Welcome to Querencia!

Querencia: Integrating place-based learning in Southwest Studies curricula

The distinctive profile of UArizona as a Hispanic-serving and Indigenous serving institution, coupled with our land-grant mission, uniquely positions us to develop a curriculum built on immersive experience in our distinct Arizona-Sonora borderlands region. This interdisciplinary project interlaces active, place-based learning with research in local archival materials, focused on the unique and plural histories, geographies, arts, and material cultures of this region. Project faculty will develop or adapt content modules from their Southwest-related courses to integrate travel to southern Arizona sites of cultural, historical, ecological and human significance, supported by primary sources in local archives. In the process, we will measure ways in which confronting such sites firsthand affects faculty pedagogy, student learning practices and academic choices, and undergraduate students’ sense of affiliation with home places and region. 

Through this project, faculty will integrate pedagogical practices anchored in Native Ways of Knowing, working in respectful, reciprocal, relational, and responsible contexts with the places and communities we explore. This project engages with UArizona’s core values of adaptation and exploration, sparks curiosity and nurtures compassion and inclusion practices.

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Why Querencia?

Students are intrigued by the unique blend of Indigenous, Spanish, and Anglo settler cultures, languages, and influences in the Arizona-Sonora borderlands. Yet, a wealth of digital information and the isolation of the pandemic have led to increased screen-based learning. This project adapts study-abroad immersion to “study a-near,” using the principles of Place-Based Learning (PBL). Barry Lopez called such immersion querencia: “a place on the ground where one feels secure, a place from which one’s strength of character is drawn—a place in which we know exactly who we are—the place from which we speak our deepest beliefs.”1 This interdisciplinary project interlaces Place Based Learning with local archival materials based in the unique epistemologies and plural histories, geographies, arts, and material cultures of the Arizona-Sonora borderlands. We will measure the impact of PBL on faculty teaching and learning, on student learning practices and academic choices, and undergraduate students’ sense of affiliation with home places and region. The distinctive profile of UArizona as a Hispanic-serving and Indigenous-serving institution, coupled with our land-grant mission, uniquely positions us to develop such a project.

Recent Events

Place-Based Learning in the Arizona Borderlands - UA CUES - Hybrid seminar and panel led by Dr. Jennifer Jenkins.

"Creating Inclusive and Equitable Learning Environments" - FLC (Faculty Learning Community) - Lecture by Dr. Jennifer Jenkins

Do I Engage in Epistemological Dominance in Academia? - Lecture by Dr. Christine Ami