Kaighin McColl, Assistant Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences and of Environmental Science and Engineering, is a hydrologist who extended his General Education course, Water and the Environment, beyond the science to include artistic representations of the impact that water has had on human life across time. After connecting with the Harvard Art Museums (HAM) at the Bok Center’s August 2019 Course Design Institute, McColl began collaborating with curators in 2020 to broaden the course, make it more engaging to a general audience, and challenge students to view the concepts learned in class in a different domain. He notes that he’s “a complete rookie when it comes to art,” but that HAM curators have been “very enthusiastic and helpful” figuring out ways to integrate the Museums’ collections into his course.
McColl’s General Education course aims to reach a non-technical audience interested in learning more about Earth’s water cycle. His collaboration with the Harvard Art Museums engages students, provides opportunities to apply their learning beyond the science classroom setting, and encourages them to analyze the enduring impact of water on human society. Students are provided a visual and historical representation of course content.
“We're all familiar with the water cycle, but we tune it out. What I like about the interaction with the Museums’ collection is that it is very explicitly about looking at an image and really seeing what is going on in a deeper, more visceral sense than what I'd be capable of doing if I was on my own.”
McColl launched this course during the COVID-19 pandemic, so his students were unable to visit HAM in person. While he intends to bring students to the Museums in the future, he notes that HAM curators’ presentations took advantage of the Zoom environment to focus students’ attention on pieces outside HAM’s collection. Museums staff teach students to engage with art in ways they may not have done before.
Takeaways and best practices
Be open-minded. The Harvard Art Museums are a “fantastic resource”, and the curators are eager to help faculty develop relevant programming for their course, even if faculty don’t know where to start. McColl found the planning process to be an iterative process in which Museums staff suggested pieces and then they discussed potential directions for the conversation with students. McColl notes that it’s “hard to tell until you run a session with students how it will go,” but in his experience, it’s been a valuable addition to the course.
Connect the visit to other classroom activities. In his course, McColl tasks students with weekly assignments that lead up to a final assignment. He found that building a response about the Museums visit into the sequence and asking students to analyze a piece of art they viewed through the same analytic frameworks they are learning in class deepened their understanding.
Bottom line
Think creatively about how your course might engage with resources at the University, such as the Harvard Art Museums. Museums staff can work with you to develop an idea and deliver programming that engages students and allows them to explore your course’s subject matter in a different context, with objects as primary sources for any interdisciplinary subject.
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Kaighin McColl, Assistant Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences and of Environmental Science and Engineering, is a hydrologist who extended his General Education course, Water and the Environment, beyond the science to include artistic representations of the impact that water has had on human life across time. After connecting with the Harvard Art Museums (HAM) at the Bok Center’s August 2019 Course Design Institute, McColl began collaborating with curators in 2020 to broaden the course, make it more engaging to a general audience, and challenge students to view the concepts learned in class in a different domain. He notes that he’s “a complete rookie when it comes to art,” but that HAM curators have been “very enthusiastic and helpful” figuring out ways to integrate the Museums’ collections into his course.
