UVA Faculty Spotlight: Bonnie Gordon

Community-engaged Learning Partner with Madison House

Q: We understand you recently received a Public Service Award from the University of Virginia provost’s office. Congratulations! Can you describe the programs and work you do that led to that award? 

A: In 2011, I began a program called the Arts Mentors, a program that pairs UVA undergraduate students and historically underrepresented elementary school kids in a series of creative explorations. The program succeeded and grew beyond my hopes. It was part of the broader Civic and Community Engagement (CCE) program, which consisted of a collective of faculty and community members and made a space for faculty to create year-long curricular experiences with sustained community partners.  

I was also a founding faculty member of the Equity Center. (University of Virginia Equity Center: A Democracy Initiative Center for the Redress of Inequity Through Community Engaged Scholarship) It was an incredible privilege to work alongside colleagues and community members on a co-produced collaborative endeavor.  

As I finished my term with the Equity Center, I began working on a project called C-ville Tulips, a community-driven program for Afghan refugees. We began our second summer of programming on June 14, 2023. We gather with students, faculty, and community members. Women engage in intentional arts programming and English learning with UVA student volunteers.  These student volunteers lead youth programming with the support of Madison House.  

Q: You have been such a wonderful partner to Madison House. Can you describe that partnership, especially as it relates to community engaged learning initiatives? 

A: For me it is difficult to untangle community engaged learning, public service, equity, and Madison House. I am trained as a music historian but have spent much of my time at UVA thinking about community engagement in the curriculum and as a co-curricular endeavor. Madison House has been a key partner every step of the way. Staff and volunteers provided key infrastructure for the Arts Mentors and the Civic and Community Engagement Program. Rose Cole, the current Director of Community Engagement at Madison House, has supported this work alongside me since 2013 when she was a doctoral student. Dr. Cole has been absolutely essential to this program and it was truly a privilege to develop curriculum, training, and student experiences with her. She was in many ways my teacher in this program.  

Community Engagement is a lot like playing improvised music. There are patterns and tropes but it’s not always predictable. And it must be done in collaboration and with listening. This was never more apparent than during the pandemic. When I think about what kept my students and me feeling inspired, especially during the endless dark days of Zoom, I turn to the small and nimble programs that Madison House facilitated.  

The Practice Partners Program stands out. Madison House offered free musical instrument practice partners for middle and high school students in the Charlottesville/Albemarle area who desired help as they practiced and learned to play musical instruments in local public schools. From 2020-2022, I supervised Madison House volunteers who were matched with young musicians. The program provided an essential creative space for UVA students and for local public school students. This could not have happened without Madison House. 

Q: How has community engaged learning evolved in recent years?

A: I have worked hard and intentionally to weave service and curriculum into a net that can help carry students to new places, to ideas they don’t encounter in typical classroom settings, and to people they would otherwise never meet but who bring viewpoints that enrich and deepen the students’ understanding of the world. These students learn in unique ways and enrich our entire university community.  

The Arts Mentors program was the model for the CCE (the aforementioned small curricular program that I launched on my sabbatical in 2016-2017). The program supported classes that worked closely with individual community members and local nonprofits to co-create substantial portions of their curricula in such a way that students worked to meet community-defined goals while deepening their learning and sense of civic responsibility. 

When Julie Caruccio and I began the Arts Mentors in 2011, there was almost no institutional support for community engagement in the curriculum and almost no way to connect what happened in the classroom to what our students did in their Madison House experiences. The landscape now is almost unrecognizable. For me, Madison House has been key in this radically shifting landscape.  

My historical and cultural training have prepared me well to uncover the details and roots of inequity. I’m the product of a Talmudic tradition and my Music History PhD program emphasized close reading, rigorous argument, command of musical styles, and reading proficiency in multiple languages. The harder challenge is to identify, acknowledge, and redress current injustices. Or, to put this differently, it is often easier to study the past than to contemplate the everyday. And at a university like this, we are surrounded by good ideas. But operationalizing them in a curriculum is often an impossible dream at best. Madison House is uniquely positioned to connect the student experience with community engagement. 

Q: What do you see as the future of community engaged learning?   

A: This is a multimillion-dollar question. Community engaged learning exists in ways that seemed impossible a decade ago. But we have a long way to go, and it will require all of us to be nimble and to work collaboratively. I’m excited by programs like the Madison House Fellows and I’m excited by the potential to weave Madison House programs into the curriculum. Madison House has always taught us how to center students, and we need to keep doing this. The experience my colleague Liz Wittner and I have had with C-ville Tulips reminds me that our students desperately need community and that they need more mentorship than ever. They are still reeling from the isolating effects of COVID and a violent and divisive political discourse as their coming-of-age backdrop. In C-ville Tulips, we have been, quite simply, blown away by the smarts, strength, commitment, and empathy of our student volunteers and interns. The students built themselves a team largely through bringing their friends and colleagues, and they show up in all-weather at all hours with a contagious energy and commitment to creating this new community. At a moment when every bit of data suggests that college students are not okay after a global pandemic that wreaked havoc on their education and that young voters remain perilously apathetic, they need multigenerational and multinational connections, and they need to feel that they can make a difference.