Mission & Values

Mission

Our goal is to make a seamless connection between rich programming provided in H&A and our students across and beyond humanities and the arts to invigorate learning through all disciplines. The work we will activate through H&A in Action will further the intersection among the humanities, arts, and STEM fields, the development of technology within our region, and the importance of public programming to expand the attention to the values within the humanities and arts throughout the university and the entire community.

This kind of faculty-led, research-infused curriculum and programming, and specifically their connection, are the type of experiential learning opportunities that makes SJSU more appealing to our first generation and underrepresented minority students. Engaged public programming, engaged research, engaged teaching, and outreach all offer an opportunity for first generation college students in this minority-serving institution to participate in hands-on activities that will increase rates of student retention and student engagement through collaborative assignments and projects, learning communities and common intellectual experiences, and experiential learning augmented by intercultural learning in the community.

Principles

Experiential Learning: Involve students with actively contested questions, empirical observation, cutting-edge technologies, and the sense of excitement that comes from working to answer important questions.
Innovation & Curiosity: Leverage differences to fuel innovation, solve problems, and demonstrate curiosity, resilience, and tenacity.
Community Expertise: Build on lived expertise of the surrounding community.
Global Awareness: Create global awareness and an understanding of culture and context for facilitating interactions between disciplines.
Community Voices: Model amplifying community voices and histories that might not otherwise be heard.
Interdisciplinarity: Transform conversations about grand challenges (e.g., environment, privacy concerns, social media, cultural division, social justice) and break down divisions between humanities, arts, social, and natural sciences.