My name is Courtney Colligan, and I am a Ph.D. Candidate in Theatre and Performance Studies. For the second summer in a row, I enjoyed working with GirlGov and their school-year programming. This summer, under the direction of Ph.D. Psychology student Nabila Jamal-Orozco and Dr. Josefina Bañales, I developed a literature review to trace the efficacy of YPAR methodology from its relatively recent conception. YPAR, Youth Participatory Action Research, is a methodology that centers youth experiences and knowledge and uses said understanding to act on social issues in communities. After the literature review, I began developing a curriculum with associated lesson plans for GirlGov to start their own YPAR project over the 2021-2022 school year. In developing curriculum and lesson plans for GirlGov, I have drawn on my years of teaching varying courses at Pitt. Because the theatre department allows grads to teach so many different classes, I’ve had a lot of experience developing a wide array of projects, activities, and evaluations that have been reworked for the GirlGov curriculum.
In building this curriculum, I reflected on how I’ve had minimal experience reading articles in psychology and social work. Therefore, learning new terms and varying forms of article structure has helped me reflect on my own writing. The pieces I am reading are precise, to the point, and typically clear. Broadening my field of study and finding ways to communicate across disciplines will help me navigate various career paths across the nonprofit sector. Furthermore, critically examining social structures and school-age programming has provided me a new way of evaluating the efficacy of community-focused programming and what role I can play in this type of programming.
From this project, I’ve become more interested in how organizations are structured, where funding comes from and why, and the ethics of studying people without solely using them as a research point – which some articles I’ve read seem to do. Grounding research and projects in the humanity of those involved and being aware of power dynamics has also made me respect and appreciate GirlGov even more, and I hope to work for an organization like theirs following graduation.
Courtney Colligan
Theatre Arts
September 2021
Learn about all the Pitch Your Own Summer Immersive Fellows and Curated Immersive Summer Fellows and their experiences with their host organizations.