Students in a UC Merced course stepped off campus and into the real world, developing flyers, website pages and even a TikTok account for a downtown arts center.
Staff at the center became clients and the students contractors in a spring semester project that produced marketing materials, forged relationships with the community and gave students an experience that in-class exercises can’t provide.
“It’s writing not just for a grade, but for people who will be impacted by it,” said Sophia Milton, a first-year writing studies major. “I’m not trying to please a class prompt, I’m trying to please a real person.”
The project is an alliance between the Merced Multicultural Arts Center and Continuing Lecturer Yogita Maharaj, who teaches the Introduction to Professional Writing undergraduate course. Needing a partner to fulfill her goal for the course, she reached out to the center’s staff.
“She said she wanted to connect the course to real life and the community," said Colton Dennis, executive director of the center known around town as the MAC. The center has been a hub for arts and culture for nearly 30 years. It has four art galleries, a black-box theater, and spaces for classes and meetings. The MAC is run by a six-member staff under the Merced County Arts Council.
"We had a Zoom meeting and we said, ‘Yeah, I think there's something here,’” Dennis said. “Then she brought her class for a tour of the building, and we settled on what our needs were and what they could provide.”
Maharaj divided her class into two-person teams and paired each with a MAC staffer. The results were remarkable. Students Conner Chen and Amy Peetaneelapalin built a timeline for the MAC's website tied to its 30th anniversary activities. Jonah Borja and Adrian Ortiz Jr. developed promotional materials for a downtown art walk.
