This research delved into the intersection of art and the United Nations’ 17 Sustainability Goals (THE 17 GOALS or SDGs) in education, investigating its applications and impacts from the perspective of art educators on college students. It aimed to fill a void in existing scholarship by examining the nuanced impact of integrating artistic elements into education focused on THE 17 GOALS within the unique socio-cultural context of China. The research explored how art-based initiatives could influence students’ perceptions and awareness of THE 17 GOALS. It gathered insights from art educators and professionals through semi-structured, phenomenological interviews, thus enriching the academic and practical discourse on this subject. The results demonstrated that art effectively serves as an educational medium, engaging students in a manner that facilitates unobtrusive and immersive learning, fostering deeper connections and offering a unique, subtle learning experience. By exploring the potential of art as a transformative tool in education concerning THE 17 GOALS, this research contributed to the development of innovative and effective educational strategies. These strategies were designed to engage and enlighten China’s younger generations, fostering a globally aware, fully developed, and multifaceted personality within this demographic.

The purpose of this study is to understand recent developments regarding curriculum standards for teaching Indigenous histories and contemporary matters, specifically within Michigan’s K-12 Public Schools(MPS). This presentation draws from interviews with a range of stakeholders, including: current and former students and educators within MPS; politicians and government officials involved in relevant legislation; university professors concentrating their work in Native Studies at universities in Michigan; and representatives of Tribal Nations located in Michigan. This project also integrates relational discussions with Washington-based educators involved in the teaching and implementation of Washington’s Since Time Immemorial (STI) Curriculum. This presentation will share research analyses of relevant pieces of legislation and academic sources pertaining to Indigenous-centered curriculum. The objective of this research is to inform a written piece addressing current efforts to expand education on Indigenous histories and contemporary matters in MPS including efforts made in the past, actions currently in progress, suggested plans for the future, and what Michigan may learn from Washington’s efforts to fully implement STI through examining shortcomings in the implementation of STI curriculum and how these failures may serve to inform Michigan’s protocol for introducing revised standards. Given that one of the major proposals to the expansion of Indigenous-related curriculum involves teaching Indian Boarding School histories, the long-term implications of this research contribute to ensuring youth are educated about the devastating consequences of residential schools, which in turn aims to assure similar policies are not introduced in the future. Discussion of these findings will emphasize institutions which allow(ed) destructive policies like that of boarding schools to be implemented, reframing the common narrative perpetuated in schooling systems that such policies are the result of a few “bad actors.” This research is interested in exploring how curricula contribute to the latter perspective, and whether newly implemented standards effectively convey the former viewpoint.

The US education system is a tool used to push the dominant Anglo-American cultures among immigrants and other minoritized cultures within the United States. With their proximity to the US border and historical events, Mexicans living in the United States have faced subjugation and discrimination from the Texas Revolution to the anti-immigrant policies and rhetoric; these educational practices have targeted Mexicans for almost two centuries. This causes a conflict of cultural identity for Mexican youths living in the United States, as they grow up within multiple social spheres that consider them too American to be Mexican yet too Mexican to be American. This conflict of identity has caused multigenerational trauma and is only made worse by the discrimination from the media and the bias of the schools, as these students are forced to look elsewhere to discover their history, such as family or the community. My research study examines the value of ethnic studies and bilingual education practices and how they not only empower these students but gives them the motivation to succeed within an academic setting. This research is based on interviews that I have conducted with Mexican Americans who have experienced the education system during different years, ranging from the 60’s to the early 2000’s. Furthermore, I examine the autobiography of a prominent Mexican American scholar as I draw scholarship on ethnic studies and bilingual education, criticizing the current education system while offering solutions to address those critiques. Through the interviews I conducted, I found that the people who were most connected to their heritage and the Spanish language, not only experienced more success academically, but were also happier, indicating the need for ethnic and bilingual studies within the K-12 curricula.

At the University of Washington, first-generation students of color often navigate and negotiate their available support through Registered Student Organizations (RSOs). Student leadership serves as a counter-narrative to the lack of representation and promotes action toward social change. The purpose of this study is to explore and understand the ways in which first-generation students of color create, perpetuate, and increase access, support, and a sense of belonging through culturally responsive safe spaces on campus. Applying theories from George DeVos and Lola Romanucci-Ross on instrumental and expressive use of ethnicity, and Diana Bui’s essay on mutual aid associations, to interrogate both formal and informal structures of campus, as manifested in safe spaces for students of color who use these resources to enhance belonging and activism. This qualitative study uses DeVos and Romanucci-Ross’ and Bui’s theories to curate questions and analyze how ethnicity acts instrumentally and expressively in culturally responsive organizing. Through semi-structured interviews with executive board members of RSOs each representing different cultural backgrounds, I predict that deconstructing norms of student activism and fostering belonging are difficult among RSOs due to gaps of cultural knowledge and difficulty aligning diverse experiences and perspectives to multiple social causes. Through this research, I aim to refine my focus on the acquisition and perpetuation of ethnicity in student organizations and its impact on the undergraduate experience for first-generation students.

Amidst the Black Spring of 2020, I found much of my exposure to and understanding of Black interiority and experience, Black history, institutional racism, police brutality, and other topics at hand to be coming from the young, Black, femme content creators I encountered on TikTok rather than my public-school education. Meeting at the intersection of Black and performance studies, communication, education, and sociology, this research seeks to answer the questions of how social media, specifically TikTok, serves as a site of informal education and how the digital performances of young, Black, femme content creators serve to shape this education. To address these questions, I examined the TikTok profiles of five content creators fitting the above qualifications with follower counts in the millions and varying niches across a three-month period. Attending to these archives through the lenses of norms and aesthetics, I’ve come to find that, among other observations, young, Black, femme content creators are educating the general public both intentionally and unintentionally on a plethora of topics, but consistently with a significant emphasis placed on joy. In a political landscape where Black history and truth are under attacked within the traditional education system, we must begin to recognize and create space for the immense value of informal education that occurs outside of the classroom and the performances that make it possible.

Discipline and disciplining have been a set of processes wielded throughout history to order, control, and extract. These processes have served as efficient colonial tools and have been so intimately indicative of the way institutions wield and disseminate power that in 1976, French philosopher Michael Foucault theorized as a new form of power: disciplinary power. In my research, I explore the concept of discipline as it exists in the collegiate system, through the perspectives of Foucault's 'Discipline and Punish' and la Paperson’s 'A Third University is Possible,' while drawing inspiration from Niccolò Machiavelli's 'The Prince' to shape writing style. Rooted in the field of critical university studies and motivated by personal reflections, this project takes the form of a "how-to" guide for cultivating a docile body and aims to explore the limits and potentials of discipline within the context of STEM education at the University of Washington. As part of my methodological approach, I incorporate and analyze various university spaces’ contributions to the overall built environment and campus power structure(s). I ask what it takes for place to become space, or more simply put, how the various disciplinary bodies that inhabit space shape or alter its meaning, and vice versa. I present this project as part of an active effort to critique the colonially and penally adjacent power structures upon which many universities are built. While my research and reflections remain focused on the University of Washington, they may serve as a case study for most of modern Western academia. Through this work, I hope to advance the push towards decolonial and interdisciplinary futures within STEM and academia, at large.