Rooted in Justice, Reaching Out: Publicly Engaged Humanities at Southwestern University

At Southwestern University (SU), community engagement and publicly engaged humanities are not separate initiatives; they are interwoven threads in a broader tapestry of regional care, social justice, and liberal arts education. As a private, Hispanic Serving Institution with Methodist roots and a deep commitment to its core values of encouraging activism in the pursuit of justice and diverse perspectives, SU is reimagining its role in Central Texas through collaborative, justice-oriented scholarship.

Deepening the Heart of Texas: Public-Engaged Humanities for Social Justice

A $1.287 million grant from the Mellon Foundation’s Humanities for All Times initiative has reinvigorated and transformed SU. The project, titled “Deepening the Heart of Texas: Public-Engaged Humanities for Social Justice,” centers public-facing, humanistic methods and sources across disciplines. It expands community-engaged learning, supports undergraduate research in the humanities and humanistic social sciences, and rethinks tenure and promotion to reward public scholarship.

“With an eye towards the ideas, sources, and approaches traditionally used in the Humanities and humanities-related fields and to turning everything outwards, the grant will allow us to strengthen course offerings, grow faculty-mentored research, and center social justice concerns that transcend discipline and SU by funding faculty development workshops, the initiatives that come out of those programs, short- and long-term collaboration with outside experts and community partners, visiting fellows as scholars/activists-in-residence, and so much more.”

Jessica Hower

Associate Dean of the Faculty & Associate Professor of History*

This initiative builds on a long-standing foundation of community-engaged learning at SU, where the Office of Community-Engaged Learning (OCEL) has fostered sustainable, mutually beneficial partnerships with local organizations. It has helped us develop SU’s current framework, outlined in the Paths to Public Engagement. This framework points to the ways students, faculty, staff, and administrators were invested in publicly-engaged work long before the grant application. The Mellon, then, has helped us increase and strengthen structural support for work that was already being done on our campus.

For example, we recently adapted a longstanding CEL faculty program to advance faculty’s work already happening within and outside of SU to foster ethical, societal impact.

The Public Engagement Fellows Program supports, both intellectually and monetarily, tenured and tenure-track faculty to work on exciting, innovative projects. Dr. Adriana Ponce, an Assistant Professor in Sociology, is leading a two-part project that brings community engagement into the heart of Sociology of the Family, while also conducting research on students’ experiences collaborating with local partners. Her work will enrich the curriculum and promote reciprocal, real-world learning opportunities for students and community members alike. Dr. Katy Ross, a Professor of Spanish, is working with students and local communities towards increasing voting participation, partnering with the Campus Vote Project and Williamson County organizations to explore sustainable voter engagement strategies. Her project aims to bridge campus and community spaces to foster long-term democratic participation

More broadly, the Mellon grant has afforded myriad exciting opportunities and structural, institutional support for PEH work. It brought in SU’s first Scholar/Activist in Residence for the 2025-2026 academic year, Dr. Robyn Adams, an Assistant Professor in the College of Media and Communication at Texas Tech University. Already, Dr. Adams is transforming SU’s campus, offering their expertise in Black Queer Reproductive justice and transdisciplinary, publicly-engaged research.

Dr. Adams’ transformative work includes interdisciplinary guest lectures, collaboration with Humanities departments to broaden academic lectures to public audiences, and collaboration with student organizations, like the Black Student Union and SU Votes, to bring community leaders to campus. Additionally, Dr. Adams is teaching a transdisciplinary course, “Our Stories, Our Justice,” a semester-long examination of Black feminist storytelling within the Reproductive Justice movement.

“When I think about social interactions and language, I automatically think about power. I automatically think about whose language, whose stories, what interactions am I promoting, what am I passing on?… Ultimately, my mission here at SU is for students to understand that they have a right to flourish.”

Robyn Adams

2025-2026 Activist/Scholar in Residence in Publicly-Engaged Humanities for Social Justice at Southwestern University**

Alongside Dr. Adams and our newly appointed Public Engagement Fellows, tenured faculty, junior faculty, staff, and students have all worked collaboratively and individually to pursue publicly-engaged scholarship. In the Humanities, Dr. Meagan Solomon co-founded Malflora Collective, “a digital platform dedicated to uplifting and preserving Latina/e lesbian history, creativity, and culture,” including a podcast series (link). Similarly, Dr. Sonia Del Hierro co-produced the Señora Power, a multi-disciplinary project committed to writing Chicana feminist consciousness into public history, including a podcast series (link). In the Fine Arts, Gabriel Peña has been working to rethink the power of theatre and storytelling as an inherently PEH venture; his commitment to the continued importance of the arts increases the sustainability of a healthy society (link). In the Social Sciences, Dr. Naomi Reed has continued award-winning, publicly-engaged work, including her collaborative podcast, Sugar Land, an investigative series that explores the hidden racial histories uncovered by the discovery of a historic, unknown cemetery in Sugar Land, Texas. Dr. Reed’s work also includes the Southwestern Racial History Project, a collaborative effort to record oral histories and to recognize voices of color within the legacy of our university. In spring 2025, Dr. Kimberly McArthur revised her upper-level course in developmental biology to expose students to the intersection between the natural sciences and the humanities. In particular, students in the course explored the historical context of key scientific discoveries. This work increased student engagement in the course and helped the students understand the intellectual framework for scientific progress.

Southwestern University is uniquely positioned to confront the challenges of our time through the Humanities and Liberal Arts education. Our work is animated by a belief that scholarship should not only interpret the world but also help transform it. Whether through community-engaged learning, community-based research, or public storytelling (i.e. Digital Humanities Projects & Podcasts), we aim to deepen our regional impact while modeling a national vision for engaged liberal arts education.

Follow our journey on Instagram at @SU_OCEL and explore more at southwestern.edu/public-engagement.

_{^{* Excerpted from: https://www.southwestern.edu/live/news/16167-southwestern-awarded-mellon-foundation-grant-for}}

_{^{** Excerpted from: https://megaphone.southwestern.edu/2025/10/29/activist-scholar-in-residence-for-publicly-engaged-humanities-robyn-b-adams/}}