VGCC Instructor Awarded Fellowship to Study in Mexico
Vance-Granville Community College instructor Matthew Nielsen returned to his Spanish classroom this fall invigorated by a unique academic opportunity. This summer, Nielsen received a fellowship from the Community College Humanities Association to attend a month-long institute in Oaxaca, Mexico. The institute, entitled “Oaxaca: Crossroads of a Continent,” provided participants with an in-depth study of the history and culture of Oaxaca, a mountainous state in southern Mexico, with a focus on the indigenous cultures of the Zapotec and Mixtec peoples. Twenty-four faculty selected from community colleges, four-year colleges and universities throughout the United States studied Zapotec and Mixtec cultures in the field with nine internationally-known scholars and writers from a variety of humanities and social sciences disciplines. The Institute was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
“Overall, the program was outstanding,” Nielsen said. “I was able to study archaeology, anthropology, history, art, and all of the humanities in general. Also, as a Spanish speaker/instructor who had never been to an area of México with large indigenous populations, the opportunity for immersion in this new Spanish-speaking population was exiting.”
Nielsen said that the unique institute gave him renewed enthusiasm for humanities education. “It reminded me of how much I miss the daily life of a student,” he said. “It was great to be back in class.” Now that he is in back teaching his VGCC classes, Nielsen hopes that his eagerness to learn rubs off on students. “Students and teachers both need to remember that education should not be a chore,” Nielsen said. “The opportunity to learn should be enjoyed and regarded highly. I also hope to emphasize to students that the humanities are not a waste of time, but rather a very important, intriguing, and rewarding area of study. The loss of the arts, literature, language, philosophy, religion, and social science as key components in our students’ curriculum would be tragic.”
According to the CCHA, “Oaxaca: Crossroads of a Continent” aimed at highlighting an often overlooked region of the Americas where some of the most important transformations in human history have taken place. It was the indigenous peoples of the Oaxaca region — ancestors of today’s Zapotec and Mixtec peoples — who were responsible for an independent development of agriculture, for early urbanization and primary state formation, and for the production of some of the earliest monumental architecture and earliest manifestations of Mesoamerican writing and calendar systems in the New World. While presently it is one of the poorest states in Mexico, Oaxaca in the past was a cultural center of Mesoamerican civilization.
“Daily lectures, round-table discussions, study visits, and interactions with the other members of the institute and locals provided a supreme learning environment for the studies of Oaxaca’s cultures and peoples, both past and present,” Nielsen reflected. “By studying at archaeological digs, historic sites, museums, cultural centers, downtown centers, rural areas, and small villages, the group was able to function as a mobile and dynamic classroom.”
Nielsen was one of three North Carolina participants in the institute. The others were Caroline Whitehead, a social scientist from Craven Community College, and Angela Herren, an art historian from UNC-Charlotte.
The project was directed by Dr. Laraine Fletcher, an Anthropology professor at Adelphi University in New York, and Dr. George Scheper, coordinator of Humanities at Community College of Baltimore County-Essex, and it was managed by David A. Berry, Executive Director of the Community College Humanities Association. In addition to those institute planners, Nielsen expressed his thanks to former VGCC Dean of Arts and Sciences Dr. John Beck for making this opportunity possible.
Nielsen was one of two VGCC instructors to study abroad this summer. Instructor Marian Dillahunt-Andrews represented the college on a trip with other educators to India.
Above: VGCC instructor Matt Nielsen hikes in Cuajimoloyas, in the mountains of Oaxaca.
