The W.M. Keck Foundation has awarded a $250,000 grant to California State University San Marcos (CSUSM) to develop a program on American Indian digital media and culture. This is the first grant that CSUSM has been awarded from the Keck Foundation.

The funding from this award will support a joint project between the California Indian Culture & Sovereignty Center (CICSC) and the Video in the Community program titled The American Indian Digital Media & Culture Project (AIDM&C). Professors Joely Proudfit and Kristine Diekman will work together on this three-year project.

The team plans to work with undergraduate liberal arts faculty and 180 undergraduate students to create, research, design and produce digital media arts products and projects with the assistance of tribal community subject and digital media matter experts.

“The overall goals are to create an international model for the presentation of tribal cultural knowledge through the delivery of interdisciplinary undergraduate media arts based projects; and to provide tribal community members, students and faculty the instruction, support and resources needed to create community responsive media projects,” said Proudfit.

“We are creating a ‘first of its kind’ model for the delivery of courses that can be replicated in other institutions,” said Diekman. “The incorporation of strategies, which include American Indian epistemology, will have far-reaching effects due to the fact that the faculty and students who are trained and who incorporate digital media projects will continue to build on their own skill sets after the completion of the project.”

Ultimately, the program will have six core courses in the project. These six courses serve as the interdisciplinary foundation for teaching and research in the undergraduate liberal arts curriculum with their emphasis on cultural intelligence, critical thinking, creative problem solving and communication.