College Expectation Regarding MSU Lifting Mask Requirements

Dear College of Arts & Letters staff and faculty,  As we turn our attention to Spring Break, during which I hope you all will have some opportunity for rest and restoration, I write to provide additional details regarding MSU President Stanley’s message about MSU lifting mask requirement on March 6 except for classrooms, research spaces. We recognize this transition may be…

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Gaining Experience and Confidence While Interning Remotely for Spanish-Based Company

Meg Finerty, a senior Communications and Spanish double major, gained professional work experience that challenged her in unexpected ways while interning with the Spanish-based company, Celpax, which offers a device, called a Daily Pulse, that measures employee morale, giving business leaders a tool for improving the workplace.

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CREATE! Micro-Grant Winner Explores Personal Hardships and Experiences Through Mixed Media Piece

As a transgender individual growing up in a homophobic household, the hardships endured by Mike Gardner created lasting emotional scars, which now serve as inspiration for art and a piece created with support from a $500 CREATE! Micro-Grant.

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Two Experiences, One Company: Interns Complete International Internship with Australian Magazine

After developing an admiration for editing from her professional writing courses at MSU, Rachel Gignac completed a virtual internship as a Publishing and Communications Intern with Publishing ByChelle, an Australian-based publication that produces in-flight magazines for Australian airlines. The internship allowed the recent Professional and Public Writing alumna to receive hands-on experience with writing and editing before graduating this past spring.

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Conversations with CAL on the Timnick Chair, Humanities, Filmmaking, and Black Art

As a filmmaker, screenwriter, and educator, Wray has served as a core faculty member in MSU’s Film Studies program since 2002, developing and teaching courses in film directing, screenwriting, and narrative film fiction, as well as in African American cinema and cinema of the African Diaspora. In addition, he is an accomplished filmmaker whose features and short films have been screened in the United States and abroad, including Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Dakar, Zurich, Berlin, and Athens. 

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MSU Alumnus, U.S. Army Veteran Channels Artistry as Mental Health Intern

Greg Fricker wanted to go to art school but joined the U.S. Army when his father insisted. His dad was career military and said that no one ever made a living as an artist. With his aspirations redirected, Fricker enlisted straight out of high school and served for 20 years until multiple traumas thrust him back into civilian life.

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Scholar-Educator, Writer, and Performer Joins AAAS as an Academic Specialist

Among the first generation on her mother’s side born outside the Jim Crow South and the first generation on her father’s side born outside Ghana, West Africa, Dr. Chamara Jewel Kwakye’s family, on both sides, have always placed education as paramount, and not just any kind of education, but rather an education that clearly connects to the freedom of the…

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Scholar, Performer, Educator Joins AAAS Faculty

A scholar, performer, and educator, Gianina K. Lockley joined MSU’s Department of African American and African Studies (AAAS) on August 16, 2021, as a Research Associate whose work is situated at the intersection of critical race theory, ethnography, storytelling, theatre, dance, and performance studies with a focus on the study of race, class, gender, and sexuality within both staged performances and the performative practices of every day.

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Finding Solace in Creating With Support From a CREATE! Micro-Grant

Iliana Cosme-Brooks, a senior double majoring in Arts and Humanities and Public and Professional Writing, has found solace in creating during the COVID-19 pandemic and has picked up embroidery, sewing, crochet, and knitting. She was selected to receive a $500 CREATE! Micro-Grant to respond critically and creatively to the events of the pandemic. Her CREATE! Micro-Grant project, titled “Synonyms for, Symptoms of, Suffocation, Solitude,” is of a mask and an exaggerated and oversized sweater that she made to illustrate how she has felt during the pandemic.  

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