Center for Regional Excellence Cultural Discovery and Learning

Cultural Discovery and Learning

In short, we seek to develop IU Northwest as a center for culture in Northwest Indiana. In order to do so, our work as scholars and educators needs more visibility in the community, and we need to learn more about resources in the community. With the Center for Regional Excellence, we have the potential for increased professional opportunities, increased visibility of the university as a community of scholars, increased learning opportunities for students, increased community and campus collaboration, improved campus climate, and the opportunity to attract a broader audience for our events and other work. Visibility creates partnerships. Partnerships foster community, and celebration of community enhances our overall quality of life in the region.

The Curatoriate and the Executive Director welcome informal dialogue about your ideas as you develop your proposal.

An example of a major project realized through the work of the Center for Regional Excellecne is our Public Art proposal that has resulted in development of one of the most significant public art projects in Indiana in forty years, the IU Northwest Sculpture Garden. It links an ambitious faculty creativity project of sculptures echoing the industrial landscape of the region with landscape architecture that recreates plantings indigenous to the region in a space accessible by campus and community alike. It offers donors to the IU Foundation a way to contribute to the aesthetics of the region, and the campus the opportunity to use the Garden as a learning environment. Ways that it links the three V's—visualize, verbalize, and virtualize—might look like this:

Public Art / Landscape Project

Here are just a few things that we can do for you in your Cultural Discovery and Learning work:.

• We will fund faculty in collaboaration with staff, students, and visiting fellows from the community, to create interdisciplinary and collaborative projects and programs within the scope of regional cultural discovery.
• We will showcase the relevant research and creativity and expertise of faculty on our website and assist with networking.
• We will showcase course and program offerings on cultural discovery.
• We will offer assistance in creating ways students can become integral to projects.
• Working with our Executive Director, we will seek funding for projects approved in concept by the Curatoriate.
• We’ll work with you through the Curatoriate to actualize ideas into projects sponsored by the Center, seeking technical expertise to virtualize ideas. While we are interested in major proposals and welcome them, our current focus is on interdisciplinary ideas that are finite, carry reasonable costs, are achievable in a relatively short time frame, and offer the opportunity to create linkages across disciplines and into the community.
• We invite additional ideas that will sustain IU Northwest’s unique identity as a center of regional excellence for cultural discovery and learning, a place that fosters a culture of creativity, celebrates regional research and creativity, promotes professional development in cultural discovery and sustainable regional vitality, and links diverse groups on the campus and in the community in shared expertise and creativity.
• In addition, we work with the Chancellor's slate of Diversity Programming, offering a slate of Diversity projects and Events each year.

General Information

• Cultural Discovery and Learning Project Ideas
• Cultural Discovery and Learning Principles and Guidelines