For more than a decade now, Dawson students from across the disciplines have engaged the community through their contributions to SPACE venues, from our website to talks to readings to exhibitions to conferences. The opportunity for this kind of public engagement has proved motivating and enriching for students, inspiring them to push towards greater depth and/or breadth as well as professionalism in their work. Starting in 2021/2022, students will also be able to receive official validation for their active engagement in SPACE through the new SPACE: Arts and Sciences Certificate.
Student contributions to SPACE may be self-initiated, but over the years many faculty have also facilitated such contributions. The descriptions and links below present faculty who are interested in facilitating student contributions to SPACE with a variety of options, whether that be as simple as including a description of SPACE in a course outline or as elaborate as a formal collaboration with SPACE on a class project.
SPACE will continue to host and build on our usual venues and activities—website, web magazine, contests, talks, conferences, exhibitions, etc.—while adapting to this new reality of online learning.
Options for faculty interested in facilitating student contributions to SPACE
1) Include our 1-page description of SPACE in your course outline. The description is available for download here.
2) Some teachers ask students for a short writing sample early in the semester to gage their baseline level of writing/critical thinking. You can use either of the following two SPACE assignments to collect a writing sample.
-The first assignment asks students to engage with peer work on the SPACE website.
-The second assignment invites them to explore intersections between their own interests and the SPACE theme.
3) When students submit work for your course that intersects with the annual SPACE theme, encourage them to submit their work to SPACE. Students can submit work to:
-the SPACE website through our submissions portal. (The portal will include a field where students can list the name of the faculty recommending their work.)
-if the work is a written piece—whether poetry, prose or essay—students can also submit it to the SPACE annual writing competition.
Below are links to just a few students’ works that began in a class and were eventually published on the SPACE website:
-Fertilization Miss-Understood (essay), by Lara Antebi (Health Sciences):
-Are Disability Accommodations Giving Students an Unfair Advantage? (essay), by Eve DeLavergne (ALC, Studio Arts Profile):
-The Land of Jasmines (fiction), by Mariam El Jabiri (Cinema Communications)—winner of the first annual SPACE writing competition, prose category.
-Echo (poetry), by Sara Rodrigues (Continuing Education)—winner of the first annual SPACE writing competition, poetry category.
4) Create a class assignment which explicitly intersects with the annual SPACE theme.
This option would involve:
-framing either one of your usual assignments or a new assignment with the annual SPACE theme in mind.
-having students work on the assignment either individually or in groups (or even as a whole class).
-recommending a certain number of completed assignments for submission to one of the SPACE venues. Assignments could be featured in the venue either separately or as a collective.
If you would like to collaborate with SPACE on a class assignment, please contact Ursula Sommerer at usommerer@dawsoncollege.qc.ca.
Below are links to several entries on the SPACE website that feature this kind of class assignment:
(i). Viva Cuba exhibit. Faculty: Gisela Frias. Program: Social Studies (North-South profile).
(ii). These Truths. Faculty: Pauline Morel, in collaboration with Moe Clark (multidisciplinary Métis artist). Program: Journeys.
Dawson’s Journeys First Peoples program invited Moe Clark, an interdisciplinary Métis artist, educator and activist, to collaborate with a group of first year students on their creative writing projects for their English 101 class. During three workshop sessions with Moe, the students created a series of collages and composed poems or spoken word pieces inspired by their artwork.
Pages 46-52 in PERSPECTIVES exhibition catalogue: http://space.dawsoncollege.qc.ca/exhibits/summary/the_perspectives
(iii). The American Gothic: A TRANS– Discourse. Faculty: Kris Woofter. Program: Creative & Applied Arts (Reflections).
(iv) Troubling SPACE S: In Search of Secret Knowledge. Faculty: Kris Woofter. Program: Creative & Applied Arts (Reflections).
(v). Interior Design Community Project. Faculty: Scott Millar, Leigh Shapiro. Program: Interior Design.
The Interior Design program “Community Project” (term 5) explores specific needs of residents in two Montreal neighbourhoods: Griffintown and St-Henri. From their unique perspective, individual students developed a project suited to their understanding of the community and inspired by research and the perspectives of residents from the two neighbourhoods: their hopes, their dreams and their ideas.
Pages 36-37 in PERSPECTIVES exhibition catalogue: http://space.dawsoncollege.qc.ca/exhibits/summary/the_perspectives
5) If you are teaching one of your program’s integrative activity classes (CE/IS/IA), you can present the annual SPACE theme to students as they are brainstorming their integrative projects and remind them that they can submit their final work to one of the SPACE venues.
Below are links to integrating activity projects that were presented in a SPACE venue:
(i) Tempestry—Daw50n, Elizabeth Barnes (Pure and Applied Sciences), Morgane Brouillard-Galipeau (Health Sciences), Yu Lu Liu (Pure and Applied Sciences). Faculty: Joel Trudeau (Physics).
The Tempestry Projects uses the knitting craft to reframe the complex and often abstract issue of climate change with an accuracy and tactility that is accessible to others. The thread colours encode the temperature in intervals of 5 degrees Celsius and are woven together to produce a visualization of the temperature profile of Montreal for a given time period.
Pages 30-31 in PERPSECTIVES exhibition catalogue: [url=http://space.dawsoncollege.qc.ca/exhibits/summary/the_perspectives]http://space.dawsoncollege.qc.ca/exhibits/summary/the_perspectives[/url]
(ii). Pathways, including over 25 students across multiple disciplines (Health Sciences, Pure and Applied Sciences, Cinema Communications, CALL, 3D Animation and CGI. Faculty: Joel Trudeau (Physics).
Pathways is an audio-visual map of the processes initiated by students to develop a proposal for an experiment to be carried out at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research and the home of the Large Hadron Collider.
Pages 36-37 in COLLISIONS exhibition catalogue: [url=http://space.dawsoncollege.qc.ca/exhibits/summary/collisions]http://space.dawsoncollege.qc.ca/exhibits/summary/collisions[/url]
Additional Resource Information
In addition to the above options for faculty to facilitate students’ contributions to SPACE, SPACE also offers faculty a number of developing teaching resources that can be used and adapted in classes across the disciplines, for example:
- a guide for students in any program on how to conduct an interview related to the space s theme.
- Social Science Methods teachers might be interested in the following exercises. The Research Methods activity connects the art of poetry to the social sciences by encouraging students to raise research questions after reading Dancing, by Robert Hass. The Quantitative Methods activity explores visual data representation by introducing students to the artwork and analysis of data journalist Mona Chalabi.
Please consult this page for future updates.
You are also welcome to get in touch with us directly about faculty resources using the form below or for general inquiries contact Ursula Sommerer at: usommerer@dawsoncollege.qc.ca.