Paid Community Engagement Opportunity for UCSB Humanities and Humanistic Social Science Graduate Students

Apply now to work with the Making of Monuments

UC Santa Barbara’s Interdisciplinary Humanities Center (IHC) seeks to hire UCSB humanities and humanistic social science graduate students to work on a summer community engagement program, the Making of Monuments. This program is a collaboration between the IHC, the Santa Barbara Unified School District (SBUSD), and the Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation (SBTHP) for the purpose of developing lesson plans for 4th- and 5th-grade students that explore the relationship between public monuments and the communities in which they are located. The workshop will take place from 9 am – 4 pm, July 29-31. For their participation, graduate students will receive a $700 stipend at the conclusion of the workshop.

The program focuses on the statue of Carlos III, located at El Presidio de Santa Bárbara State Historic Park. Drawing upon their expertise in primary source research, each graduate student will work with three teachers to assist them at the Presidio Research Center and be a resource for them as they develop lesson plans around the statue in alignment with K-12 California content standards.

Interested graduate students should submit a resume and cover letter describing their qualifications and relevant experience to ihcucsb@gmail.com by Friday, June 28, 2024. Inquiries can be directed to IHC Assistant Director Casey Haughin-Scasny (haughinscasny@ihc.ucsb.edu).

This place-based civics education project enables elementary students to acquire the knowledge, skills, and dispositions they need to participate as informed and engaged members of our self-governing society, by studying and contributing to current national and international discussions about how we commemorate the past and represent ourselves.

SBUSD elementary teachers partner with UCSB graduate students to conduct research with the support of SBTHP for the purpose of developing curricula about the statue of Carlos III, who was the King of Spain when a Spanish expedition founded the Santa Barbara Royal Presidio fortress in 1782. The statue was a gift from King Juan Carlos I of Spain to the City of Santa Barbara in 1981 and currently stands in the courtyard of the Santa Barbara Presidio. There has been much community debate about the appropriateness of this statue, given that it celebrates a colonialist history in which indigenous Chumash peoples were enslaved and dispossessed of lands. Using the statue, its history, and the current debates around it, educators will develop a learning module that explores issues of historical memory through a framework of inquiry that addresses questions such as:

• How do monuments come into being?
• What is the basis for determining who or what is to be commemorated and remembered?
• What should and do monuments accomplish?
• What are our responsibilities as citizens, custodians, and makers of history with regard to monuments?

Read more about the Making of Monuments in The Current