Medieval recruiting

UNM does all kinds of recruiting to reel in new students, but one of the strangest ways might be talking to high school students about the plague.

Nicholas Schwartz is the program’s facilitator of the Medieval Outreach Program, and he said UNM students and alumni to go to local high schools to talk about medieval culture and society and mentor students.

“This semester we have presented on the Black Death in relation to Chaucer and ‘daily life’ in medieval England, among others,” he said. “We also have a peer mentoring program, which offers high school students the opportunity to work with a graduate student on a project related to the Middle Ages.”

The University is the only school in the nation with a outreach program for medieval studies. He said the outreach program began in the mid 90s. Timothy Graham, the director of the Institute for Medieval Studies, said University students in the Outreach Program also help high school students prepare projects for National History Day, which has competitive stages at both the local, state, and national levels.

“Last year, one of the students we advised reached the national stage of the competition, when he had the opportunity to present his project on the Fourth Crusade of 1204 in Washington, D.C.,” Graham said.

Schwartz said the program shows high school medieval studies can be interesting, which could encourage them to study it at UNM.

“Giving presentations in local high schools is a great way to do that,” he continued. “Our hope is that these presentations enrich students’ appreciation of the medieval period and, ideally, make them more interested in it.”

UNM student Jeramie Barker, who gives presentations at high schools as part of the Outreach Program, said many students have misinformation about the medieval period, which he said he hopes to rectify.

“While at Albuquerque High School a teacher whose class we were going to present in referred to the period that we study as ‘the Dark Ages,’” he said. “I jokingly replied that we prefer to call the period ‘the Middle Ages.’ Our goal, at least it is mine, is to bring a little light to ‘the Dark Ages.’”

Patricia Gardner, a teacher at Albuquerque High School, said her students seem to enjoy the presentations.

“Most enjoyed learning from the grad students, as well as the activities,” she said. “The grad students in the outreach program are a great community resource. Any time I have a student with a project from that time period, I always refer them to the Outreach Program.”