Image: Detail of textiles featured in the “Intersections” exhibit in the Lynn Mecklenburg Textile Gallery. Photo by Dakota Mace.
Thanks for reading our weekly roundup of news and events at the School of Human Ecology. Have something we should know about? Email Public Relations Manager Serena Larkin, or submit your SoHE event via this form.
SoHE celebrates Wisconsin’s first official Indigenous Peoples Day
Last week, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers declared the second Monday in October Indigenous Peoples Day. The School of Human Ecology is proud to be home to UW–Madison’s largest number of Native students as well as a Native faculty cluster hire comprising Drs. Kasey Keeler, Brian D. McInnes, Mariaelena Huambachano, and (arriving January 2020) Carolee Dodge Francis—all of the Civil Society and Community Studies department. Monday, they shared resources to foster understanding and discussion of this momentous occasion, including a history of the holiday and its significance, local celebrations open to the public, further learning resources, and a one-page student handout for SoHE instructors to share in their classes.
SoHE student founds group to diversify the design profession
Last spring, Hayley Pendergast, an interior architecture student in the School of Human Ecology, noted a scarcity of people of color in her design classes. She decided to do something about it—and founded a new student group, Diverse Thinking in Design. Read more from Madison 365.
New research: Student debt’s impact on young people’s sense of financial well-being
How do emerging adults make financial decisions? In part, based on their sense of financial well-being, a quality SoHE Dean Soyeon Shim has been exploring for years in her APLUS longitudinal study. A new paper by Dr. Shim and three colleagues examines the specific impact of student debt on young people’s subjective financial well-being, including variation by family socioeconomic status. Their findings illustrate how student debt may suppress postsecondary education’s impact as an inequality-reducing mechanism and invite both individual- and policy-level interventions.
New research: Free school meals —> Better elementary attendance
Universal access to free school meals through the “Community Eligibility Provision,” begun in 2014-15, has been associated with better attendance for low-income elementary school students in Wisconsin. That’s based on newly published research in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics from Dr. Judi Bartfeld, SoHE’s Meta Schroeder Beckner Outreach Professor.
Two SoHE artists to show in MMoCA Triennial, opening Friday
Marianne Fairbanks, a professor of design studies, and Dakota Mace, a graduate of SoHE’s MFA in design studies, will both be featured in the 2019 Wisconsin Triennial, opening this Friday at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. The Wisconsin State Journal wrote up the prestigious show, which showcases some of the state’s top talent in the visual arts.
Jennifer Angus show opens in St. Pete, Florida
SoHE professor Jennifer Angus received top billing in the St. Pete Catalyst last week recommending her latest (and largest) show, which opened to the public Saturday. It was also noted in AliveTampaBay and i love the Burg.
Food politics panel at Wisconsin Book Festival
The Isthmus notes that SoHE professor Jennifer Gaddis will join two fellow food politics experts for a discussion of historic and contemporary food politics as part of the Wisconsin Book Festival this Saturday, October 19, at 1:30 PM at A Room of One’s Own bookstore in Madison. Gaddis’s book, The Labor of Lunch: Why We Need Real Food and Real Jobs in American Public Schools, has attracted interest and coverage from outlets including The Guardian and Mother Jones.