When I consider experiential learning across this program, I think about moments where learning moved from knowledge to practice.
Grant writing and ethics work helped me build responsible research rather than simply produce an assignment. It trained me to think about who benefits from research, who is burdened by it, and what accountability looks like in method, not just in intention.
The creative work asked me to do self location and honest reflection without hiding behind academic distance. And the trauma focused coursework taught me that witnessing is not passive. It demands a response that is worthy of what is shared.
Vlad’s summary captures why these spaces can matter when they are designed with care. He observes that human rights museums can create experiences “where the emphasis is often placed on generating memorable emotional experiences, rather than simply conveying information” (Vlad, 2022, p. 3). That language aligns with how I now think about consultation and learning spaces. Facts matter. But if a process does not reach people as whole human beings, it often fails to change anything that matters.
Reflection on Experiential Learning
When I consider the experiential learning woven throughout my graduate journey in Human Rights and Social Justice, I find myself reflecting not just on what I learned, but on how I was changed by the act of learning itself. Three experiences outside of my practicum stand out as particularly transformative — each building on the last, and each asking something different of me as a scholar, a creator, and a community member.
Claiming My Place as a Researcher
Writing a grant proposal was more than a technical exercise. It required me to articulate why my questions mattered, how I would approach them ethically, and what accountability looked like. It helped me move through impostor syndrome by replacing doubt with structure, clarity, and responsibility.
Artifact: Grant proposal
A creative project in the decolonization focused course forced me to make choices about voice, image, and story without hiding behind theory. It became a form of reckoning and self location. It taught me that discomfort is not a flaw in learning. It is often the evidence that learning is real.
Artifact: Time and Place video
Bringing the Work Home: The Community Showcase
Sharing work in a public or community facing setting changes the stakes. It reminded me that scholarship carries responsibility, and that accountability to community is not an appendix to academic work. It is the point.
Artifact: Indigenous Data Sovereignty Podcast
Looking Forward
Taken together, these three experiences have shaped a through-line in my development as a human rights practitioner and researcher. I have learned to claim my scholarly voice, to engage with justice through creative and embodied means, and to understand that the work I do in this program belongs, ultimately, to something larger than myself.
Source
Vlad, I. (2022). Emotion and memory in Third Space human rights education: An examination of two national museums. International Journal of Human Rights Education, 6(1). https://repository.usfca.edu/ijhre/vol6/iss1/6