EHN Associated Youth Programs
The EHN facilitates, supports, and interconnects a number of arts, humanities, STEM, and civic programs for Syracuse area youth. These programs collaborate to align curriculum, scheduling, and personnel across schools and community centers, enabling youth to participate in ongoing enrichment programming across stages of education and communities with the support of SU faculty, students, and staff and local artists, teachers, and community leaders connecting through the EHN.
Launched in the summer of 2019, the Narratio Fellowship connects resettled refugee youth ages 16-22 with artists and mentors through an annual storytelling project in collaboration with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. After a summer program focused on object-based storytelling, culminating in a public performance at the Met, youth Fellows continue to work with artists and Narratio staff to design and facilitate workshops and performances at local community centers, libraries, galleries, and schools. The annual program culminates in a comprehensive exhibit in Fellows’ home communities. Fellowship alum cycle back into subsequent years of the program as facilitators and artists.
Natural Science Explorers Program
The Natural Science Explorers Program (NSEP) seeks to inspire scientific curiosity in elementary students through a collaborative, graduate student-led educational program. The program uses inquiry-based learning and culturally responsive teaching to engage students in the scientific process and empower them to explore the natural world around them. In this way, NSEP motivates students to explore the natural world through the lens of ecology, evolution, earth, and the environment and promotes science identities by encouraging students to follow the scientific process by asking questions and having scientific discussions.
Write Out
Write Out is a community writing collective that partners with local organizations to offer youth-oriented after school programming designed to get students excited about writing and storytelling. Since it was first launched in 2020, Write Out has partnered with teachers, artists, and community leaders from the North Side Learning Center, YWCA’s Girls Inc., the Center for Community Alternatives, La Casita Cultural Center, SUNY ESF, and Syracuse University to co-design writing workshops for children and teens in the Syracuse Area. Write Out seeks to provide youth a space to share their own stories, on their own terms, and encourage students to write across languages and modes of meaning-making.
Speaking Circle
Speaking Circle is an after school dialogue and public speaking program developed in collaboration with the North Side Learning Center that fosters information literacy, language proficiency, and civic engagement through research-based public speaking activities and events. Since 2021, student across Syracuse City School District high schools have participated in Model United Nations conferences, original oratory competitions, New York State History Day, and Public Forums.
Photography & Literacy (PAL)
Photography & Literacy (PAL) is a collaboration between Mercy Works, SU Art Museum, and the Engaged Humanities Network that works with middle and high school students to tell stories through photography and writing. The PAL Project was founded by photographer and public educator Stephen Mahan in 2010. In its decade-long lifespan, the program has connected Syracuse University students, faculty, and staff with hundreds of local K-12 students to develop autobiographical texts blending photography, digital media, and writing. Mahan passed in 2018, but his panoramic empathy and commitment to social justice and education live on in this cornerstone program of ethical and impactful community-engaged teaching, learning, and creative expression.
Syracuse University Research in Physics (SURPh)
Project Leads: Jenny Ross, Mirna Mihovilovic Skanata, Alison Patteson, Denver Whittington, Eric Coughlin (Physics)
SURPh is a 6-week, paid internship for students from the Syracuse City School District high schools designed to create a pipeline of diverse science and engineering students in the Syracuse City area. In partnership with SCSD teachers, Physics faculty lead student participants in bootcamps to introduce basic experimental skills they need in their research. After working in labs on cutting-edge physics research, participants present their science to families, SCSD leaders, and Syracuse University leaders.
The Body Project
The Body Project is an empirically-supported prevention program proven to improve body image, prevent eating disorders and reduce depression among adolescent girls and young women. In this iteration of the program, members of SU's Clinical Psychology program partner with the YWCA of Onondaga County to run weekly sessions in conjunction with Girls Inc. after school and summer programming. Participants learn to speak, write and act in ways that run counter to the cultural appearance ideal for females.
Data Warriors
Project Leads: Nicole Fonger (Math & Math Education), Jonnell Robinson (Community Geography), Ken Keech (Nottingham H.S.), Stephen Caviness (Math Education), Karley Voyias (Math Education), Waleed Raja (Math Education), Lauren Ashby (Sociology)
Data Warriors brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars in the fields of mathematics education, community geography, and sociology to work with work Nottingham High School teacher Ken Keech and his students on education and advocacy around local environmental justice issues through math and mapping. The current and ongoing work of the project focuses on lead poisoning prevention, Interstate 81, and building safe communities in Syracuse.
Breedlove Readers
Project Lead: Courtney Mauldin (Teaching & Leadership)
The goal of The Breedlove Readers book club is to enlarge the leadership experiences of middle and high school aged Black girls by centering their experiences, truths, and multiple literacies. Recognizing that the educational spaces available to Black girls that support and encourage their processes of truth-telling have been, and continue to be, severely limited (Brown, 2013), it is of utmost importance that they have access to alternative educational spaces that prioritize their interests and lived experiences. Breedlove responds to this need by supporting Black girls in accessing literature that positively reflects their lives as well as creates alternative spaces for Black girls to gather in community and explore reading, writing, and creating towards social transformation in their communities.
Creative Art Lab
Project Lead: Rochele Royster (Creative Arts Therapy)
Creative Arts Lab is a pop-up open art studio that holds space for people to discover and nurture their artists’ selves, address and heal trauma and work toward creating social change within themselves and their communities. Using a black feminist framework and community care model, participants explore topics of interests through the creative arts, storytelling, installation and exhibition.
Deaf New Americans CODA Educational Support
Deaf New Americans Advocacy Inc. is working with the EHN to connect Children of Deaf Adults (CODAs) with after-school educational support for all subjects. CODAs often experience delays and gaps in their learning because of language barriers between homes, communities, and schools. This program provides academic and English language support through 1-1 and small group tutoring, conversation, and relationship building.
Philosophy Lab
Philosophy Lab creates after-school programming for local middle and high school students centered on developing reasoning and critical thinking skills via philosophy. The program's primary goal is to help students gain the confidence to develop their own principled answers to some of the deep existential questions they may already be wondering about.