School of Arts & Humanities

An interdisciplinary team of faculty and staff will be creating workshops and guides to support faculty in accessing, interpreting, and using disaggregated student success data. This data will be obtained primarily from the CSU Course Equity Portal, the CSU Student Success Dashboard, and Canvas analytics. This is part of larger work by the SSU Middle Leadership Academy that focuses on creating a series of professional growth opportunities for SSU faculty to increase course pass rates and eliminate equity gaps.

The S.T.O.R.M. (SocioTechnical Operational Risk Management) project was awarded to PI- Dr. John P. Sullins (SSU), Co-PI Dr. Ryan Jenkins (Cal Poly), and Dr. Patrick Lin (Cal Poly).  A prototype resource is being developed to prudence a tool that can be used by the DOD in analyzing the ethical impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) assets that are used in the US military or that the US military is considering deploying.  

This project will enable the Hutchins School of Liberal Studies to establish new criteria for transformative texts; revise and revitalize curriculum pathways and advising to conform to state and institutional demands; and most importantly, develop an implementation proposal to expand the Hutchins GE lower division curriculum to a large percentage of the incoming student body through SSU's First Year Experience (FYE) program.

The next step in the Cinematic Arts & Technology comprehensive degree program is completion of a cutting-edge Media Innovation Lab (MIL) that will prepare students for fruitful careers in production or "below the line" professions. SSU has already made a considerable investment to support the Cinematic Arts degree, spending more than $1 million to develop the space for the MIL in Salazar Hall.

Research into first-year writing equity gaps lacks attention to student and advisor perspectives. This project seeks to address this gap by surveying and interviewing Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) students and advisors from the Student Disability Services office at Sonoma State University, a mid-sized, regional, Hispanic-serving institution in northern California.

Working in collaboration with the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, SSU's Native American Studies Program has designed a pilot program addressing food sovereignty, cultural practices and land management at FIGR's Learning Center located on a 450-acre preserve. Programming has been drastically impacted by COVID-19. The grant funding will be used to develop curriculum; host a workshop informed by FIGR experts and virtual lectures by Native experts; and fund transportation to FIGRLC.

The purpose of this funding is to continue to grow the Cinematic Arts & Technology degree at SSU. Specific areas of support include an animation suite, scholarships, a guest speaker series and equipment upgrades and maintenance. The goal of our cinematic arts program is to give our students the potential to learn a wide variety of skill sets they can take into the job market. Because digital animation is a vibrant and growing field, our graduates would have yet another possible career avenue.