Two videos from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., this past fall highlighted the work of John Hitchcock, a contemporary artist and musician, and a Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor in the School of Education’s Art Department.
An installation by Hitchcock was part of the National Gallery’s exhibition, “The Land Carries Our Ancestors: Contemporary Art by Native Americans,” which showcased works by an intergenerational group of nearly 50 living Native artists from across the United States. The four-month exhibition ran through Jan. 15, 2024.
The artists featured use a variety of practices — including weaving, beadwork, sculpture, painting, printmaking, drawing, photography, performance, and video — to visualize Indigenous knowledge of the land.
One video shows a time-lapse of Hitchcock and the exhibition team transforming an empty gallery into “a wall of wonder” as they install Hitchcock’s work, “Impact vs. Influence.”
The National Gallery also published an interview to YouTube with Hitchcock about the installation, where he talks about his journey to becoming an artist. “When I was a little kid, my mother, she would let me run up and down the hallway with crayons,” Hitchcock says. “And I would have crayons on both sides, and just (run and draw) on the wall. And it was super exciting.”
The work of Tom Jones, a professor of photography in the Art Department, was also included in “The Land Carries Our Ancestors.”
Seeking a stronger link between scientists and communities
When you ask Percival Matthews to define “civic science,” he doesn’t have a simple answer.
One way to embrace the idea of civic science, Matthews explains, is to begin any scientific endeavor with the knowledge that you are a person as well as a scientist — a person who was born and lives in a community and whose science is going to affect that community for better or worse. (Hopefully, for better.)
The second way to understand civic science, he says, is to accept that the new and growing field doesn’t — and shouldn’t — have a concrete definition right now.
“What’s important is for us to continue to ask the question, ‘What should civic science be?’ ” Matthews says.
Matthews is the associate dean for equity, diversity, and inclusion at the School of Education and an associate professor in its Department of Educational Psychology. He has long been passionate about building bridges between academia and the “real world,” and that passion has found a perfect home in his role as an advisory board member for the Civic Science Fellows program. The nationwide program, which has strong UW–Madison roots, seeks to reimagine how scientists interact and collaborate with the communities around them.
The Civic Science Fellows program launched at UW–Madison and several other partner institutions across the country in 2020. Matthews says he was moved to join the project because of its unique approach of marrying concepts many people wouldn’t necessarily put together: civic engagement and scientific inquiry.
Stern argues school-to-prison pipeline began during desegregation
Racially discriminatory discipline was institutionalized during the American school desegregation era of the 1960s and 1970s, and sowed the seeds of the so-called “school-to-prison pipeline” for Black students, according to an article from Walter Stern published in the Journal of Southern History.
The school-to-prison pipeline is a research-backed phenomenon in which students who experience “zero tolerance” or otherwise strict disciplinary policies in school are more likely to end up in jail or prison than peers in schools with more nuanced disciplinary policies. Scholars typically date the beginning of the pipeline’s existence to the 1990s, but Stern argues it began decades earlier.
In his article, “School Violence and the Carceral State in the 1970s: Desegregation and the New Educational Inequality in Louisiana,” Stern examines the case of Gary Tyler. Tyler was a Black teenager who was imprisoned for nearly 42 years after being wrongfully convicted of fatally shooting a white student at their desegregating Louisiana high school in 1974.
Stern says exploring the Tyler case is a way to illuminate a largely neglected history of school violence and the criminal justice system.
“My article highlights the creation, contestation, and institutionalization of racially discriminatory discipline, which I present as a new form of educational inequality that developed during desegregation,” says Stern, an associate professor in the Department of Educational Policy Studies. “In doing so, I believe it provides a more complete history of the so-called school-to-prison pipeline.”
Saldaña contributes to congressional briefing on educational accountability
Christopher Saldaña, an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis, was part of a working group on educational accountability that presented during a Sept. 27 briefing organized by Jamaal Bowman, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York.
The briefing featured the expertise of those behind the report, “Educational Accountability 3.0: Beyond ESSA.” This work was a joint project between the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) and the Beyond Test Scores Project. The report outlines the current issues with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).
Saldaña’s research examines the relationship between K-12 school finance and educational opportunity, with a particular emphasis on the educational experiences of marginalized youth, families, and communities. He, among several other researchers, spoke at the congressional briefing.
“The report reflects a diverse set of expertise and experiences that present the possibility of an educational accountability system that promotes, more than anything, a school system that supports students to flourish in their learning and life, as opposed to an accountability system that punishes students, families, schools, and districts for ostensibly ‘failing’ on a standardized test,” Saldaña says.