Writing Students Help a Merced Arts Center Find a Fresh Voice
Students in a UC Merced course stepped off campus and into the real world, developing flyers, website pages and even a TikTok account for a downtown arts center.
Staff at the center became clients and the students contractors in a spring semester project that produced marketing materials, forged relationships with the community and gave students an experience that in-class exercises can’t provide.
“It’s writing not just for a grade, but for people who will be impacted by it,” said Sophia Milton, a first-year writing studies major. “I’m not trying to please a class prompt, I’m trying to please a real person.”
The project is an alliance between the Merced Multicultural Arts Center and Continuing Lecturer Yogita Maharaj, who teaches the Introduction to Professional Writing undergraduate course. Needing a partner to fulfill her goal for the course, she reached out to the center’s staff.
“She said she wanted to connect the course to real life and the community," said Colton Dennis, executive director of the center known around town as the MAC. The center has been a hub for arts and culture for nearly 30 years. It has four art galleries, a black-box theater, and spaces for classes and meetings. The MAC is run by a six-member staff under the Merced County Arts Council.
"We had a Zoom meeting and we said, ‘Yeah, I think there's something here,’” Dennis said. “Then she brought her class for a tour of the building, and we settled on what our needs were and what they could provide.”
Maharaj divided her class into two-person teams and paired each with a MAC staffer. The results were remarkable. Students Conner Chen and Amy Peetaneelapalin built a timeline for the MAC's website tied to its 30th anniversary activities. Jonah Borja and Adrian Ortiz Jr. developed promotional materials for a downtown art walk.
Sirinity Thomas led the MAC’s introduction to TikTok. The center has a Facebook page and an Instagram account, but hadn’t tested the waters of the youth-oriented, trend-happy social platform. One day, Thomas and some classmates went to the MAC to capture visuals for a TikTok post. MAC Education Director Lisa Gilliland-Viney said she received a text message that the students were coming.
She texted back that she was teaching a class and couldn’t join them. “‘It’s OK,’ they said. ‘We’ve got it.’ And they did.”
Another project captured the spirit of the collaboration.
Each month, Gilliland-Viney organizes a family-day event around artists from various parts of the world. She needed help getting the word out. "My brain was going in 100 different directions," she said. "Having them promoting the events, I thought, ‘Oh, thank goodness.’"
Students designed flyers and brochures for each month’s event. One flyer covered a lobby door. Another, for a Lunar New Year event, landed in Gilliland-Viney’s inbox about 2 a.m. the day before. “The email said, ‘Is this OK?’ I thought, ‘This is brilliant,’” she said.
For the students, the collaboration has been like a job rehearsal. Borja, a fourth-year English major, is considering a career in public relations. "Delving into this professional partnership gives me hands-on experience and a good background for the future,” he said.
Clement Ankomahene, a fourth-year student majoring in management and business economics, said working with the MAC staff was “super revealing.”
“Having real stakes, in which we have to get our product delivered, helps put into perspective how real life works versus learning in a classroom,” he said.
Those dynamics are exactly what Maharaj was after. "Instead of sitting here and lecturing them about how to write a press release, I had them go out, research the genre, put together a presentation and then develop the actual document with the MAC," she said.
For Dennis and his staff, the students have been a genuine asset. "I would get busy and not answer my email, and they would follow up,” he said. “They were really great about communicating, sharing their ideas, and going above and beyond."