UHD Receives Library of Congress Grant
Funds Will Help Explore Afro-Latino Heritage and Enhance Learning through Creating Digital Story Maps

By Dr. Gregory Dement

Since 2014, the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence (CTLE) has been driving innovation in teaching and learning through fostering a culture of belonging, collaboration, and continuous improvement at UHD. Programs like the Teaching Circles and Course Innovation initiatives provide financial and operational support to faculty teams proposing to explore and pilot new pedagogical or student engagement strategies.

This often leads to the adoption of new instructional approaches and strategic initiatives that contribute to enhanced student success at UHD. On occasion these collective efforts lead to successful bids for external grant funding, and that's just what happened recently, as CTLE Director, Dr. Gregory Dement, and Professor of Spanish, Dr. Raquel Chiquillo, collaborated as co-PIs with CTLE Instructional Designer, Fabiola Vacatoledo, and Online Learning Librarian, Jennifer Fuentes on submission of a successful grant proposal to the Library of Congress (LOC).

The grant team’s project, titled “Discovering Afro-Latino Heritage: A Reflective Story Map Project to Enhance Student Belongingness and Learning,” was awarded $69,084 through the LOC's Connecting Communities Digital Initiative (CCDI). This initiative is sponsored by a LOC program called Of the People: Widening the Path, which is supported by the Mellon Foundation. The initiative provides opportunities for more Americans to engage with the Library and add their perspectives to the LOC's collections toward centering marginalized groups and telling a more inclusive American story.

“Our goal with this project is to improve student success at UHD through the strategic use of digital and experiential learning strategies,” said Dr. Dement. “By focusing on storytelling, we hope to build community and enhance our students’ sense of belonging. In addition to the direct impact on target course curriculum, I am excited about the research and communication skills students will gain through engagement with this project.”

The UHD grant team is excited to collaborate with faculty, students, and the community in building an interactive digital story map that integrates original content and materials available through the LOC's digital collections. The story map(s) will explore Afro-Latino Heritage with a focus on the trans-Atlantic slave routes focused on Latin America, the lives of enslaved Africans in the Caribbean, and the migration of Puerto Rican, Cuban and Garifuna Afro-Latinos to the United States.

For her part, Dr. Chiquillo sees the project as an opportunity to engage students in research. “I'm excited to receive this grant,” she said. “It will not only help our students participate in and learn about Afro-Latino communities, but will also help their academic and intellectual confidence.”

In addition to providing a relevant and engaging resource for the broader UHD student body and community, this project seeks to enhance teaching and learning in key target courses through providing the historical context instructors need for units in Latin American and Latino Studies literature classes, especially those that focus on Afro-Latino writers and poets. Since this is an area that has not been traditionally emphasized in Latin American Literature classes, there is limited material available and ready for use by students and instructors. This project would help fill that gap, enhancing teaching and learning in key target courses through faculty/student creation and use of the proposed Afro-Latino Story maps.

CTLE Instructional Designer Vacatoledo hopes the story maps "will keep growing as work with UHD faculty, staff, and students lays the groundwork for more understanding, empathy, and empowerment of our Afro-Latino students at UHD and in their communities.” Through the programmatic support of the grant team, such faculty work with students will take place in key target courses, with an aim to remix and create content for the Afro-Latinos Story Map(s) project.

The project team recently solicited proposals and selected six UHD faculty members who will create student assignments in key target courses that leverage LOC digital collections. In addition to Dr. Chiquillo, the awardees for the Spring 2024 semester who will be implementing projects are Rafael Andugar Sousa, Albert DeJesus-Rivera, Fernell Jimenez-Pabon, Giuliana Lund, and Christal Sánchez. 

A primary objective of the project is to increase students’ sense of belonging through building community. This objective aligns with giving students a voice and inviting them to share their stories. Students contributing to the Afro-Latino Story Map(s) will gain research skills, develop digital fluency, and engage in metacognition through reflecting on their own stories. Student deliverables might be submitted as narrative text, videos, podcasts, digital maps, photographs, etc.

In addition, students will have the option of interviewing Afro-Latino members of the UHD and Houston communities to create original content. Faculty will create content for the Story Map(s) as well, in addition to supervising their students. To further foster community building within UHD, students that identify as Afro-Latino will be encouraged to create short video segments about their communities that will form part of the content used in the Story Map(s), if they so wish. In addition, students in the Translation Minor at UHD will be encouraged to help caption the Story Map(s) in both English and Spanish.

“This is a truly collaborative project for students, faculty, CTLE, the W.I. Dykes Library, and beyond," Online Learning Librarian Jennifer Fuentes. "That not only speaks to UHD’s commitment to educational and research endeavors, but also its commitment to fostering understanding and belongingness within the Houston area.”

About Connecting Communities Digital Initiative (CCDI) Grant Program:

• Learn about the CCDI
• Learn about the peoples and cultures of the program

CCDI Publications about UHD Grant:

• 2024 CCDI Recipients
• Library of Congress Gazette Article about UHD grant

About Story Maps:

• Project Overview