Research and Creativity
Meadows Exploration Awards
The Meadows Exploration Awards offer undergraduate students the opportunity to do something truly amazing through art. Designed to promote independent research and creative exploration, the awards are available to any Meadows undergraduate student with an approved idea and a faculty sponsor. Past award recipients have choreographed new works; written and performed music; created art, films and TV programs; worked on political campaigns; delved into research; embarked on national and international trips; and participated in performances.
Their efforts have made a difference regionally, locally and internationally. For example, journalism majors Myra Arthur, Garrett Haake, Ashleigh Hendricks and Gabe Travers explored immigration issues through a series of interviews shot in El Paso, Texas, and Ciudád Juarez, Mexico. The resulting documentary, "Reaching Across Borders: A Bicultural Look at Immigration in Texas," examined the views of students, immigrant families, border officials and lawmakers on both sides of the border.
Emily Ewbank, an Art History student, traveled to Auschwitz, Treblinka and seven other Polish Holocaust sites to explore the impact of the Holocaust on contemporary Polish memorial art. She continued her work in an Art History seminar at SMU, "Why We Go to Auschwitz: Art, Trauma and Memory," with a research paper on the effect of the Holocaust on the work of artist Anselm Kiefer. The experience culminated in an exhibition of photographs she took in Poland at the Dallas gallery Gray Matters.