning about the plants and their culinary and medicinal properties. 

teach.png
Community Art Class

Ceramics Class Field Trip to Baltimore Clayworks 2022-23

SCHOLARSHIPS

Ceramics Class Field Trip to Baltimore Clayworks 2022-23
SCHOLARSHIPS

Scholarship

2023 AMPS Conference, Applying Education in a Complex World, ‘International Virtual Exchange and the Pedagogy of Grit’ https://amps-research.com/ An in person and virtual teaching and learning conference: Sheridan College, Toronto, Canada.

2022 ACEEU (Accreditation Council for Entrepreneurial and Engaged Universities) Stakeholders Forum, University of Florence, Italy,  Triple E Award Finalist Presentation, in person and virtual. 

2022 Shaping the Future of Student Engagement in Knowledge Exchange, Plymouth University, UK. Presentation ‘Using International Virtual Collaborations for Knowledge Exchange’ in person and virtual.

NCECA 2018 conference (National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts) Pittsburg, PA, USA. Panelist Presentation on the contribution HBCUs have made in the education and advancement of artists of color.

Budvase 23.jpeg
bottom of page