[{"id":1024,"date":"2025-06-18T20:31:27","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T20:31:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/thectrlbeat\/?p=1024"},"modified":"2025-06-18T20:31:27","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T20:31:27","slug":"letter-from-the-editors-spring-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/thecfebeat\/2025\/06\/18\/letter-from-the-editors-spring-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Letter from the Editors, Spring 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

Letter from the Editors, Spring 2025<\/h3>
<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

We welcome you to the spring semester with a new issue of\u00a0The CTRL Beat<\/em>!<\/p>\n

The spring 2025 issue highlights practice- and research-based insights on labor-based grading, global dialogue, individual liberation, teaching first-semester students, and the myth of attention spans. It also features insights from AU award recipients.<\/p>\n

The diversity of topics on teaching, research, and learning explored in this issue showcases the breadth of ways in which faculty and staff across campus engage in critical reflections on these issues.<\/p>\n

We hope you enjoy this issue and continue to engage with past issues through\u00a0our archive<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Thank you for your continued support!<\/p>\n

Sincerely,
\nSahil Mathur, Managing Editor
\nHannah Jardine, Executive Editor<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>

<\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":4249,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editor-letters"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/thecfebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/thecfebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/thecfebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/thecfebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4249"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/thecfebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/thecfebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/thecfebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/thecfebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/thecfebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":966,"date":"2025-06-18T16:00:44","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T16:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/thectrlbeat\/?p=966"},"modified":"2025-06-24T02:29:51","modified_gmt":"2025-06-24T02:29:51","slug":"applying-ethical-frameworks-to-experiential-learning-in-the-field-faculty-student-reflections-from-anthropology-in-ecuador-zev-cossin-and-leticia-soares","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/thecfebeat\/2025\/06\/18\/applying-ethical-frameworks-to-experiential-learning-in-the-field-faculty-student-reflections-from-anthropology-in-ecuador-zev-cossin-and-leticia-soares\/","title":{"rendered":"Applying Ethical Frameworks to Experiential Learning in the Field: Faculty\u2013Student Reflections from Anthropology in Ecuador – Zev Cossin and Leticia Soares"},"content":{"rendered":"

Applying Ethical Frameworks to Experiential Learning in the Field<\/h1>

Faculty\u2013Student Reflections from Anthropology in Ecuador<\/p>\n<\/div>

<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n
<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
By Zev Cossin and Leticia Soares<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Fall 2025<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

In July 2023, Zev Cossin (Anthropology) led a group of AU students to Cayambe, Ecuador for a fieldwork course in Community-Based Research Methods and Anthropology. The following is a conversational reflection between Dr. Cossin and Leticia Soares, a student in the fieldwork course, on the challenges and opportunities of directly involving undergraduate students in ongoing collaborative research methods. Through our reflections, we discuss the importance of fully integrating students into collaborative research methods. Despite key challenges, doing so helps train a new generation of ethically oriented social scientists.<\/p>\n

Leticia: <\/strong><\/p>\n

In reflecting on our work in Ecuador, I think back to my first visit to \u201cQuitoloma.\u201d New to the country, new to the altitude, I trek my way up a mountain covered in grasses longer than my legs. I scramble over rocks at the peak and map out the remains of ancient habitation, all while wondering what in the world I was doing there. We had been told the site was an Inca fortress used to take over the region around 1500 C.E.\u2014a few decades prior to Spanish arrival. Yet, the longer I spent trying to understand that narrative, the more I wondered: What other stories and experiences might be buried in that landscape? Our excursion was led by American anthropologists; I wondered what role the local people played in their research, if at all. Who controlled the narrative of the site? Who benefitted from this work? Most importantly, I was left wondering what role I had in a field with a deep history of colonial practices and extractive research methods.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Figure 1<\/em>. The site of Quitoloma, Ecuador. Habitation structures (ca. 1500) are visible in the foreground. Agricultural fields reach higher up into the high altitude \u201cparamo\u201d ecosystem in the background. Photo by Zev Cossin.<\/p>\n

Zev:<\/strong><\/p>\n

I, too, think back to that day at Quitoloma. As one of those American anthropologists leading a group of students, I had been there many times, and it has become a place of intense emotions for me: the cold, thin air, indescribable views of the valleys below, the quick surges of rain clouds and intense wind gusts that overtake you without warning\u2014these are just the physical triggers. But the view from the site also looks out upon the setting of over 500 years of resistance to colonial forces by local families.<\/p>\n

First, local communities put up fierce resistance to an Inca incursion around 1500 C.E. After finally succumbing to the expanding Inca empire, just a generation later, local families found themselves in a new battle against Spanish colonization. The Spanish introduced new systems of land tenure and the region became dominated by the hacienda<\/em> system that ensnared local Indigenous families in violent forms of debt peonage. And today, the export flower industry is the newest actor, buying up land and employing descendants of those hacienda<\/em> laborers to cultivate beautiful roses and cut-flowers to sell to consumers like us, in Washington, DC.<\/p>\n

\"Bouquets<\/p>\n

Figure 2<\/em>. Bouquets of flowers at the end of a production line at a flower plantation we visited in Cayambe, Ecuador. Photo by Zev Cossin.<\/p>\n

That day at Quitoloma was the first time I had gone with students from American University, and I wondered what they were feeling and seeing as we sat there. Students like Leticia, many of whom were anthropology majors, were there for a field course in Anthropology and Community-Based Research Methods. This was an experiential learning course, where students would participate in actual, ongoing research to understand how centuries of colonial histories have shaped contemporary life in the region and to consider what our connection is as flower consumers in the global north. This season was going to be different, because instead of going in with a fully set research agenda, we would wait to consult and assist our community partners in the ways that they desired. I planned to experiment with a research approach known as \u201cRestorative History\u201d being developed at places like the National Museum of American History (NMAH), discussed further below.<\/p>\n

But traveling to Ecuador with a group of students, without a detailed plan and schedule for what we would do on a daily basis, was risky, to say the least.<\/p>\n

Leticia: <\/strong><\/p>\n

As an Anthropology major and Legal Studies minor, I was interested in the application of legal frameworks to cultural heritage. This subject was relevant to the fieldwork course as the framework of restorative history draws on principles of restorative justice. In legal theory, restorative justice is a practice that prioritizes community involvement and repairing harm done, rather than punishment and retribution. By bringing together the affected parties, restorative justice aims to acknowledge and identify the harm caused by an offender\u2019s actions and take steps to remedy that harm (Development Services Group, Inc. 2010). Restorative justice prioritizes the needs of the victim, who is often overlooked in Western criminal justice systems. Ultimately, this approach is only successful when both parties are willing to come to the table and collaborate.<\/p>\n

So, how can this framework be applied to historical studies and cultural heritage? The Center for Restorative History at NMAH outlines four pillars of restorative history: 1) make history a practical tool for justice; 2) privilege community knowledge to expose truths silenced in historical narratives; 3) create partnerships based on mutual capacity building; and 4) confront legacies of injustice that their institutions have perpetuated. These pillars are meant to facilitate more ethical and collaborative forms of research within communities.<\/p>\n

Zev and Leticia:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Given this framework, we set out to establish a month-long program in collaboration with the Indigenous community of Chumillos Central, the custodians of the Quitoloma site and a community with whom the archaeology project had worked to excavate the site many years ago. Initially, we met as a small group with community leaders, \u201cbreaking bread,\u201d to discuss how we could best support this community, with the limited time frame of a three-week field school. The Chumillos leaders were prepared with quite a few ideas for us that would contribute to their long-term goal of bringing more visitors to Quitoloma and opportunities for local families. Their five main ideas were:<\/p>\n