GEAR UP MISSISSIPPI SUMMER ENRICHMENT PROGRAMS 2007 ABSTRACT
Name of Institution (Include Branch/Campus and School or Division)
DELTA CENTER FOR CULTURE & LEARNING, DELTA STATE UNIVERSITY
Address (Include Department)
Delta Center for Culture & Learning, Box 3152, Cleveland, MS 38733
Principal Investigator(s)
Tamika Eatmon and Luther Brown
Title of Project
2007 Mississippi Delta Arts & Heritage Summer Experience
Project Summary (Maximum number of words 250)
The 2007 Mississippi Delta Arts & Heritage Summer Experience will engage as many as 60 rising 12th-graders from Gear Up Mississippi schools all over the state in three weeklong
MISSISSIPPI DELTA ARTS & HERITAGE SUMMER EXPERIENCE GEAR UP MISSISSIPPI SUMMER ENRICHMENT PROGRAMS 2007
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Narrative of Proposal ……… 4
A. Goals …….……….. 4
B. Academic and Enrichment Activities …………. 6
C. Administrative Plan ……… 8
D. Evaluation and Outcomes ………10
Budget Summary ……….. 11
Budget Narrative … ……….. 12
Appendices ……… 14
A. Daily Camp Schedule ………..15
B. Resume of Camp Director ………...18
GEAR UP MISSISSIPPI SUMMER ENRICHMENT PROGRAMS 2007 MISSISSIPPI DELTA ARTS & HERITAGE SUMMER EXPERIENCE
NARRATIVE OF PROPOSAL
The Delta Center for Culture & Learning seeks a $25,000 grant from Gear Up Mississippi to fund the 2007 Mississippi Delta Arts & Heritage Summer Experience residential camp. The program, which was has been quite successful in the past thanks to Gear Up funding, is designed to engage students from Gear Up Mississippi schools with myriad aspects of Delta culture and its important contributions to music, art, agriculture, and human rights issues worldwide. This year the camp will be divided into three weeklong sessions, each focusing on a centralized theme of Delta culture.
The Mississippi Delta with its history of oppression, disparity, and astounding human endeavor is one of the most culturally concentrated regions of the country. Its landscape and the people who inhabit it have undergone substantial upheaval and change, even in the last fifty years. Out of these circumstances have emerged world-renowned musicians (e.g. Charlie Patton, Muddy Waters, Pop Staples), champions of the struggle for human rights (e.g. Fannie Lou Hamer, Hodding Carter, Charles McLaurin), and important literary lights (e.g. Walker Percy and Shelby Foote).
revered in foreign countries or that tourists come from across state and international borders to see what Alan Lomax called “the land where the blues began.”
These are lessons and stories that must be passed along for preservation’s sake, and the Gear Up Mississippi Delta Heritage & Arts Summer Experience aims to recover this heritage for as many as 60 rising twelfth-graders from Gear Up Mississippi schools during three weeklong sessions of hands-on exploration Delta culture. One of the objectives is to demonstrate the interconnection and relevance of music, social struggle, and the environment of the Delta. The camp, sponsored by Delta State University’s Delta Center for Culture & Learning, will give students a deeper understanding of Delta
heritage through a curriculum of field trips, guest presentations, culinary experiences, cultural activities, and artistic expression, while exposing them to life on a college campus. In addition, the program will target various students’ needs in preparing for post-secondary education and exploring academic interests.
It is the mission of the Delta Center for Culture & Learning “to promote the understanding of the history and culture of the Mississippi Delta and its significance to the rest of the world” (www.blueshighway.org). One of the ways the Center meets this objective is through programs for youth. With additional activities being introduced, this year marks the fourth summer the Center has offered the camp. The Delta Center’s Office of Community & Student Engagement also runs an arts and heritage after-school program in the Cleveland School District. The curriculum from this program, which ties into the Mississippi Social Studies Framework, is similar to the activities used in the Mississippi Delta Arts & Heritage Summer Experience.
be reserved for students to meet with financial-aid officers, student leaders, professors, athletic coaches, university admissions, career services, and academic support staff.
The camp will be residential and will be divided into three weeklong sessions, each serving up to 20 campers. Some of the program will be based on activities,
fieldtrips, and presentations conducted during the 2006 camp, all of which are compiled in a portfolio (see Appendix C), but the camp has been revised to offer additional opportunities for individual expression through writing, dance, and music, while remaining to focus on specific themes of Delta cultural issues.
The second session (June24 – June 29) will focus on the Blues. Campers will take a musical journey through the history of the blues presented by local musicians and historians. They will hear the music played live, visit blues museums, make diddley bow guitars and mojos, and learn the basics of harmonica playing and African dance.
Excursions include trips to Clarksdale and Dockery Farms, where campers will learn about how the blues grew out of the plantation system. Students will have the
opportunity to write, compose, and record their own blues songs utilizing state of the art technology at the Delta Music Institute. Art instruction will focus on the African
influence on the blues with students designing and dyeing cloth using traditional African textile techniques of mudcloth, adinkra, and indigo.
The final session (July 8-13) will concentrate on the Civil Rights Movement. Campers will meet current and former civil rights activists from the Delta and learn about Freedom Summer of 1964 and such pioneering influences as Fannie Lou Hamer and Aaron Henry. Excursions include a tour of the “Emmett Till Trail” from Greenwood to Sumner, a trip to the National Civil Rights and Stax museums in Memphis, and a fieldtrip lesson on food, community building, and the movement. Students will be involved in creative workshops on clay, collage, and papermaking and will design individual one-of-a-kind books and covers from handmade paper. The theme for the book design will be chosen by the campers and will relate to some aspect of civil rights. Additional projects will include utilizing printed handsas a motif of uniqueness and social struggle.
programs will include recreational events, movies, and musical performances by local ensemble groups and DSU student bands. Weekly scheduling will include opportunities for campers to meet with DSU students, staff, faculty, and administrators in informal and formal settings throughout the week (see daily schedule, Appendix A).
Each session will feature workshops focused on demystifying the college admissions process. Students will undergo a program application process that will replicate the experience of applying for college, requiring the students to write a short essay and to list past experiences. This essay will then be critiqued by a DSU English professor who will offer tips for improving writing skills. Students will meet with
admissions counselors to review transcripts, complete admission applications and student profiles. Campers will also participate in an on-line focus career assessment designed to measure students’ interest and skills and to explore various major and career options. Once completing the surveys, students will meet with career services staff to review and interpret assessment results. Students will also participate in a Financial Aid interactive workshop where students will access and review on-line applications and discuss various deadlines. An ACT prep workshop will provide participants with test taking strategies and skills to help improve scores, along with an academic skills workshop focusing on study skills, time-management, handling stress, and personal motivation.
Campers will stay in a dormitory, segregated by gender, and will receive meals through Aramark, the food service at Delta State. Two graduate assistants will serve as resident advisors, living with the campers and taking care of them between the hours of 6 p.m. and 8 a.m. They will be responsible for some of the evening recreational
Several locations on campus will be designated for camp activities. Most of the heritage component of the program will be held in three rooms reserved specifically for the summer program. These spaces will be large enough to hold at least 20 campers and will be able to accommodate audio-visual needs. A room in the Holcombe-Norwood art building will provide a functional space for the arts program. Seminar rooms in the Charlie Capps-DSU Archives Building and the Student Union will serve as spaces for cultural workshops, musical performances, and lectures.
A team of nine full-time staff will run the camp. Pat Brown, the camp director, will organize and lead the art activities. Ms. Brown is a Delta State art professor with extensive instructional experience (see resume, Appendix B). Two DSU student-interns, from the art department, will assist her in running the art component of the camp. The art team will be in charge of organizing and running all art activities and working with the heritage team to coordinate the art activities with the cultural programming. The camp director will also be responsible for choreographing key program activities such as an introduction, orientation, and a closing ceremony. Delta Center staff will assist the director with the planning. Staff from the Delta Center, including a project
director/heritage coordinator, will organize and lead the heritage component of the camp. The heritage coordinator will be responsible for planning all fieldtrips; hiring guest musicians, speakers, and other presenters; directing all cultural workshops; and arranging special evening programs. The program director/heritage coordinator will also be
summer interns from the Robertson Scholars Program at Duke and UNC will be in charge of coordinating various logistical needs, documenting the program for promotional and sustainability purposes, and organizing other activities. Luther Brown, Director of the Delta Center, and Tamika Eatmon, the DSU Coordinator for Community & Student Engagement, who has served as an educator and has worked with several youth enrichment programs, will provide administrative support—Brown as project administrator and Eatmon as project director.
Much of the assessment of the program will rely on the results of pre- and post-surveys administered directly before and after each session. The evaluations, designed by the Delta Center, will focus on cognitive as well as emotional development. In addition to the surveys, the students’ journal entries will be evaluated to determine the program’s effectiveness. A comprehensive method of evaluation will include each session’s closing ceremony and art exhibition.
The program will be documented through photos and video footage; both the documentation and the survey evaluations will be used as sustainability measures for improvement and expansion of the program. They will be compiled in a larger portfolio of the camp, which will include a detailed description of activities and challenges faced during the camp.
GEAR UP MISSISSIPPI SUMMER ENRICHMENT PROGRAMS 2007 BUDGET SUMMARY
Principal Investigators:
_Tamika Eatmon and Luther Brown _
Submitting Institution:
_Delta Center for Culture & Learning at
Delta State University____________________________________
GEAR UP MS Funds
Requested Institutional Match
A. Key Personnel (including fringes) $7,068 $9,332
B. Support Personnel (including fringes) $3,150 $14,216
C. Project Materials $2,500 $100
D. Project Supplies (e.g., copying, postage, etc.)
$275
E. Participant Expenses—Identify (e.g., Residential Costs such as lodging and meals; Transportation; Incentives; Other)
$12,007
[itemized below] [itemized below] $1,316
1. Housing $4,500
2. Food $5,354
3. Museum Fees $803 $116
4. Transportation $1,350
5. Room Rental Fees $1,200
Subtotal (A-E) $25,000 $24,964
F. Indirect Costs $1,919
20 youth participants and staff members (Gear Up $5,354). Museum fees will include admission to the National Civil Rights Museum, Stax Museum of American Soul, the Tunica Queen, Delta Blues Museum, and the Highway 61 Museum (Gear Up $803). Free admittance to the Tunica Riverpark Museum will be included as in-kind contribution (DSU $116). Transportation of students and staff during field experiences and for daily outings will be included in Gear Up funds—university vehicle costs for 15-passenger van calculated at .30 per mile / bus calculated 1.10 per mile ($1,350). DSU Room Rental fees will correspond with the in-kind rate of $1,200 based upon rates charged to outside groups utilizing space on campus.
