Each summer, we celebrate the scholarly and adventurous ways College of Liberal Arts students spend their summer break. Between internships, education abroad, and volunteering, our students are using their time away from campus to enrich their college experience.

Check out our four summertime standout students for 2019:

Jayleen Serrano
Jayleen Serrano

Jayleen Serano

Jayleen Serrano, a senior art student concentrating in graphic design, has a special connection with South Korea.

Her mother is Korean and much of Serrano’s childhood was a blend of American and Korean culture, including the entertainment and art she consumed.

This summer, Serrano had the opportunity to study abroad in South Korea and apply an academic lens to a piece of South Korean culture: films.

Serrano was one of six CSU students participating in an education abroad program called “Cinema, Culture, and History in South Korea.” The month-long program in Seoul is led by Associate Professor Hye Seung Chung from the Department of Communication Studies and focuses on the history of cinema in Korea’s post-colonial era. From the Golden Age classics of the 1950s and 1960s to the blockbuster hits and contemporary art-house films of today, students examined the films in the context of the sociopolitical and cultural issues the country was facing at the time.

Read more about Serano on Source 

Craig Somers

Craig Somers, history graduate student, outside of the Public Lands History Center
Craig Somers, history graduate student, outside of the Public Lands History Center

Craig Somers, a graduate student in Colorado State University’s history department, is inspired by preservation’s move toward more inclusive practices that “engage underrepresented communities to recover cultural identity and history.”

Somers is somewhat of a nontraditional student in the public history program. While he has a passion for public lands and American history, his previous experience is in design.

This summer, Somers worked with the Public Lands History Center (PLHC) and the City of Greeley’s Historic Preservation Office to conduct various public history projects.

Later in August, Somers spent a week in Rocky Mountain National Park with other graduate and undergraduate students, high school teachers and students, and NPS staff to create an interactive digital education tool for Trail Ridge Road. This project is part of an ongoing annual collaboration between the PLHC and Rocky Mountain National Park called Parks as Portals to Learning.

Read more about Somers on Source