Saturday, February 22, visiting assistant teaching professor of English and gender, sexuality and women’s studies at the College of William and Mary Melanie A. Marotta led students on a field trip to Washington, D.C. The trip’s aim was to deepen the understanding of diversity and inclusion already being taught in her classes, amidst the current federal diversity, equity and inclusion ban. The trip was sponsored by grants and scholarships that Marotta received from the Charles Center, the Center for the Liberal Arts and the Office of Diversity and Inclusion.
When asked about her vision for the field trip, Marotta recounted her joy of field trips as a kid and the idea of extending that experience to the undergraduate level.
“When I was a kid, I used to like to go on field trips, because you ultimately get this hands-on learning experience,” Marotta said. “Now, when you’re in primary, secondary, it tends to be more of a field trip like you go and you see a play or you go to a museum. When you go to university, experiential learning is this 1980s conceptualization, this theory where you immerse yourself in order to understand someone else’s lived experience.”
Marotta used her concept of experiential learning to gather many grants, including the COLL Innovation Grant funding from the Center of the Liberal Arts. This grant is only applicable to supporting the development of COLL 350-attributed classes. Marotta teaches multiple classes at the College addressing the constructions of race, including Neo-slave Narratives, American Literature and the Crisis of Slavery and Feminist Theory courses.
Director of the Charles Center and professor of chemistry at the College Elizabeth J. Harbron commented on one of the grants that Marotta received in an email to The Flat Hat.
“The Charles Center offers different funding opportunities for students and faculty. On the faculty side, our Community of Scholars program supports intellectual interactions with students outside of traditional learning spaces,” Harbron wrote. “This program funded Prof. Marotta’s field trip, and we also support guest lectures, film screenings and discussions, and other opportunities for faculty and students to gather outside of class.”
Harbron encouraged more professors to use grants similarly, as it deepens students’ understanding of the course.
“We love seeing the creative activities our faculty propose in their Community of Scholars applications,” she wrote. “Events like Professor Marotta’s field trip help students connect what they’re learning in the classroom to the broader world.”
Marotta mentioned how this trip was meant to deepen students’ understanding of difficult topics in her courses by experiencing them in a new context.
“My 362 class, which is Literatures of American Nationalism and the Crisis of Enslavement, is also a COLL 350, and the goal is to connect issues affecting race in America then to now, so that course is ostensibly 1800 to 1865,” Marotta said. “So, the goal was we’ve been speaking about these things: Can you go and have the experience and see what it was actually like for people? It helps people to visualize that way and then to reflect.”
Students were required to use inspiration and sources from the museums in their midterm assignments centered around the struggles of race in early America, keeping their work relevant to the lessons of diversity taught in class.
Molly Estes ’26, a student in Marotta’s American Literature and Crisis of Slavery class, expressed her appreciation for the curriculum centered on diversity both in and out of the classroom.
“The experiential learning trip was an amazing opportunity to apply topics discussed in class to art exhibits, historical accounts, personal stories and more,” she said. “While the National Museum of African American History and Culture most clearly aligned with our course themes, the Hirshhorn displays works showing the long-term consequences of the crisis of slavery and the National Air and Space Museum subtly reinforces American nationalism through the celebration of American achievement and spirit.”
Marotta promoted taking advantage of the hands-on opportunities at the College that could increase understanding in courses, whatever the subject. She also discussed her plans for this DEI-centered trip.
“I hope to do this in Spring 2026. After I look at the essays, I’ll see what students thought of the museums and depending upon which exhibits are on in 2026 like I might, I’d probably keep the first and the third and swap out the second, just depending upon what’s going on, and include like the National Gallery or something. The first obviously is going to stay, because we really want to make sure that race is examined in an American context. There’s inequity in America and we can’t erase the past; banning books isn’t helping anyone. We need to continue to look at racial and gender inequities, etcetera in order for America to progress,” she said.
Estes commented on how beneficial the trip was on the class’s understanding of DEI themes.
“Visiting such a range of museums strengthened our understanding of the course topics and DEI itself, because we weren’t being told what we should know – we had to analyze works and look for underlying messages,” she said.
Marotta added that the field trip was fruitful in more ways than one – students were not only inspired, but they were sharing their work to a larger audience.
“The Inkwell [Literary Magazine] is going to publish, and they have to vet everything, you know, peer review, but they’re gonna publish two essays from the students as well, which I’m thrilled about because that means that students get publication,” she said.
