Celebrating Student Voice through the Annual First Year Experience Exhibition

Abstract

Instructors from the library and museums will discuss the First Year Experience (FYE) Exhibition, a project that invites first-year students to see themselves as full participants in the academic community at the University of Delaware. Each year, we curate an exhibition of student-created work as a way to demonstrate that their ideas about social issues are valued in an academic context. The exhibition draws the campus community’s attention to digital reflections students create as part of a library and museums program for the FYE curriculum. In this program, students interact with art exhibitions and Special Collections materials related to themes from the required First Year Common Reader. We make sure that students’ ideas and experiences guide our curatorial process. We welcome creations from all levels of artistic skill and validate popular modes of information creation. We hope to expand possibilities for other institutions to value student voice on campus.