In UP course, students find the extraordinary in the everyday

When Assistant Professor of Dance Christi Camper Moore received notice she had been nominated for the 2022-23 University Professor award, she asked herself what she was most curious, and most passionate, about.

The University Professor Award, which is the longest running teaching award at OHIO, recognizes outstanding teaching at the university. Nominations for this award come from the student body, and a student selection committee selects up to four faculty annually. 

University Professors have the freedom to develop and teach a course of their choosing as a means of enriching the undergraduate curriculum.

“The idea of ‘collaborative making’ with time to really discuss and engage felt like a luxury,” she said, adding that she was interested in a course applicable to a broad segment of the student body, but also designed and supported using arts-based strategies that create rich and meaningful experiences in community with others.

Camper Moore, who also serves as graduate chair and head of Arts Administration, earned the University Professor award honor and delivered her course, “Eyeing the Everyday,” in fall 2023.

Camper Moore was hired to develop a new graduate program in addition to teaching courses, so designing curriculum felt very comfortable to her, as did exploring the processes of creation and iteration.

Fundamentally, according to Camper Moore, we are all involved in learning . “We’re all students,” she said.

As she designed the class, she thought critically about a focus for each week that would engage students in collaborative art making and illuminate “what we see or don’t see.”  

Later one of her students would comment on the concept of seeing or not seeing: “Your vision for this class has been a unique, interesting, and engaging journey that I feel grateful to have been able to be a part of.  It showed that we experience, feel, interpret, and perceive differently, which leads us to behave and make choices based on those perceptions. Sometimes these behaviors or choices occur subconsciously, but this class turned on a part of my brain that made me start paying attention to those choices more closely and opened my curiosity as to why.”  

The class comprised seven learners -- a mix of undergraduate and graduate students -- and a conscious effort was made to collaborate with community and university resources, including the Upcycle/Maker Space, Kennedy Center, various guest speakers/makers and the collection of zines and artists’ books in the special collections in Alden Library.

Together, Camper Moore and the students applied to install an exhibit of their semester long, collaborative art making with University Libraries and received funding to do so from the Arts for Ohio initiative that integrates the arts into the fabric of the university. 

The exhibit, “Eyeing the Everyday: Objects of the Ordinary” is now on display on the fourth floor of Alden Library. Artifacts include photography collages of the making processes, handmade artist books, 3D “sculptures” using found objects, a mobile of "quilt", as well as a looped video of site-specific movement explorations and studies of spoken word with movement. In addition, the students collaboratively created and published a zine, which has now been added to the special collections in Alden.

During the quilt squares project, Camper Moore took students to the community maker space and each student received scrap material. 

“Their only job was to create a 12 by 12 square,” she said. “They created alongside peers. We asked questions about what seemed like random choices but aimed to surface ideas about what informed or guided their decision making process. The students often said, ‘I never thought about that before.”

One of Camper Moore’s goals was to invite students into constant questioning and curiosity. 

“I didn’t have expectations of them,” she explained, “but part of the reveal was that we often put expectations on ourselves. This was a rethinking about seeing possibilities instead of problems. … It’s more about critical thinking, finding ways to reframe what the educational institution teaches students about mistakes.”

“All information is good information,” she said. The course offered students time to experiment and to acquire more tools to find the language to answer their own questions. 

Camper Moore explicitly focused on relationships and connections and considered how to expand those in the learning environment.

“I’m really grateful for the students,” she said. “This is risk taking. And they went into the course with a lot of generosity.”

One of her students commented, “This class has been definitely out of the ordinary for me, but a welcome break from the isolated, linear courses I've been taking. It was a great way to connect with others and find common ground with individuals much different than me.” 

Both instructor and students welcomed the University Professor course experience. A student noted, ““This class has been definitely out of the ordinary for me, but a welcome break from the isolated, linear courses I've been taking. It was a great way to connect with others and find common ground with individuals much different than me.” 

And yet another plans to take this new perspective into other experiences: “Throughout the majority of my life, I have never sat down and questioned why I am seeing what I am seeing, nor have I questioned what I am seeing.  The importance of collaboration has been a theme consistently coming up for me throughout this semester.  In future courses and learning opportunities, I hope to remember the importance of collaboration and lean on that concept in times when I need it most.” 

As for Camper Moore, she said teaching the University Professor course reinvigorated her own teaching and learning; reminding her of the immensely valuable importance of having the time and opportunity to examine our own teaching practices and what sparks our curiosity and creativity.