Architecture students to share M-LAB project experience with Colgate audience

Susan Feightner
(315) 443-1525

Three original team members of the Syracuse University sculpture class that designed and built the Mobile Literacy Arts Bus (M-LAB) will discuss the project and its mission during a lecture for the Art and Art History Department Lecture Series at Colgate University on Wednesday, Oct. 29, at 4:30 p.m. in Golden Auditorium in Little Hall.

Speaking will be SU School of Architecture alumni Vincent Appel ’08 and Jessica Posner ’08, and fifth-year architecture student Zachary Seibold. Posner is the current M-LAB coordinator.

The M-LAB was built by a team of SU students enrolled in a seminar taught by Marion Wilson, director of community initiatives for SU’s College of Visual and Performing Arts (VPA). M-LAB is a project within the Partnership for Better Education, which engages the Syracuse City School District (SCSD) and higher education students, faculty and staff in projects that enhance and enrich the educational experience of the students and communities served by the SCSD.

The M-LAB began as a used recreational vehicle and was renovated into a mobile arts studio equipped with digital cameras, laptop computers, printers and other technologies. The project began last year with Henninger High School students and this year involves Fowler High School students. The class is producing an interactive, online Zine of their work, and an exhibition will be mounted in SU’s Warehouse Gallery.

SU students enrolled in the “Literacy, Community, and Photography” course taught collaboratively by Stephen Mahan, photography instructor in the Department of Transmedia in VPA, and John Colasacco, an instructor in The College of Arts and Sciences Writing Program, are mentoring the high school students in both the writing and photography components of their class work.

For more information about M-LAB, contact David Morgan, director of the Partnership for Better Education, at (315) 443-4181.