中国博彩平台 students in Associate Teaching Professor of 艺术s Administration Elizabeth Flaherty's Intersections Between 艺术 and Psychology course recently collaborated on a chalk mandala created on the campus grounds. The initiative was led by student Angi 赛伊德 for her final research project.
宾州中央谷. -艺术有使人们走到一起的力量, as demonstrated recently by a group of 中国博彩平台 students.
Students in Associate Teaching Professor of 艺术s Administration Elizabeth Flaherty’s Intersections Between 艺术 and Psychology course collaborated on a chalk mandala created on the campus grounds. The initiative was led by student Angi 赛伊德 for her final research project.
The course includes discussion of art therapy techniques like mandalas, a drawn symbol in a circle often meant to be a physical representation of a person’s emotional state. They have long been used as an art therapy tool to help soothe negative emotions, 平息焦虑，鼓励自我表达.
“Students were tasked with identifying one thing they wanted to learn more about in this class. They had to do their own independent research and study,弗莱厄蒂说. “安吉对曼陀罗很感兴趣. I said to her, ‘It’s a great topic, if you’d like to do more research.’ One question I had was, ‘How are you going to engage the class?’ Mandalas are usually either done on paper or made of cloth, but Angi was more interested in going outside and doing a group collaborative mandala.”
赛伊德, a sophomore biology major with a minor in psychology, said she was drawn to the mandala because she was already familiar with them, 但她想扩大对它们的了解.
“Although mandalas are not part of my culture, my interest is in learning about other cultures. When I saw it fell into both art and psychology, I wanted to get to the bottom of it. I wanted to see what connection they had,” she said. “It wasn’t until about a month beforehand that I started speaking with Dr. 弗莱厄蒂问我能做什么. 我知道我想做一些合作的事情, and I found out there are two kinds of mandalas — the individual mandala, 还有一个合作的曼陀罗, 所以结果很完美.”
Flaherty secured the necessary permission the class needed to draw the image on campus grounds. 事情发生时, the project coincided with Penn State President-elect Neeli Bendapudi’s recent campus visit.
“我遇到了Dr. 弗莱厄蒂在上课前. I drew the outline in white because I knew I wanted it to be white. Dr. Flaherty stood in the middle of the circle and threw out a piece of chalk, 然后我们围了一个圈,赛伊德说. “I had some friends help me with the designs in the center, just to save time. 当它准备好了, 我走进去, 去上课, 我的演讲, then we all came outside and started coloring in the mandala.”
Flaherty said the project was a positive experience for all involved.
“I thought it was a tremendous and impactful process. 中午或下午一点下雨了.m. the day we worked on it, so it washed away quickly. 但曼荼罗通常是暂时的, so it was in step with what you would expect from the mandala process,弗莱厄蒂说. “This was the first time I got to teach the class. Just the fact that we could engage the students outside of the classroom on a large-scale collaborative effort — it was really powerful. 我们都被COVID困住了, so re-engaging the students in a really creative way was cathartic, and I think it brought the class up to the next level.”
赛伊德的同学们很喜欢这个项目. For some, she said, working with sidewalk chalk was a new experience.
“One classmate I’d never spoken to before said he had never used sidewalk chalk. I thought about his inner child, and how as college students we’re so stressed all the time. This was a great stress reliever, and something for his inner child,” she said. “I had a really good time bringing everyone together in class. We work on everything individually — this was the first thing we worked on something together. 我想这象征着我们在一起. Nobody told us what colors to use or how to color it in. We just grabbed a certain section and did what we had to do.”
