On December 2, Sarah Lawrence College gathered with partner institution Bronx Community College (BCC), community organizations, faculty, and students to celebrate the culmination of a remarkable four-year endeavor made possible by a grant from the Mellon Foundation. The celebration provided an opportunity to reflect on the impact of the grant and to share the projects and pedagogies it supported.
In January 2022, Sarah Lawrence, in partnership with BCC, was awarded a $1.5 million Mellon Foundation grant as part of its Humanities for All Times initiative to rethink the humanities through the lens of climate and environmental justice and to develop creative, collaborative pedagogies to address the climate crisis. Over the course of four years, the Mellon grant supported the work of the Sarah Lawrence Interdisciplinary Collaborative on the Environment (SLICE), an initiative whose foundations began during the COVID-impacted 2020-21 academic year. A group of faculty in art history and literature (Heather Cleary, Sarah Hamill, and Eric Leveau) joined colleagues in environmental science, biology, and economics (Michelle Hersh, An Li, and Bernice Rosenzweig) in response to a growing desire on campus for civic engagement around climate change and social justice. Rooted in Sarah Lawrence’s foundational values of collaboration and interdisciplinary education, SLICE has sparked new ways for faculty to work together, develop shared projects, and connect coursework with community partners.
“One of the joys of teaching at Sarah Lawrence is that we are encouraged to innovate, to try out new modes of teaching and learning,” said faculty member Matthew Ellis (History), who taught a recent SLICE course, Global Environment History. “Not only was SLICE a natural fit for me as a teacher who is passionate about fostering different avenues for student collaboration, it was also a natural fit for our students, who rose to the challenge of cross-disciplinary groupwork.”
Joining Ellis in presenting projects that took place over the past four years were faculty members Melissa Frazier (Russian, Literature), Sarah Hamill (Art History), and Eric Leveau (French, Literature) from SLC and Raffaela Diotti and Kathleen Urda from BCC. Each spring, students in SLICE courses at SLC and BCC gathered for two off-site “interludes”, opportunities to share work, engage with community partners, and learn in new environments, and presented their work at a semester-ending SLICE Symposium. Those interludes took place at partner organizations such as Groundwork Hudson Valley, Untermyer Gardens Conservancy, the Van Cortlandt Park Alliance, and Sarah Lawrence’s own Center for the Urban River at Beczak (CURB).
A special highlight of the evening was a student-led tour of Vital Forms, an exhibit in the Barbara Walters Gallery curated by Art History faculty member Mitchell Herrmann and students from his Anthropocene Aesthetics seminar, which blended art theory and curatorial practice as it explored ecological aesthetics in the era of anthropogenic climate change. Students in the course were responsible for all aspects of the exhibition – a vivid example of the inquiry-driven, hands-on learning that defines a Sarah Lawrence education and prepares students for success after college.
“This seminar was designed to give students practical experience in curating an exhibition,” said Herrmann. “But more broadly, it was about how we think together about big, complex problems in a serious way, and how we present the work of that inquiry to the wider world and make complicated ideas accessible.”
Bridget Duran ’26 and Maisie Wieser ’26, along with classmates Chooki McCutchin-Mossin ’27 and Lennon Moore ’27, had the opportunity to work closely with Bicheng Liang and Yixuan Shao, the artist duo known as Alchemyverse – this fall’s Artist in Residence at the College’s Heimbold Gallery – ultimately writing the wall text for their artworks included in the Vital Forms exhibition. “We interviewed Alchemyverse, transcribing a 40 minute conversation and editing it into an engaging conversation,” said Duran, an artist who aspires to work in museum curation. “This experience was incredible,” added Wieser. “It was the first time I’d gotten to curate something, and learning about all the work and collaboration that goes into it was amazing.” Wieser plans to attend grad school and work in education or community engagement in a museum setting.
Maddy Heavens ‘26 researched and wrote the script for the Vital Forms tour with fellow students Hudson Halverstadt ‘28, Devon Fuchs ‘27, and Maren Coudret ‘28, and led a tour for guests including BCC president Dr. Larry Johnson. “SLC’s curriculum as a whole, and this class especially, has taught me to challenge conventional ways of thinking, and to think outside the box. Getting hands-on experience like this has shown me all aspects of what’s involved in an exhibit like this, from writing to logistics to installment; it’s given me a really well-rounded idea of what curation is.” An artist herself, Heavens plans to attend grad school on her path to working in either curation or children’s education in a museum.
As the Humanities for All Times grant period concludes, those gathered on December 2 celebrated not an ending but a foundation for future work. The projects, partnerships, and pedagogical innovations supported by the grant have shaped how faculty teach, how students learn, and how Sarah Lawrence collaborates beyond its campus.